Numbers 23:7
And he took up his parable, and said, Balak the king of Moab hath brought me from Aram, out of the mountains of the east, saying, Come, curse me Jacob, and come, defy Israel. And he took up his parable, and said, Balak the king of Moab hath brought me from Aram, out of the mountains of the east, saying, Come, curse me Jacob, and come, defy Israel.
Numbers 23:7 opens Balaam's unwilling prophecy of blessing over Israel, declaring that Balak the king of Moab had brought him from Aram out of the mountains of the east to curse Jacob and defy Israel. Taking up his parable means speaking in solemn, prophetic style, and the utterance that follows is poetry of great beauty. To defy in the verse means to devote to destruction.
After sacrifices had been ordered according to religious rites, God by His angel met Balaam and put the utterance in his mouth to return and speak to Balak and the princes of Moab by the burnt sacrifice, so that he had no power to say anything beyond the word God gave him. The hired curse was thus turned into commanded blessing that could not be reversed, for he could not curse a people whom God had not cursed but had promised to prosper, and he was constrained to speak blessings contrary to the curses in his heart.
Balaam was a corrupt, hypocritical, avaricious gain-seeker who longed in heart to curse God's people for reward, and though acknowledged by God as a prophet he proved unfaithful and would have placed God's people in a false light if God had permitted him; instead God controlled him and compelled him in exalted strains of inspiration to proclaim Israel as God's chosen with God's almighty power as her protection. That compelled blessing was a striking display of God's goodness and mercy, giving clear evidence to idolatrous Moab and Midian that Jehovah was the God they should serve by letting the Moabites themselves see God's power controlling Balaam, as the last ray of light shining upon a stiff-necked people who had set their wills in defiance of God's will before their cup of iniquity became full and their probation ended.
Balak's conducting of Balaam from one point to another was a repeated, vain hope of inducing him to change the blessing of Israel into a curse and break his steadfastness, and its failure shows that when a man is sustained by divine power neither human applause nor fear of man can shake his decision to bless what God has blessed.