Numbers 23:27

"And Balak said unto Balaam, Come now, I will take thee unto another place; peradventure it will please God that thou mayest curse me them from thence. And Balak took Balaam unto the top of Peor, that looketh down upon the desert. And Balaam said unto Balak, Build me here seven altars, and prepare me here seven bullocks and seven rams. And Balak did as Balaam had said, and offered up a bullock and a ram on every altar."

"Another place ..." (Numbers 23:27). Balak again and again sought "another place" for the attempted cursing of Israel, as if one place could have been more or less desirable than another for such a purpose. He had to learn the hard way that God is everywhere! Jonah could not actually "lose" God by fleeing to Tarshish; and neither could Balak have found any place on earth from which God would have cursed Israel. Nevertheless, Balak, at once set the stage for the third oracle on top of Peor.

The first two oracles came from the top of Pisgah, but the stage is now changed to the top of Peor. Although the precise location of this peak is not surely known,[17] its general locality is, "somewhere to the North of the Dead Sea, and opposite Jericho, described as looking toward the desert."[18] This location was extremely important to Israel. It was at Baal-Peor, somewhere in the vicinity of this mountain, that the Wilderness Generation of Israel engaged in a crucial rebellion against God, a tragedy that would later divide and destroy both the kingdoms of Israel. Balaam himself is revealed to have been a vital part of that tragic failure of Israel, hence, the appropriateness of this full account of Balaam's devices against Israel.