Numbers 22:12

Summary

The verse reports God's direct speech to Balaam, prohibiting two things: going with the men who summoned him, and cursing the people of Israel. The reason given is that the people already have the status of "blessed."

Key words

• va-Yomer ("and he said", H0559) — qal narrative form marking the sequential action that moves the story forward: God speaks in direct response to a prior request.
• Elohim ("God", H0430G) — masculine plural noun functioning here as the subject of the verb, the one issuing the prohibition.
• lo' tele-kh ("you will not go", H3808 + H1980G) — negation plus qal imperfect (second person masculine), producing a prohibitive sense ("you shall not go") rather than a simple future statement.
• lo' ta'or ("you will not curse", H3808 + H0779) — same construction (negation + imperfect), a second parallel prohibition addressed to Balaam specifically regarding the act of cursing.
• varukh ("blessed", H1288) — qal passive participle, masculine singular, describing a state already in effect for the people, not an action Balaam or anyone else is performing.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built as a chain introduced by the narrative va-Yomer, followed by two parallel negative clauses using lo' + imperfect verb forms — lo' tele-kh ("you will not go") and lo' ta'or ("you will not curse"). Both use the same grammatical pattern (negation plus second-person masculine imperfect), which in Biblical Hebrew commonly expresses prohibition rather than a mere statement about the future. This repetition creates a rhetorical parallelism: first the prohibition on physical movement ("with them"), then the prohibition on speech-act cursing ("the people").

The clause of reason, introduced by ki ("for", H3588A), gives the grounds for both prohibitions: barukh hu' ("blessed [is] he/it"). The word barukh is a passive participle, indicating an existing condition — the people are described as already being in a blessed state, not that they are about to receive a blessing. The pronoun hu' ("he/it", H1931) refers back to ha-'Am ("the people", H5971A), confirming that the participle applies to the collective noun previously mentioned as the object of the forbidden curse.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the two Hebrew prohibitions with οὐ πορεύσῃ ("you will not go") and οὐδὲ καταράσῃ ("nor shall you curse"), preserving the parallel negative structure but linking them with οὐδὲ* ("nor") rather than repeating a separate negation as in the Hebrew's two instances of lo'. For the final clause, the LXX has ἔστιν γὰρ εὐλογημένος ("for he is blessed"), using a periphrastic perfect passive construction, which corresponds structurally to the Hebrew's participle barukh denoting an existing state. The Vulgate follows a similar structure with quia benedictus est ("because he is blessed"), matching the stative sense of the Hebrew participle rather than framing it as a future action.