Numbers 22:19

Summary

Balaam asks Balak's messengers to stay overnight so that he may learn what more Yehovah will tell him. The verse repeats and extends the request from Numbers 22:8, adding the messengers themselves ("you also") to those who must wait, and shifts the purpose from a general answer to specifically hearing "what more" Yehovah will say.

Key words

• shevu ("remain", H3427) — qal imperative, 2nd person masculine plural: a direct command to the messengers to stay.
• na' ("please", H4994) — particle of entreaty attached to the imperative, softening the command into a polite request.
• 'edah ("let me know", H3045) — qal form with the -ah ending, expressing purpose or result ("so that I may know") rather than a simple statement of fact.
• yosef ("will he increase", H3254) — hiphil jussive of the causative stem, literally "let him add"; combined with the interrogative mah ("what"), it forms the idiom "what will he add" = "what more."
• dabber ("to speak", H1696) — piel infinitive, functioning as the complement of yosef: "add to speak" = "say further."

What the text says

The sentence opens with ve-'attah ("and now"), a transitional adverb marking a shift in Balaam's speech after his earlier refusal. The core command is shevu na' vazeh gam-'attem ha-laylah — "remain, please, in this [place], you also, the night" — where ba-zeh ("in this") points to the location, gam-'attem ("also you") explicitly includes the messengers among those who must wait, and ha-laylah functions adverbially, marking the duration ("during the night") without a preposition.

The second clause, introduced by ve-'edah ("so that I may know"), expresses the purpose of the waiting. Its object is the idiomatic question mah-yosef Yehovah dabber 'immi — literally "what will Yehovah add to speak with me." The hiphil jussive yosef ("let him add") paired with the infinitive dabber ("to speak") produces the sense "what more will Yehovah say," distinguishing this request from a request for a first answer — Balaam has already received a response (22:12) and now asks whether that response will be supplemented or changed.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders shevu ba-zeh ("remain in this [place]") as ὑπομείνατε αὐτοῦ ("wait there"), shifting from a demonstrative pronoun to a locative adverb, and gives yosef as a future indicative (προσθήσει, "he will add") rather than preserving the jussive nuance found in the Hebrew. The Vulgate places obsecro ("I beg") at the very start of the sentence, corresponding loosely to na', and translates mah-yosef...dabber as "quid mihi rursum respondeat" ("what he might answer me again"), interpreting "add to speak" as "answer again" rather than a literal addition to prior speech. The BSB's phrase "as the others did" is an interpretive addition not present in the Hebrew gam-'attem ("you also"), which itself contains no explicit reference to earlier messengers.