Numbers 22:2

Summary

The verse opens the Balak narrative by reporting that Balak, son of Zippor, saw everything that Israel had done to the Amorites. It functions as a narrative hinge, establishing the cause for Balak's subsequent actions in the following verses.

Key words

• va-yar ("and he saw", H7200G) — qal narrative verb (vayyiqtol form), marking the next event in the story sequence; the prefixed va (H9001) links this clause to what precedes.
• Balaq ben-Tzippor ("Balak son of Zippor", H1111 / H1121A / H6834) — a construct chain identifying the subject by name and patronymic, standard for introducing a character in narrative.
• 'et (H0853) — the direct object marker, untranslated, signaling that what follows (kol 'asher 'asah Yisra'el) is the grammatical object of "he saw."
• 'asah ("he had done", H6213A) — qal perfect, denoting a completed action prior to or independent of the main narrative verb, hence rendered "had done" in English.
• la-'Emori ("to the Amorite", H9005 / H0567) — preposition plus article plus gentilic noun, marking the recipient of Israel's action; the definite article treats "Amorite" as a collective/generic reference to the people group.

What the text says

The sentence is built around a single main verb, va-yar ("and he saw", H7200G), whose subject is Balaq ben-Tzippor ("Balak son of Zippor", H1111/H1121A). The object of this seeing is introduced by the object marker 'et (H0853) followed by the phrase kol 'asher 'asah Yisra'el la-'Emori — "all that Israel had done to the Amorite." Within this embedded clause, 'asah (H6213A) is a qal perfect, marking an action completed before the moment of Balak's seeing; this sequencing (perfect verb inside a narrative clause led by a vayyiqtol) is what allows translations to render it as a pluperfect ("had done") relative to the main verb.

The phrase la-'Emori (H9005/H0567) uses the definite article with a gentilic noun, referring to "the Amorite" as a collective designation for the people rather than a single individual. The construction kol 'asher ("all that", H3605/H0834A) generalizes the scope of Israel's actions without specifying particular events, leaving the content of "all that Israel had done" to be inferred from the preceding narrative material outside this verse.

Differences between versions

The LXX (Swete) preserves a participial construction, idōn Balak ("Balak having seen"), rather than a finite narrative verb, and the provided LXX text is cut off before completing the phrase with "to the Amorite." The Vulgate uses Videns ("seeing"), also participial, followed by Amorrhæo in the dative, matching the sense of "to the Amorite." The Hebrew, by contrast, uses a finite qal verb va-yar ("and he saw") rather than a participle, giving the clause a more direct narrative sequence than the participial openings of the LXX and Vulgate.