Numbers 22:21

Summary

The verse narrates Balaam's actions the morning after receiving permission to go with the Moabite officials: he gets up, saddles his donkey, and departs with the leaders of Moab. The sentence is a simple sequence of three consecutive narrative actions.

Key words

• va-yaKom ("and he arose", H6965B) — qal narrative form, the first in a chain of three consecutive verbs marking sequential action.
• bil'Am ("Balaam", H1109A) — proper name, subject of all three verbs in the verse.
• va-yachaVosh ("and he saddled", H2280) — qal narrative, second action in the sequence; takes the direct object marker 'et (H0853) before its object.
• 'atoN-o ("his donkey", H0860 + H9023) — feminine singular noun in construct form with a possessive suffix, literally "donkey-of-his".
• va-yElekh ("and he went", H1980G) — qal narrative, the third and final verb, closing the sequence of morning actions.

What the text says

The verse is built on three verbs in the narrative (vav-consecutive) form: va-yaKom ("and he arose", H6965B), va-yachaVosh ("and he saddled", H2280), and va-yElekh ("and he went", H1980G). This chain structure is a standard feature of Biblical Hebrew narrative prose, presenting a tight sequence of actions performed by a single subject, Balaam, with no interruption or elaboration between them. The repeated vav-prefix on each verb signals temporal and logical succession: rising leads to saddling, which leads to departing.

The object of the saddling, 'atonV ("donkey", H0860), appears in construct form with the possessive suffix -o ("his", H9023), producing "his donkey" as a single grammatical unit. The direct object marker 'et (H0853) preceding it has no independent translation but marks the noun phrase as the direct object of va-yachaVosh.

The final clause uses the preposition 'im ("with", H5973A) followed by sarei ("leaders/princes of", H8269), a plural construct form linked to Mo'av ("Moab", H4124G), indicating that Balaam's departure is not solitary but accompanies the Moabite delegation mentioned earlier in the chapter.

Differences between versions

No substantive divergence appears among the Hebrew, LXX (Swete), and Vulgate texts for this verse; all three preserve the same three-part sequence of actions (rising, saddling, going) with the same subject and companions. The Vulgate's cum eis ("with them") is slightly more generic than the Hebrew's explicit sarei Mo'av ("leaders of Moab") and the LXX's tōn archontōn Mōab ("the rulers of Moab"), but this reflects translational compression rather than a difference in underlying meaning.