Numbers 22:25

Summary

The donkey sees the angel of Yehovah and presses itself against a wall, crushing Balaam's foot in the process. Balaam responds by striking the donkey again.

Key words

• 'aTon ("donkey", H0860) — feminine singular noun with definite article, the subject of both actions in the verse.
• mal'Akh ("messenger/angel of", H4397H) — construct form, linking directly to Yehovah; the construct chain identifies whose messenger is seen.
• tillaChetz ("it squeezed itself", H3905) — niphal (reflexive/passive) stem: the donkey's own action of pressing itself against the wall.
• tilChatz ("it squeezed", H3905) — same root as above but in qal (simple active) stem: here the donkey squeezes Balaam's foot, a distinct grammatical voice for a related but different action.
• Yosef ("he repeated", H3254G) — hiphil (causative) verb paired with the infinitive haKota ("to strike", H5221), forming the idiomatic construction "he added to strike" = "he struck again."

What the text says

The verse is built as a chain of four narrative-vav clauses, each advancing the action in sequence: the donkey sees (Tere'), presses itself (tillaChetz), squeezes the foot (tilChatz), and Balaam repeats his blow (Yosef... haKota). A notable feature is the repetition of the root H3905 in two different verbal stems within the same verse: first as niphal (tillaChetz, "she pressed herself" — an action done to/by herself against the wall) and then as qal (tilChatz, "she squeezed" — an action done to Balaam's foot). This stem-shift lets the Hebrew narrate a single physical motion producing two distinct effects — the donkey's self-positioning and the incidental crushing of the rider's foot — using morphology alone, without needing separate verbs.

The final clause uses the hiphil of Yosef ("he added/continued") governing an infinitive construct le-haKotah ("to strike her"), a common Biblical Hebrew idiom for expressing repeated action, here rendered as "he continued to strike her" or "he struck her again."

Differences between versions

The Hebrew names mal'Akh Yehovah ("angel of Yehovah," H4397H + H3068G), while the LXX renders this as τὸν ἄγγελον τοῦ θεοῦ ("the angel of God"), substituting theos for the divine name. The Vulgate at this point does not repeat the title at all, reading simply "Quem videns asina" ("seeing whom, the donkey"), referring back to the figure introduced in the previous verse rather than restating "angel of the Lord." The Vulgate also renders Bil'Am (Balaam, H1109A) indirectly as "sedentis" ("the one sitting"), where the Hebrew and LXX both explicitly name Balaam.