Numbers 22:28

Summary

Yehovah causes the donkey's mouth to open, and the animal speaks to Balaam, asking what she has done to deserve being struck three times. The verse marks the point where a mute animal is given speech to address a rebuke directly to a human.

Key words

• va-yiftach ("and he opened", H6605A) — qal verb with narrative vav, marking the next event in sequence; the subject is Yehovah.
• Yehovah ("Yehovah", H3068G) — the divine name given as grammatical subject of the opening action.
• pi ("mouth of", H6310G) — construct noun, syntactically bound to the following word ha-'aton, forming "the mouth of the donkey."
• va-tomer ("and she said", H0559) — qal narrative verb, feminine subject, continuing the sequence; the donkey becomes grammatical agent of speech.
• hikkitani ("you have struck me", H5221) — hiphil (causative) perfect with 1st person suffix "me," expressing a completed action performed against the speaker.
• zeh shalosh regalim ("this three feet/times", H2088 + H7969 + H7272) — demonstrative + cardinal number + plural noun, an idiomatic way of marking repetition ("these three times").

What the text says

The verse opens with a narrative vav construction (va-yiftach) placing Yehovah as the one who performs the action of opening — the verb is qal, not causative in form, but its object is et-pi ha-'aton, "the mouth of the donkey," marked by the direct object particle 'et (H0853). The construct chain pi ha-'aton ("mouth of the donkey") ties the two nouns together grammatically, with the definite article on 'aton ("the donkey") but not on pi, standard for Hebrew construct phrases.

The second clause, introduced by another narrative vav (va-tomer), shifts the grammatical subject to the donkey (feminine verb form), who now speaks le-Bilʿam ("to Balaam"). The donkey's speech is a rhetorical question built on meh ("what?") followed by the qal perfect 'asiti ("I have done") with a 2nd person suffix lekha ("to you"). The causal clause ki hikkitani ("that/because you have struck me") uses the hiphil perfect of the verb "to strike," a causative form indicating Balaam's completed action against the speaker, marked with the 1st person object suffix -ni ("me"). The closing phrase zeh shalosh regalim is an idiom combining the demonstrative zeh, the number shalosh ("three"), and regalim (literally "feet," here used to denote occurrences or times), producing the sense "these three times."

Differences between versions

The LXX renders Yehovah (H3068G) as ho theos ("God") rather than transliterating the divine name, differing from the Hebrew's explicit use of the personal name Yehovah. The Vulgate follows the Hebrew more closely with Dominus ("the Lord"). The LXX also renders the idiom zeh shalosh regalim ("these three times") as touto triton ("this third time"), a slightly different construction from the Hebrew's demonstrative-plus-number phrasing, though conveying similar repetition.