Numbers 22:37

Summary

Balak confronts Balaam upon his arrival, asking why he did not come immediately despite having been urgently summoned, and questioning whether Balaam doubts his capacity to reward him with honor.

Key words

• sha.Lo.ach ("certainly ", H7971G) — infinitive absolute of the same root as the following verb; in Hebrew this construction (infinitive + finite verb) intensifies the action, conveying something like "I certainly sent."
• sha.Lach.ti ("did I send", H7971G) — qal perfect, 1st person singular; paired with the infinitive absolute above, marks the completed and emphasized act of sending.
• ha.Lakh.ta ("did you come", H1980H) — qal perfect, 2nd person masculine singular; describes Balaam's completed (non-)action, the subject of Balak's complaint.
• 'um.Nam ("really", H0552) — adverb introduced by the interrogative particle ha (H9008), forming a rhetorical question about sincerity or reality ("is it really the case that...?").
• 'u.Khal ("am I able", H3201) — qal imperfect, 1st person singular, expressing an open or future-oriented capacity, here negated by lo' (H3808).

What the text says

The verse opens with the narrative formula va-yomer ("and he said," H0559) attached to Balak, introducing his direct speech to Bil'am (H1109A). The first question uses the interrogative ha (H9008) plus the negation lo' (H3808) to form a rhetorical question expecting agreement: "Did I not certainly send...?" The doubling of the root sh-l-ch — infinitive absolute shaloach followed by the finite perfect shalachti — is a grammatical device that intensifies the verb, something a single-word translation like "I sent" cannot fully convey; it stresses the certainty or insistence of the act of sending.

The second question, lamah lo' halakhta 'elai ("why did you not come to me"), uses the interrogative pronoun mah (H4100) combined with the preposition le (H9005) to form "why," followed by the qal perfect halakhta, marking Balaam's failure to act as a completed fact from Balak's perspective.

The final clause combines two interrogative markers: ha (H9008) attached to the adverb 'umnam ("really," H0552), and then a second negated question with the imperfect 'ukhal ("am I able," H3201) governing the piel infinitive kabedekha ("to honor you," from H3513G with pronominal suffix H9031). The piel stem of k-b-d denotes an intensive or causative sense of honoring/rewarding, distinct from a simple qal "to be heavy/honored." The structure stacks three rhetorical questions, each built on negation plus an expected affirmative answer, which is a common pattern in Biblical Hebrew for expressing indignant or emphatic assertion through interrogation.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the double Hebrew construction shaloach shalachti simply as ἀπέστειλα ("I sent"), without reproducing the infinitive-absolute emphasis present in the Hebrew. The Vulgate expands the sending clause into "Misi nuntios ut vocarent te" ("I sent messengers to call you"), adding "messengers" (nuntios) not explicitly present as a separate word in the Hebrew text, which only has the verb "to send" and the infinitive "to summon" (liqro, H7121G). The final rhetorical question about ability to honor is rendered by the Vulgate as a statement about inability to pay a reward ("mercedem... reddere nequeo"), shifting the interrogative form of the Hebrew and LXX into a declarative one.