Numbers 22:38

Summary

Balaam replies to Balak that although he has come as summoned, he cannot speak freely: he can only pronounce the word that God places in his mouth. The Hebrew stresses this limitation through an emphatic verbal construction and a fronted object clause.

Key words

• ya.Khol ("certainly ", H3201) — infinitive absolute of the same root as the following verb; it reinforces or questions the verb's force, producing an idiom often rendered "am I able at all?"
• 'u.Khal ("am I able", H3201) — imperfect form paired with the infinitive absolute above; together they form a single intensified question about capacity.
• da.Var ("word", H1697) — definite noun ha.Davar ("the word"), placed at the front of its clause before the relative pronoun, marking it as the topic of the sentence.
• ya.Sim ("he will put", H7760) — imperfect verb describing a future/repeated action of God placing words in the mouth.
• 'a.da.Ber ("I will speak", H1696G) — piel imperfect, intensive stem, appearing at the very end of the sentence after the fronted object, so that the verb arrives only after its object has been named.

What the text says

The sentence divides into two parts. The first is Balaam's statement of arrival, hi.neh-va.ti 'e.Lei.kha ("here — I have come to you"), followed by the paired construction ha.ya.Khol 'u.Khal ("certainly-able am-I-able"). This doubling of the same root (infinitive absolute + imperfect) is a common Biblical Hebrew pattern that intensifies the verb; combined with the interrogative particle ha (H9008), it frames the question as emphatic — not merely "can I speak" but something closer to "am I truly able to speak anything at all?"

The second part restructures normal word order. The definite object ha.Davar 'a.Sher yaSim 'Elohim beFi ("the word that God puts in my mouth") stands before the verb 'adaBer ("I will speak"). Hebrew resumes this fronted object with the suffixed pronoun 'oTo ("it," attached to the object marker H0853), technically not required grammatically but making the fronting explicit: "the word ... it I will speak." This front-loading of the object is a stylistic device unavailable to translations that must follow subject-verb-object order; it places rhetorical weight on "the word" before naming the act of speaking it.

Differences between versions

The LXX turns the infinitive-absolute construction into a straightforward future statement with a question mark, δυνατὸς ἔσομαι λαλῆσαί τι ("will I be able to speak anything?"), losing the doubled-root intensification found in the Hebrew. It also renders yaSim ("he will put") as βάλῃ ("throws/casts"), a different verb of placement. The Vulgate restructures the second clause negatively — "can I speak anything else, except what God has put" — introducing a nisi ("except") construction not present in the Hebrew, which instead uses a simple relative clause with a fronted object.