Numbers 22:39

Summary

The verse reports that Balaam went together with Balak, and that both arrived at a place called Kiriath-huzoth. It is a short narrative transition marking movement from one location to another in the Balaam story.

Key words

va-i.Ye.lekh ("and he went", H1980G) — qal verb with narrative vav, third person masculine singular; it opens the verse by advancing the action in strict sequence ("and then he went").

bil.'Am ("Balaam", H1109A) — proper name, subject of the first verb; identifies who performs the action of going.

'im- ("with", H5973A) — preposition linking Balaam to Balak, expressing accompaniment rather than mere proximity.

va-i.ya.Vo.'u ("and they came", H0935G) — qal verb with narrative vav, third person masculine plural; the plural form shifts the grammatical subject from Balaam alone to both men together, marking their joint arrival.

kir.Yat chu.Tzot ("Kiriath-huzoth", H7155) — a two-word proper place name functioning as the destination of the verb "they came"; grammatically it is a construct-type toponym (a "city of streets/outskirts" by its component sense), here used purely as a geographic label.

What the text says

The verse is built as two short clauses joined by the narrative vav, a typical feature of Biblical Hebrew storytelling that presents events as a chronological chain: first va-i.Ye.lekh ("and he went") with Balaam as singular subject, then va-i.ya.Vo.'u ("and they came") with a plural verb form indicating that both Balaam and Balak now act as a joint subject. This shift from singular to plural verb form across the two clauses is a grammatical detail that marks the transition from Balaam's individual action (going with Balak) to their combined arrival at the destination, without the Hebrew needing to repeat both names as subjects a second time.

The preposition 'im- ("with", H5973A) attached to Balak's name specifies the nature of the first action: Balaam's going is not independent but explicitly accompanied by Balak. The destination, kir.Yat chu.Tzot (H7155), is treated grammatically as a single locative complement of the verb "they came," requiring no preposition "to" in the Hebrew text itself (the arrival verb governs the place name directly).

Differences between versions

The LXX renders kir.Yat chu.Tzot as Πόλεις ἐπαύλεων ("cities of encampments/farmsteads"), translating the place name descriptively rather than transliterating it as a proper noun, unlike the Hebrew and most other versions which treat it as a toponym. The Vulgate goes further, replacing the place name entirely with a descriptive phrase, "urbem, quæ in extremis regni ejus finibus erat" ("a city which was in the farthest borders of his kingdom"), omitting the name kir.Yat chu.Tzot altogether. The RV1909, BSB, and SBLIBRE all preserve the Hebrew proper name (as "Husoth," "Kiriath-huzoth," or "Quiriat-huzot"), following the Hebrew text's treatment of it as a place name rather than a description.