Numbers 22:9

Summary

Numbers 22:9 narrates that Elohim came to Balaam and asked him who the men accompanying him were. The verse consists of two consecutive narrative actions (arrival and speech) followed by a direct question introduced by the interrogative mi ("who?", H4310).

Key words

• yavo ("he came", H0935G) — qal verb in narrative (vav-consecutive) form, marking the first sequential event of the scene: the arrival of Elohim to Balaam.
• Elohim ("God", H0430G) — masculine plural noun, here functioning as the grammatical subject of the singular verb yavo, a common pattern in Biblical Hebrew for this term.
• mi ("who?", H4310) — interrogative pronoun opening the direct speech; it introduces the question that structures the rest of the verse.
• ha-anashim ha-elleh ("these men", H0582 + H0428) — the demonstrative elleh ("these") is joined to the article-marked noun anashim ("men"), producing the phrase "these men," the object of the question.
• imakh ("with you", H5973A + H9032) — preposition with a second-person masculine singular pronominal suffix, closing the sentence by locating the men relative to Balaam ("with you").

What the text says

The verse is built on two linked narrative clauses joined by the vav-consecutive: first va-yavo ("and he came"), then va-yomer ("and he said"). This chaining is typical of Biblical Hebrew narrative sequencing, presenting the arrival and the speech as a single continuous action rather than two separate events. The subject of both verbs is Elohim, a plural-form noun taking a singular verb, a standard grammatical feature when this term designates a singular divine referent in the Hebrew text.

The question itself is framed by mi ("who?"), followed by the doubly-marked noun phrase ha-anashim ha-elleh ("the men, the these" — i.e., "these men"), where both the noun and the demonstrative carry the definite article. The sentence closes with imakh ("with you"), a preposition plus pronominal suffix that syntactically ties the identity of "these men" to their proximity to Balaam.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew interrogative mi ("who?", H4310) asks about identity/personhood. The LXX renders this with Τί ("what?"), and the Vulgate similarly uses Quid ("what") in "Quid sibi volunt homines isti" ("What do these men want for themselves"), shifting the question from "who are these men" toward "what do these men want/mean." This represents a divergence in how the interrogative and the verb of inquiry are rendered between the Hebrew text and the Greek/Latin versions.