Numbers 23:17

Summary

The verse narrates Balaam's return to Balak, who is found standing beside his burnt offering together with the princes of Moab. Balak then immediately asks Balaam what Yehovah has spoken.

Key words

• va-yyavo ("and he went/came", H0935G) — qal narrative verb, marking the next event in the story sequence: Balaam's arrival.
• nitzav ("standing", H5324) — niphal participle, describing Balak's ongoing posture (a state, not a completed action) at the moment Balaam arrives.
• olato ("his burnt offering", H5930A) — feminine singular noun in construct form with a possessive suffix, indicating the offering belongs to Balak and is the reference point for his position.
• itto ("with him", H0854) — preposition plus suffix, locating the Moabite officials in relation to Balak, not to Balaam.
• dibber ("has he spoken", H1696G) — piel perfect verb, denoting an intensive or emphatic act of speaking that is already completed at the time of the question.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence structure moves through a chain of narrative verbs joined by the vav consecutive (va-yyavo, "and he went"; va-yyomer, "and he said"), which is typical of Biblical Hebrew storytelling: each new verb form advances the action one step. Between these two narrative verbs sits a descriptive clause introduced by hinno ("there he was", H2009), an interjection that shifts from narration to a scene-setting description — it presents what Balaam sees upon arrival, namely Balak nitzav ("standing", niphal participle) beside olato ("his burnt offering"), with the princes of Moab itto ("with him").

The construct chain olato attaches the noun "burnt offering" to Balak by means of a possessive suffix, marking the offering as his own rather than a general or shared one. Balak's question, mah dibber Yehovah ("what has Yehovah spoken?"), uses the interrogative mah ("what?") with the piel perfect dibber, a verb form that in this stem often carries a nuance of forceful or repeated speech, and the perfect aspect frames the speaking as an accomplished event Balak is now asking about.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate renders the opening as "Reversus invenit eum" ("having returned, he found him"), making explicit an idea of return and discovery that the Hebrew va-yyavo ("and he went/came") states more simply as arrival. The LXX (Swete) compresses the scene, omitting an explicit rendering corresponding to hinno ("there", H2009) and to the verb va-yyavo, moving directly to describing Balak's standing position, which gives the Greek a slightly more elliptical narrative flow compared to the fuller Hebrew sequence of verbs.