Numbers 23:30

Summary

The verse closes the episode of Balak and Balaam's third oracle sequence, stating that Balak did exactly as Balaam had instructed him, then offered a young bull and a ram on the altar.

Key words

• va.Ya'as ("he did", H6213A) — qal narrative form, marking the next event in the storyline: Balak's compliance.
• ka.'aSher ("just as", H0834D + H9004) — preposition plus relative particle, forming a comparative clause that ties Balak's action directly to Balaam's prior words.
• 'a.Mar ("he had said", H0559) — qal perfect, denoting a completed speech act that precedes and governs Balak's subsequent action.
• i.Ya'al ("he offered up", H5927I) — hiphil narrative form, causative: Balak causes the offerings to go up (i.e., presents them on the altar), rather than simply "going up" himself.
• miz.Be'ach ("altar", H4196) — masculine singular noun with the definite article ba ("on the"), specifying one particular altar, not multiple ones.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built as two linked narrative clauses joined by the narrative va ("and then"). The first clause, va.Ya'as Balak ka.'aSher 'a.Mar Bil'am ("and Balak did as Balaam had said"), uses a qal perfect verb ('a.Mar) for Balaam's earlier statement, subordinated to a qal narrative verb (va.Ya'as) for Balak's action — grammatically marking Balaam's words as the cause and Balak's compliance as the result.

The second clause, va.Ya'al par va-'Ayil ba-miz.Be'ach, uses the hiphil stem of the verb for "offered up" (i.Ya'al), which is causative: Balak does not himself ascend but causes the animals — a par ("young bull", H6499) and an 'Ayil ("ram", H0352A) — to go up onto the altar, i.e., he presents them as offerings. The noun miz.Be'ach carries the definite article, indicating a single, specific altar in the Hebrew text.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew ba-miz.Be'ach ("on the altar") is singular and definite, and the LXX similarly reads ἐπὶ τὸν βωμόν ("upon the altar"), also singular. The Vulgate, however, renders this as per singulas aras ("on each of the altars"), a plural and distributive reading. The English and Spanish translations provided (BSB "each altar", RV1909 "cada altar", SBLIBRE "cada altar") follow the Vulgate's distributive sense rather than the singular form found in the Hebrew and Greek texts.