Numbers 24:11

Summary

Balak commands Balaam to flee back to his own place, recalling his earlier promise to honor him greatly, but noting that Yehovah has withheld that honor from him. The verse combines an imperative dismissal with a statement of frustrated intention.

Key words

• berach ("flee", H1272) — qal imperative masculine singular, an urgent direct command to Balaam.
• meqomekha ("your place", H4725 + H9021) — construct noun with possessive suffix, specifying the destination as belonging to Balaam himself.
• kabbed 'akhabedkha ("surely honor, I will honor you", H3513) — infinitive followed by imperfect of the same piel root, a doubled construction emphasizing the intensity of the intended honoring.
• hinneh ("here!", H2009) — interjection drawing attention to the contrast that follows.
• mena'akha ("he has withheld you", H4513) — qal perfect third person, marking Yehovah as the subject who has completed the act of withholding.

What the text says

The verse opens with ve'attah ("and therefore/now", H6258), a transitional adverb marking a shift in Balak's speech toward a conclusion. The imperative berach-lekha ("flee for yourself") uses the qal imperative of H1272 combined with the preposition le plus pronominal suffix (H9005 + H9031), a construction sometimes called the "reflexive dative" that reinforces the personal direction of the action toward Balaam himself. This is followed by 'el-meqomekha ("to your place"), a construct noun phrase locating the destination explicitly as Balaam's own territory.

The second half of the verse shifts to Balak's own recollection. 'amarti ("I said", H0559) is a qal perfect, marking completed past speech. The following kabbed 'akhabedkha pairs an infinitive of the piel root H3513 with an imperfect of the same root — a construction that in Biblical Hebrew intensifies or emphasizes the verb's action, here rendered by translations as "surely" or "richly" honor. This doubling underscores the scale of the reward Balak had intended.

The final clause pivots with hinneh ("here!", H2009), an interjection that draws attention to a contrast. mena'akha Yehovah mikkavod ("Yehovah has withheld you from honor") places Yehovah as the grammatical subject of the qal perfect mena'akha (H4513), with mikkavod ("from honor", H9006 + H3519) specifying what has been withheld. The structure attributes the withholding directly to Yehovah, using the divine name as agent of the completed action.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the opening as νῦν οὖν φεῦγε ("now therefore flee") without the phrase "to your place" as a possessive construct, instead using εἰς τὸν τόπον σου ("into your place"), a simpler prepositional rendering. The Vulgate begins directly with revertere ("return") rather than "flee," diverging from both the Hebrew berach ("flee") and the LXX pheuge ("flee"). The LXX also renders the doubled Hebrew construction kabbed 'akhabedkha with a single future verb τιμήσω σε ("I will honor you"), omitting the infinitive-imperfect doubling that intensifies the Hebrew phrase.