Numbers 24:25

Summary

Numbers 24:25 closes the Balaam narrative with two parallel movements: Balaam rises and returns to his own place, and Balak likewise departs on his own way. The verse uses a chain of narrative verbs to mark the sequence of actions ending the encounter between the two men.

Key words

• va-yakom ("and he arose", H6965B) — narrative qal verb, first in a three-verb chain marking sequential action by Balaam.
• va-yelekh ("and he went", H1980G) — narrative qal verb, second link in the chain, describing Balaam's departure.
• va-yashov ("and he returned", H7725G) — narrative qal verb, third link, specifying the direction of Balaam's movement back.
• mekomo ("his place", H4725) — construct noun with pronominal suffix, indicating the destination Balaam returns to.
• darko ("his way", H1870L) — construct noun with pronominal suffix, indicating the path Balak takes, parallel to Balaam's mekomo.

What the text says

The verse divides into two clauses joined by the conjunction ve ("and", H9002) combined with the adverb gam ("also", H1571), producing "and also" — a construction that signals parallelism between Balaam's action and Balak's action. The first clause contains three narrative verbs in sequence — va-yakom ("he arose", H6965B), va-yelekh ("he went", H1980G), va-yashov ("he returned", H7725G) — all governed by the subject Bil'am ("Balaam", H1109A). This triple verb chain is a common Hebrew narrative device that breaks a single action (departure and return) into discrete steps, giving the sentence a rhythmic, sequential quality that a single verb in translation cannot replicate. The destination is marked by the construct phrase li-mekomo ("to his place", H4725 with H9005 and H9023), using the generic noun "place" rather than naming a specific location.

The second clause shifts to Balak as subject, using a single perfect-tense verb halakh ("he went", H1980G) rather than a narrative chain, which gives Balak's action a more summary, non-sequential character compared to Balaam's three-step departure. Balak's destination is expressed as le-darko ("to his way", H1870L with H9005 and H9023), using "way" instead of "place" — a lexical variation that creates partial rather than exact parallelism between the two men's departures.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders both departures with the verb ἀπῆλθεν ("he went away") for both Balaam and Balak, flattening the Hebrew's lexical distinction between mekomo ("his place") and darko ("his way") into a single repeated verb. The Vulgate specifies Balak's return as via, qua venerat, rediit ("returned by the way he had come"), adding the detail "by which he had come" not explicitly present in the Hebrew le-darko ("to his way"). The BSB translates mekomo as "his homeland," an interpretive expansion beyond the more general Hebrew "place."