What Does Numbers 23:18 Mean?
And he lifted up his proverb, and said, Rise, Balak, and hear and respond. Tilt your ear to me, son of Zippor.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And he took up his parable, and said, Rise up, Balak, and hear; hearken unto me, thou son of Zippor:THE KEY
The verse makes hearing a movement: Balak must rise, hear, and give his ear before the message is even named.
THE MEANING
The call reaches you before its message does: rise, hear, attend. Hearing here is active reception, as the paired commands move from listening to giving the ear itself. The words address you now as someone able to receive what is about to be spoken.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that hearing is passive, that a message can reach you without your attention turning toward it.
THE ROOT
וּשְׁמָע
u-shemaʿ
GROWS FROM
שמע
To hear, heed, and respond.
“hear and respond” in this verse is u-shemaʿ. The Hebrew verb can carry hearing that answers; the call is for more than sound to reach Balak. The next command sharpens that attention by naming the ear.
ALSO GROWS
shama: Hear, listen, heed.
שָׁמַע
This is the verb behind the summons to hear, with room for a response.
shemuah: A report or something heard.
שְׁמוּעָה
The related noun presents a report as something received through hearing.
הַאֲזִינָה
haʾazinah
GROWS FROM
אזן
Ear; to give ear or attend.
“Tilt your ear” in this verse is haʾazinah. The word translated “hearken” comes from the Hebrew word for ear. English makes this sound like another way to say “hear,” while Hebrew gives the second command a bodily focus: incline attention toward the speaker.
ALSO GROWS
ʾozen: Ear.
אֹזֶן
This noun reveals the concrete image beneath “hearken”: the ear is the part being offered to attention.
heʾezin: Listen or give ear.
הֶאֱזִין
This verb is the listening action expressed in the command to Balak.
THE PATTERN
Receiving a word begins with deliberate attention before response.
Hear and respond, O Israel. The LORD our God is one LORD.Bend your ear and come to me. Hear and respond, and your living soul shall live. I will cut a covenant of the ages with you, the steady faithful loves of David.Know this, my beloved brothers. Let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to swell.THE THREAD
God is not a man, that he should lie, nor a son of man, that he should relent. Has he said, and will he not do it? Has he spoken, and will he not make it stand?The call to hear is immediately grounded in a claim about the speaker: God does not speak falsely or leave his word unfinished. That turns the summons into preparation to receive a word that holds steady.
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