What Does Numbers 23:4 Mean?
And God met Balaam, and he said to him, I have laid seven altars in rows, and I have brought near on every altar a bullock and a ram.
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 God met Balaam: and he said unto him, I have prepared seven altars, and I have offered upon every altar a bullock and a ram.THE KEY
Balaam names his own arranging and offering, but the verb of meeting makes God the actor in the encounter.
THE MEANING
The verse places Balaam’s preparation beside an encounter whose subject is God. The altars and animals are what he arranges and offers; the meeting is what God does. That distinction remains present: what you set in place and what meets you are not the same kind of act.
THE ROOT
וַיִּקָּר
wayyiqqār
GROWS FROM
קרה
To meet or encounter; to happen or come to pass.
The root holds meeting alongside what happens or befalls, so “met” carries the sense of an encounter that comes to pass. The verse names God as the one who meets Balaam, while Balaam reports what he has arranged.
ALSO GROWS
miqreh: Event, occurrence, or chance.
מִקְרֶה
This noun shares the root’s sense of what happens, linking an encounter with an event that comes to pass.
niqrah: Was met with, encountered.
נִקְרָה
This form appears in Exodus 3:18, where the people say the LORD has met with them; the root can describe an encounter received by a whole people.
וָאַעַל
vaʾaʿal
GROWS FROM
עלה
To rise, ascend, or go up.
“brought near” in this verse is vaʾaʿal. Balaam’s verb is causative: he says he made a bull and a ram ascend. The offering is pictured as rising, while the meeting is still named as God’s act.
ALSO GROWS
ʿolah: Burnt offering; literally, an offering that ascends.
עֹלָה
This noun names the kind of offering described by the rising verb in the verse.
ʿaliyyah: Ascent or going up.
עֲלִיָּה
This branch keeps the upward movement visible in the Hebrew word family behind “offered.”
THE PATTERN
Scripture repeatedly names divine encounter through God’s initiative: God meets, comes, or calls.
And Jacob woke out of his sleep, and he said, Surely the LORD is in this place, and I did not perceive it.And the LORD came, and stood, and called as at other times, Samuel, Samuel. Then Samuel answered, Speak, for your servant hears and responds.He perceived plainly in a vision, about the ninth hour of the day, a messenger of God coming in to him, and saying to him, Cornelius.THE THREAD
And they shall hear and respond to your voice. Then you shall come, you and the elders of Israel, to the king of Egypt, and you shall say to him, The LORD God of the Hebrews has met with us. And now let us go, please, a three days' road into the wilderness, that we may slaughter to the LORD our God.The root קרה (qarah, meet or encounter) is behind “met” here and “hath met with us” in Exodus. The same word extends from Balaam’s individual encounter to a people naming their encounter with the LORD.
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