And he said to them: The pronoun he refers to Balaam, which Good News Bible makes clear.

Lodge here this night: Many languages will have an idiomatic way of expressing this clause; for example, Chewa says “Lie down right here today,” which implies night. The translation should not imply that some special building was located there in which visitors would lodge. So Good News Bible says “Spend the night here.”

And I will bring back word to you, as the LORD speaks to me: Here Balaam indicates that he will receive a message from the LORD in a dream during the night. The Deir ʿAlla inscription contains the following line: “The gods came to him during the night,” which is the time when diviners and prophets normally receive their perceptive or predictive messages. New Revised Standard Version renders as the LORD speaks to me as “just as the LORD speaks to me,” which is more accurate. In this section Balaam normally uses the covenant name of Israel’s God, the LORD (YHWH in Hebrew), but the narrator uses “God” (ʾelohim in Hebrew) to refer to his instructions to Balaam (see verse 9). These distinctions should be preserved in the translation. It may be that Balaam felt that he would somehow have to use the personal name of Israel’s deity in order to effectively put a curse upon them. Helpful models here are “and I will bring you back the answer the LORD gives me” (New International Version), “and tomorrow I will report to you whatever the LORD tells me” (Good News Bible), and “In the morning I will tell you whatever the LORD directs me to say” (New Living Translation).

So the princes of Moab stayed with Balaam: The Midianites are no longer mentioned in the Balaam story, which may indicate that the Moabites were more important, or simply that the narrator wishes to get them “off stage” in order to concentrate on the people who are central to his account. For the Hebrew word rendered princes (sar), see 21.18. Here New Jewish Publication Society Version says “dignitaries.”

Quoted with permission from de Regt, Lénart J. and Wendland, Ernst R. A Handbook on Numbers. (UBS Helps for Translators). Miami: UBS, 2016. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .