A LIONESS — Hebrew’s second lion-word, distinct from ari/aryeh, the lion. ⭐ Numbers 23:24 sets the two side by side in one verse, a people rising like a lavi and lifting itself like an ari, and most versions flatten the pair into sizes instead of sexes: the KJV prints ‘a great lion’ and ‘a young lion’, Geneva does much the same, and the whole Spanish shelf prints «león» twice. Only the ASV and the Douay-Rheims put the female first, which is what the Hebrew does. ⚠ The pairing is inherited rather than invented: Genesis 49:9 crouches Judah down as an aryeh and a lavi in a single line of Jacob’s blessing, so a Moabite hireling describing Israel from a hilltop is using the vocabulary Israel’s own ancestor used of one of its tribes. ⭐ And at Numbers 24:9 he says it again with the order REVERSED — lion first, lioness second — and adds Genesis 49:9's own verb, couched, so the second telling is closer to Jacob's blessing than the first was. → first discussed at Num 23:24