THE UTTERANCE — the formula that marks a saying as an oracle rather than an opinion. In the prophets it is overwhelmingly ne'um Jehovah, 'the utterance of Jehovah', the tag that closes or punctuates a prophetic speech. ⭐ Numbers 24:3-4 and 24:15-16 use it six times, and the speaker attaching it to himself is a foreign diviner: ne'um Bil'am, the utterance of Balaam. The formula that will later authenticate Isaiah and Jeremiah is worn first, in the Torah, by a man hired to curse Israel. ⚠ The shelf mostly flattens it to a verb of saying (KJV 'hath said', ASV 'saith'), while the NWT 1984 and TNM 1987 keep it as a noun ('the utterance of', «la expresión de»), which is what the Hebrew does. → first discussed at Num 24:3