TO DENOUNCE, to curse with indignation — the third of the Balaam story’s curse-verbs, alongside arar and qabab. ⭐ It is a prophetic word that has wandered into the Torah exactly once: searched in both its spellings across the whole archived Hebrew text, the verb occurs in the Five Books only at Numbers 23:7 and 23:8. Everywhere else it belongs to Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Zechariah, Malachi, Daniel, Lamentations, the Psalms and Proverbs. ⚠ Its noun, za’am, is one of the standard words for divine WRATH, which is why the two verbs are not interchangeable: arar puts a person under a curse, za’am pronounces indignation on them. Balaam answers Balak by keeping this verb and swapping the other one. → first discussed at Num 23:7