FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS of the CLASSICAL HEBREW VERB

When the time is in the future, I will be about to eat is not a form that anyone is normally likely to use - we
have merely mentioned its theoretical existence to complete the pattern.
Finally, a concurrent action, a continuous action I was eating, I am eating, I will be eating, is expressed by
the participle preceded by the subject.
This is strictly not a tense but a participle phrase; however we may convert it to a tense.
...
‘He appeared to him .... he sitting at the entrance’, which we would prefer to render as ‘while he was sitting
at the entrance’.
The verb ‘to be’ must sometimes be inserted when translating into English:
... ‘Balak [being] king at that time, or ‘Now Balak was king at that time’ (‘was’ being a
continuous tense and not a single action).
וַיֵּרָא אֵלָיו
וְהוּא יֹשֵׁ‏ ב פֶּתַח הָאֹהֶל
וּבָלָק
מֶלֶךְ‏ בָּעֵת הַהִוא
Note that the subject is often put before the verb for contrast, or even (rarely) for emphasis. Also in poetry
and in conversation the rules of word-order are not always obeyed. There are also other exceptions.