Genesis 19

Notes

1. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 62, 2

   מַלְאָךְ is "messenger" (62). These are two of the three "men" who stood over Abraham at Mamre (18:2, 16, 22); the narrator calls them "messengers" here and at v. 15, and the men of Sodom, Lot and the narrator himself call them "men" (vv. 5, 8, 10, 12, 16). Both words are printed as they fall: אִישׁ keeps its core gloss "man," so the reader sees the narrative move between what they look like and what they are sent to do. Heb 13:2, "some, without knowing it, have hosted messengers," looks back to Abraham and Lot alike. Lot sits "in the gate," where the elders of a city sit (23:10; Deut 21:19; Ruth 4:1); Genesis Rabbah 50:3 takes it that he had been made a judge that day, which the men of Sodom throw at him in v. 9.

2. Decision↩ Back to the text

   Expected: "my lords" (KJV, RSV)

   Rulings 9, 49

   The Masoretes point אֲדֹנַי here with patah, the human plural "my lords" (H113), and the word is printed so. At v. 18, to the same pair, they point אֲדֹנָי with qamets, the form kept for the divine title (49), and the device is printed there; see the note at v. 18. Lot's offer matches Abraham's at 18:3–5 point by point: lodging, washing of feet, a meal, leave to go on in the morning.

3. Decision↩ Back to the text

   Expected: "unleavened bread" (KJV, RSV)

   Rulings 5, 39

   מַצָּה is bread baked without leaven, quickly: the bread of the Passover night, eaten "in haste" (Exod 12:8, 11, 39), and of the feast named for it (Exod 12:15–20; 23:15). The word is in English already as matzah, plural matzot, so ruling 5 prints the Hebrew loanword, as with sabbath and shofar. The KJV and RSV paraphrase it with two English words, and "bread" is לֶחֶם's. Lot's matzot answer Abraham's cakes of fine flour (18:6). Rashi, after Genesis Rabbah 50:12, notes that it was Passover. The WPRB softens to "unleavened bread"; the report proposes the row for the WPRB table.

4. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Ruling 2

   מִקָּצֶה is "from the edge," the far end of a thing (8:3; 47:21): from every quarter of the city, to the last man. Jer 51:31 has the city taken "from the edge." The verse heaps up its totals: "the men of the city, the men of Sodom," "from lad to old," "all the people," so that no one in Sodom stands apart from the act. Abraham's bargaining (18:23–32) had asked for ten just men.

5. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 2, 37

   "Know" is the home gloss of יָדַע, held as at 4:1, 17, 25, where it is the knowing of a man and a woman. Verse 8 settles the sense here: Lot answers with "two daughters who have not known a man," the same verb. The LXX has συγγενώμεθα "let us have intercourse with them," the Vulgate cognoscamus. Judges 19:22–25 repeats the scene almost word for word at Gibeah, with the same verb and the same offer. D. S. Bailey (Homosexuality and the Western Christian Tradition, 1955) read "know" as "get acquainted with," a demand to check the strangers' credentials; the answer of v. 8 tells against it. The prophets name Sodom's sin otherwise. Ezek 16:49–50 has pride, plenty of bread, ease, and not strengthening the hand of the poor and needy. Isa 1:10 and 3:9 use Sodom for injustice in judgment. Wis 19:13–17 and Josephus (Antiquities 1.194–200) have hatred of strangers. Jude 7 has "going after other flesh." The WPB prints the verb and leaves the reader with all of it; the WPRB has "have sex with them" here and "slept with" at v. 8, as Gen 4 has "slept with." The daughters "lie" (שָׁכַב, vv. 32–35), a different verb, kept apart.

6. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 115, 2

   דָּבָר is "word" throughout (115a), so "do not do a word" stands where English would say "do nothing," and again at v. 22, "I am not able to do a word." The Hebrew idiom treats the act and the thing said as one matter; the English shows the reader where the noun is.

7. Decision↩ Back to the text

   Expected: "under the shadow of my roof" (KJV, RSV)

   Rulings 39, 2

   קוֹרָה is a beam (2 Kgs 6:2, 5, the beam the prophets cut at the Jordan; Song 1:17 "the beams of our house are cedars"). Lot's roof is named by its beam, the part for the whole. "Shadow" is shelter, as in "the shadow of your wings" (Ps 17:8; 91:1) and Jotham's fable, "take refuge in my shadow" (Judg 9:15). כִּי עַל־כֵּן is printed "for on thus," the home gloss of כֵּן held as at 2:24: this is why they came. The host's duty is the ground of the offer, which the narrator neither commends nor condemns. The old man of Gibeah makes the same offer in the same words (Judg 19:23–24).

8. Decision↩ Back to the text

   Expected: "Stand back" (KJV, RSV)

   Rulings 2, 25

   גֶּשׁ־הָלְאָה joins the imperative of נָגַשׁ "approach" to הָלְאָה "farther off, beyond" (35:21; Num 16:37; 1 Sam 20:22, 37). Literally "approach farther off": come close in order to get out of the way. The Vulgate has recede illuc, the LXX ἀπόστα ἐκεῖ "stand off there." Both words are printed with their home glosses and the dash, so that the self-cancelling order stays as rough as it is.

9. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 10, 6

   וַיִּשְׁפֹּט שָׁפוֹט is the finite verb with its infinitive absolute: "and judging, he judges!" (6, 10; compare 2:16, "eating you may eat"). The sojourner (גּוּר, the alien without land: 12:10; 20:1) has made himself a judge. Abraham had just called Adonai "the judge of all the land" (18:25), with the same verb. Genesis Rabbah 50:3 reads Lot's seat in the gate (v. 1) as an office, and the men of Sodom as throwing it at him.

10. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "blindness" (KJV, RSV)

    Rulings 25, 2

    סַנְוֵרִים occurs only here and at 2 Kgs 6:18, where Elisha's attackers are struck with it and then led, seeing, into Samaria (6:20). It is not the lasting blindness of עִוָּרוֹן (Deut 28:28). Akkadian šunwurum "made to shine" is often compared: a blinding glare. Both stories make it a sudden failure of sight in the face of messengers or horses of fire. The men go on groping for the doorway, which "dazzling" shows and "blindness" hides. The LXX has ἀορασία "unseeing," the Vulgate caecitate.

11. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 2, 20

    חָתָן is a man related by marriage: here the son-in-law, elsewhere the bridegroom (Ps 19:6; Isa 62:5; Exod 4:25–26). The singular "son-in-law" heads a list of kin and may be generic, "any son-in-law." The LXX has the plural γαμβροί, matching v. 14.

12. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "the LORD hath sent us to destroy it" (KJV, RSV)

    Rulings 2, 20

    שִׁלַּח, the piel, takes the split home gloss "send away" (20): Lot is "sent away" from the overturning at v. 29, and Hagar at 21:14. Here the piel is a commission, and "sent us away" would make it a dismissal. "Sent us off" keeps the piel's direction outward without the false sense. "Ruin" is the home gloss of שָׁחַת held through its chain (37): the land ruined and the flesh ruining (6:11–12), Elohim ruining with the flood (6:13, 17), and Abraham's question, "will you ruin the city for fifty?" (18:28–32). The messengers now say "we are ruining."

13. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 2, 10

    לֹקְחֵי בְנֹתָיו "the takers of his daughters" is a participle with no tense. It may be present or past, the men who had married them, or future, the men who were to take them. Rashi and Genesis Rabbah 50:9 read both: two daughters at home were betrothed, and two more were married in the city and died there. The daughters "who are found" here (v. 15) are then the two unmarried ones. The RSV "who were to marry," the KJV "which married." The participle is printed, so the reader holds both.

14. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "as one that mocked" (KJV) / "jesting" (RSV)

    Rulings 2, 37, 122

    מְצַחֵק is the piel of צָחַק "laugh," the verb of Isaac's name (17:17, 19; 18:12–15) and of Sarah's laughing (21:6). It returns at 21:9 in the same piel form, of Hagar's son. The lexicon leaves the piel to be fixed when reached (H6711). It is printed with the home gloss here, so the chain from 18:12–15 through 21:6–9 stays audible. The sense in this verse is joking or jesting: to the sons-in-law Lot's warning was a laugh. The report raises the piel.

15. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 1, 2

    עָוֹן "iniquity" is wrong, guilt and the punishment that follows, in one word (see the note at 4:13). "In the iniquity of the city" is either "in its sin," as one of its sinners, or "in its punishment" (RSV). The KJV has "iniquity." The home gloss holds both.

16. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 8, 74

    The verb is singular: "and he said." One of the two speaks, though both had brought them out (v. 16). The LXX and the Vulgate have the plural, "they said." In v. 18 Lot answers "them," and from v. 19 he speaks to one, "your servant… your eyes," and "he said to him" (v. 21). Genesis Rabbah 50:11 holds that one messenger had come to overturn Sodom and the other to save Lot. The persons are printed as the Hebrew has them.

17. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "Oh, not so, my Lord" (KJV) / "Oh, no, my lords" (RSV)

    Rulings 1, 9, 49, 46

    The consonants אדני may be "my lords" (human, patah) or Adonai (the divine title, qamets). At v. 2 the Masoretes pointed it as human; here, addressed "to them," they point it with qamets, as at 18:3. b. Shevuot 35b discusses the two verses and counts this one as holy. Lot speaks to the messengers and through them to the one who sent them, the one who answers "I have lifted your face" and "I am not able to do a word" (vv. 21–22). The RSV follows the consonants and the plural addressee. The Masoretic pointing is printed with the device (49), and the human reading is kept here.

18. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "thou hast magnified thy mercy" (KJV) / "you have shown me great kindness" (RSV)

    Rulings 2, 3

    חֶסֶד is first-fixed here as "loyalty." In Genesis it is what one party owes the other inside a bond and gives beyond what is owed: the guest's protection of his host (here), a wife's for her husband (20:13), an ally's oath (21:23), a master's servant for his master (24:12, 14, 27), the dying man's last request (47:29, "do loyalty and faithfulness with me"). The verb is always "do" (עָשָׂה), as here: loyalty is done, not felt. Nelson Glueck's Das Wort ḥesed (1927) argued for covenant loyalty; Katharine Doob Sakenfeld (1978) added the freedom of the one who shows it. The KJV's "mercy" and "kindness" (from the Vulgate's misericordia and the LXX's ἔλεος) give the feeling and drop the bond. "Loyalty" restores the bond and keeps the doing. Of Adonai, Exod 34:6–7 ("great in loyalty and faithfulness, keeping loyalty for thousands") will carry it. The choice is corpus-wide, and the report raises it.

19. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "it is a little one" (KJV, RSV)

    Rulings 2, 17, 18

    מִצְעָר is a small thing (Job 8:7, "your beginning was a trifle"; Isa 63:18). The name of the city, צוֹעַר Zoar, is made from it by the narrator: "on thus he called the name of the city Zoar" (v. 22), "Trifle-town." The root צָעַר "be small" is also in the "younger" daughter, הַצְּעִירָה (vv. 31–38), who will come down from the mountain above it. English cannot carry the pun with "Zoar" (17), so the name is printed in its familiar form (18) and the pun is here. Zoar was called Bela (14:2, 8). "Trifle" keeps מִצְעָר apart from קָטָן "small" (v. 11) and מְעַט "little."

20. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 2, 39

    "I have lifted your face" is the idiom of acceptance: to lift someone's face is to grant his request and receive him (32:21; 1 Sam 25:35; Job 42:8–9). It is the "lifting" of 4:7 and the "lifting" Cain asked of his iniquity (4:13), with the home gloss of נָשָׂא held. "Also for this word" grants Lot's second request, after the first, his rescue.

21. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "overthrow" (KJV, RSV)

    Rulings 3, 20, 2

    הָפַךְ is "turn" in the qal (H2015), and with a city as object the lexicon allows "overturn" by collocation (3). Here the object is "the city" (v. 21), "these cities" (v. 25) and "the cities" (v. 29), and the noun הֲפֵכָה (v. 29) names the event: "the overturning." The phrase becomes a formula for the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah: Deut 29:22; Isa 1:7; 13:19; Jer 49:18; 50:40; Amos 4:11; Lam 4:6, "the iniquity of my people is greater than the sin of Sodom, which was overturned in a moment." "Turn" would make the cities turn into something. "Overturn" keeps the root of "turn" and adds only the upset that the collocation gives. The gloss stands without a declaration in the lexicon's gloss field, so the report asks for one (20).

22. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "The sun was risen upon the earth" (KJV) / "The sun had risen on the earth" (RSV)

    Rulings 2, 57

    יָצָא is "go out" (qal), and the sun is its subject, as in "like the sun going out in his might" (Judg 5:31) and Ps 19:6–7, the sun "going out" like a bridegroom from his chamber. In English "the sun had gone out" says the sun was extinguished, a false sense (57). "Gone forth" keeps the verb's direction and the image of the sun as one who walks out. The clause is the counterpart of v. 15: the dawn went up as the messengers urged Lot; the sun was out when he reached Zoar, and then the fire fell.

23. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 9, 46

    יהוה stands twice: "Adonai rained… from Adonai, from the skies." Both are printed as the divine name. Hebrew narrative often repeats a noun where English would use a pronoun (compare 1 Kgs 8:1; 2 Chr 7:2), and Rashi reads it so: it is the way of the text to speak thus, as Lamech says "women of Lamech" (4:23). The Christian tradition read two persons. Justin Martyr (Dialogue with Trypho 56, 127) made the verse a proof that "the LORD" who walked with Abraham in Gen 18 and rained fire on Sodom is distinct from "the LORD in heaven." The Council of Sirmium (351) anathematised anyone who did not take the first as the Son and the second as the Father. b. Sanhedrin 38b records a heretic's question on this verse and Rabbi Ishmael's answer that it is the way of the text. The text says "from Adonai" and no more; both names are printed, and English leaves the question as open as the Hebrew does.

24. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "a pillar of salt" (KJV, RSV)

    Rulings 2, 39

    נְצִיב is from נָצַב "be stationed" (21:28–29; Exod 2:4, Miriam "stationed herself at a distance"): something set to stand. It is used of a garrison post (1 Sam 10:5; 13:3–4) and an official set over a district (1 Kgs 4:19). "Post" keeps the root and both uses: a thing set upright, and a station. "Pillar" is left for מַצֵּבָה, the standing stone Jacob sets up (28:18, 22; 35:14, 20). וַתְּהִי without לְ is "and she was" (104, 113a). Wisdom 10:7 has "a standing pillar of salt, a memorial of an unbelieving soul." Josephus says he saw it (Antiquities 1.203). Luke 17:32 has "Remember Lot's woman." The WPRB has "pillar," and the report proposes the row for its table.

25. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "as the smoke of a furnace" (KJV, RSV)

    Rulings 2, 39

    קִיטוֹר is thick smoke or vapour (Ps 119:83, "a wineskin in the קִיטוֹר"; Ps 148:8, "fire and hail, snow and קִיטוֹר"). "Smoke" is the home gloss of עָשָׁן, so this word takes "fume." כִּבְשָׁן is a kiln for lime or pottery, the source of the soot Moses throws into the air (Exod 9:8, 10). The phrase returns at Sinai: "and its smoke went up like the smoke of the kiln" (Exod 19:18), where the word for smoke is עָשָׁן. "Furnace" is left for כּוּר (Deut 4:20, "the iron furnace").

26. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Ruling 74

    "A man there is none in the land" is the elder daughter's reason, and Genesis Rabbah 51:8 and Rashi read it as her belief that the whole world had been destroyed, as in the flood. Zoar is close below them (vv. 22–23, 30), so the daughters may mean only that no man would come to women of an overturned city. "As the way of all the land" is the way of the world. The narrator gives no verdict on what follows. The two nations born of it are kin to Israel, and Deut 2:9, 19 gives them their lands as "the sons of Lot." Ruth the Moabite and Naamah the Ammonite (1 Kgs 14:21) are both mothers in the line of the kings of Judah.

27. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 79, 74

    In וּבְקוּמָהּ "and in her rising" the Leningrad Codex sets a dot over the vav, one of the ten dotted places of the Torah. Sifre Numbers 69 and Genesis Rabbah 51:8 read the dot as a doubt: he did not know when she lay down, but he did know when she rose, so that on the second night he drank knowing what had happened. The word is translated as written (79). The same phrase in v. 35 is undotted and spelled without the vav (וּבְקֻמָהּ). "Know" here is the knowing of facts, the same verb as in vv. 5 and 8.

28. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 17, 18

    The name מוֹאָב is heard as מֵאָב "from a father," which the elder daughter's plan has twice said: "let us keep seed alive from our father" (vv. 32, 34; v. 36 "from their father"). The LXX spells it out: "she called his name Moab, saying, 'From my father'" (λέγουσα Ἐκ τοῦ πατρός μου). English cannot carry it, so the name is printed in its familiar form (18). Deut 23:4 bars Moabites and Ammonites from the assembly, for want of bread and water and for Balaam; Ruth 4:13–22 brings a Moabite woman into David's line.

29. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 17, 18

    בֶּן־עַמִּי is "son of my kin." עַם is "people" (v. 4), and in names it is the father's kin (Ammiel, Amminadab). The younger daughter names her son for the closeness of his father, as the elder did. The name is then the people's: "the sons of Ammon" (עַמּוֹן). The familiar form is printed (18). The LXX has "Ammon, saying, 'Son of my kin'" (Υἱὸς τοῦ γένους μου). Naamah, mother of Rehoboam, was an Ammonite (1 Kgs 14:21).