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| A satellite picture showing the position of the Sea of Galilee, the Dead Sea and the Jordan Valley (between them). Canaan is the area between them and the Mediterranean Sea. The size of the Dead Sea has shrunk considerably over the past few decades, raising environmental concerns. The green markings in the south show commercial evaporation plants in an area which has only recently become separated from the main body of the sea. (Source: Wikipedia, from NASA) |
One dimension of the famous story of the destruction of the mythical towns of Sodom and Gomorrah is clearly etiological: it serves as a legend to account for the existence of the Dead Sea, the deepest hypersaline lake in the world, 50 km long and 15 km wide, into which the Jordan River flows; its water is nearly ten times as salty as that of the ocean (in H, yam hammélax 'the sea of salt, the Salt Sea', see 14:3). The features consisting of the Dead Sea, the Jordan River and the Sea of Galilee have resulted from a geological fault which is part of the boundary between the African and Arabian tectonic plates. Water flows in the north-south direction, ending up in the Dead Sea where it evaporates. Until two million years ago, the lake formed part of a lagoon which had an outlet to the Mediterranean Sea, after which time the level of the land rose, leaving it permanently landlocked; since then the body of water has gradually shrunk, and the Dead Sea is its last vestige. It is not clear what the origin of the Sodom and Gomorrah legend is or where these towns would have been located, but a possible origin is suggested at the end of this post.
18:18 w'nivr'khu vo kol goye ha'áretz
(JPS) '...and all the nations of the earth are to bless themselves by him'; compare 12:3 w'nivr'khu v'kha kol mishp'xot ha'adama.
18:19
This verse is a little complicated and so it is perhaps worth attempting to resolve its meaning. The first clause says ki y'da‛tiw lit. 'for I have known him' (i.e. God has "known" Abraham). Speiser suggests that in this context the meaning of y-d-‛ is 'to acknowledge' or 'to single out' (followed by JPS); CB offers: 'known, approved and chosen' or 'recognized'; traditional translations (KJV) simply have 'for I know him.' The following subordinating conjunction, l'má‛an (asher) 'in order (that)', makes it very hard to defend this last, and the KJV's "solution" - for I know him that he will command his children... - apart from not being real English, not today at least, also misrepresents l'má‛an, whereas ESV, by opting for 'choose' to translate y-d-‛, is able to respect the original better with for I have chosen him, that he may command his children..., cf. EAS For I have singled him out in order that he may instruct his sons... The next phrase after 'his children' or 'his sons', w'et beto axaraw lit. 'and his house after him', is rendered literally in the old translations but Speiser suggests and his future family, while JPS opts for and his posterity, both of which seem reasonable. The next bit - which represents what he will command or instruct his family to do - w'sham'ru dérekh YHWH la‛asot tz'daqa umishpaT 'they shall keep the way of YHWH to do justice and judgment', is more or less clear apart from the usual kind of syntactic uncertainties: although w'sham'ru itself means 'they shall keep', here it can only be understood as the "asyndetic complement" of y'tzawwe 'he shall command' (itself the complement of l'má‛an, as we have seen). The structure is thus literally: "I have chosen him in order that > he will command his sons etc. > they will keep etc.", whereas the sense is "...in order for him to command his sons to keep..." But now we are confronted with a second l'má‛an followed, this time, by an infinitive clause which we also need to interpret, and get the entire thing to make sense: l'má‛an havi YHWH ‛al avraham et asher dibber ‛alaw, which among other things has two instances of the versatile preposition ‛al about which I wrote in a note on 18:2. The verb is havi, the hiphil (causative) infinitive of b-w-' 'to enter, come', i.e. 'to bring', and YHWH is the subject, so that l'má‛an havi YHWH... is 'in order for YHWH to bring...' This is followed by two complements: the prepositional phrase ‛al avraham 'on Abraham' and the direct object (of havi) et asher dibber ‛alaw 'that which he spoke on him'; this second ‛al, following dibber 'spoke', must mean 'concerning', of course. The whole thing is resolved in KJV as that the LORD may bring upon Abraham that which he hath spoken of him. This seems a little bit more faithful to what the H says than JPS in order that the Lord may bring about for Abraham what He has promised him; Speiser's proposal might be better: so that Yahweh may achieve for Abraham the promises he made about him. Speiser says of this verse: "The verse as a whole gives an excellent summary of the way of life ("way of Yahweh") that is expected of Abraham and his descendants," so let's look at the verse as a whole one more time: "For I have singled him (= Abraham) out so that he will instruct his children and family (l'má‛an y'tzawwe et banaw w'et beto axaraw) to observe YHWH's way by doing what is good and just (w'sham'ru dérekh YHWH la‛asot tz'daqa umishpaT) in order for YHWH to fulfil his promises to (or rather, concerning) Abraham." The idea, then, would be that God has promised Abraham and his descendants something, but the fulfilment thereof is contingent upon Abraham and his descendants carrying out their part of the bargain, their side of the covenant; God wishes to keep his promise but will only do so if they will keep (w'sham'ru) their part. To ensure that there is a chance of that happening, God has chosen Abraham for the task because he recognises in him (ki y'da‛tiw) the ability to transmit (l'má‛an asher y'tzawwe) YHWH's way (dérekh YHWH) to his children (banaw) and his future offspring (beto axaraw).
18:20 z'‛aqat s'dom etc.
The noun z'‛aqa 'cry, outcry' may be considered a variant of tz'‛aqa with a similar meaning, a nominalization of the root tz-‛-q mentioned in my note on wayyitzxaq in 17:17, and which returns below on 19:13.
s'dom w'‛amora
Nine times in Genesis, Sodom (s'dom) and Gomorrah (‛amora) are mentioned together, invariably in this order; another eleven times Sodom alone is mentioned; Gomorrah is never mentioned without Sodom.
18:21 er'de na w'er'e
'I will go down and see...' or 'Let me go down and see...' Commentators note the rampant anthropomorphism of this idea of God, who is "up there", needing to "come down here" to "see" what is going on in the world. The figure is entirely reminiscent of the tower of Babel story (11:5): wayyéred YHWH lir'ot 'God descended to see...' (using exactly the same two verbs). Common authorship by J is assumed; this is his style!
‛asu kala
Lit. 'I will go down and (I will) see whether like her outcry that has come to me they have done kala': so what is this kala? It seems that there are three options. The word kala (which only occurs in Gen. this once) comes from the verb root k-l-h 'to be completed, finished' (acc. to EK) and has the two meanings 'completion' and 'complete destruction.' So, one reading (the one that is generally assumed by translations, actually) is that in ‛asu kala the sense of kala is 'altogether' (KJV, JPS and others) or perhaps 'at all' (EAS). Another possibility might be that kala 'destruction' is a single-word expression of a possible verdict: 'I will go down and see whether like her outcry that has come to me they have done: destruction!' or something of the sort. But some think the text might be corrupt and would amend kala (כלה) to kullam (כלם) 'they all, all of them' (which would be the subject of ‛asu 'they have done').
18:22 w'avraham ‛odénnu ‛omed lifne YHWH
Personally I don't see anything objectionable about this clause in terms of narrative coherence: so, the other two men went on (from where they were standing, outside the town) to Sodom, but Abraham still stood in front of YHWH (rather than turning around to go home); obviously he did so because he wanted a word in private with YHWH, which God conceded to him. Nevertheless, it would seem that the original (pre-Masoretic) text may have said here that God remained standing in front of Abraham, instead of vice-versa, but the Masoretes took it upon themselves (on this rare occasion) to alter the text; so say the ancient rabbis. Their reason was that as it stood, this seemed to them to be a demeaning attitude of God, who as man's superior should never have to wait on him. A subordinate always stands before (‛omed lifne) a superior rather than the other way around. A storm in a teacup?
18:23, 24 ha'af tispe
This verb (s-p-h) is not terribly common. It has a qal and a niphal, and means 'to take away, sweep away, snatch away'. In Gen. it only occurs in these two verses and then in 19:15 and 19:17 in the phrase pen tissafe.
18:25 xalíla l'kha me‛asot kaddavar hazze
The interjection xalíla is related to the verb x-l-l 'to be profaned.' EK glosses 'God forbid! Far be it...'
hashofeT kol ha'áretz lo ya‛ase mishpaT
KJV 'Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?', JPS 'Shall not the Judge of all the earth deal justly?' and similarly most translations. Perhaps a modernized formulation could be something to the effect of: "What? You are the world's greatest judge: don't tell me these people will not be given a fair trial?!" The H wording has more punch because the words shofeT 'arbitrator, judge' mishpaT 'decision, ruling, (legal) justice' are cognates; both come from the same verb root sh-p-T. Speiser, however, questions the tradition of translating this root as '(to, a) judge' because this implies the legal aspect of the meaning is intrinsic, and he claims it is not. One result of this confusion, he argues, is the misnomer of calling the book of the Bible Judges when it isn't about judges at all! I can do no better than to quote Speiser on this and then leave the matter open: "The basic meaning of sh-p-t is 'to exercise authority' in various matters, hence 'govern, decide' and the like... The legal connotations are at best incidental." Having said that, he nonetheless consents to using judge and justice in the translation of this sentence "in a non-technical sense". (The EAS translation is, in fact: 'Shall he who is Judge of all the world not act with justice?') The root sh-p-T comes into play again below when the inhabitants of Sodom accuse Lot of meddling (19:9, JPS): ha'exad ba lagur wayyishpoT shafoT 'The fellow... came here as an alien and already he acts the ruler!' Here acts the ruler corresponds to wayyishpoT shafoT.
18:27 el adonay
Although the custom is to read YHWH as adonay 'my lord(s)' in order to avoid pronouncing the divine name, there are places in the text, of which this is one, that contain not the tetragrammaton but the actual word adonay (written out as אדני, '-d-n-y, rather than יהוה). This word is formally plural and may be used to address several people, as it may have been in 18.3 and will be again in 19:2 and 19:18, but can also be said to a single man as a sign of greater respect than the morphologically singular form adoni (written identically in consonantal script). Adoni is not said to God, but either it or adonay can be said to men. Thus, given the spelling, in the present case adonay means 'my lord' (not "the LORD"), even though the difference can no longer be heard when said out loud given the avoidance of pronouncing the tetragrammaton.
19:1 mal'akhim
Here they are referred to as 'messengers', or as we might say with the usual translations, angels.
w'loT yoshev b'shá‛ar s'dom
Lit. 'Lot was sitting at the Sodom gate.' "The gate area of an ancient Near Eastern city served as a civic center where the community's afairs could be conducted with the full participation of the citizens in the sight of all" (EH).
19:2 w'hishkamtem w'halakhtem l'dark'khem
Translated in KJV: 'and ye shall rise up early (= w'hishkamtem) and go (= w'halakhtem) on your ways', but acc. to Speiser's note this is not the most idiomatic translation because the construction sh-k-m w-V means 'to V in the morning' (rather than 'to get up early and V'). So Lot does not really mean "you will get up early" but "you will be able to get on your way in the morning." Acc. to EK, the verb is related to the noun shékhem 'shoulder' or 'back (of a beast)' [or is it sh'khem? - ARK] and originally referred to loading a beast of burden (ready for a day's work or a journey, probably). In colloquial Eng. we might say 'get started.' See also the use of this verb in 19:27 and my additional note on it there.
lo ki bar'xov nalin
The r'xov was a wide road or a town square.
19:3 mattzot
Unleavened bread. Now associated almost exclusively with the holiday of Passover or Pesach (pésax), the original function of unleavened bread was to provide a staple nourishment at short notice (when there wasn't enough time to leaven dough to make "proper" bread), hence its appropriate use in this story because the travellers turned up unexpectedly and Lot wished to provide them with a meal in a hurry. Unlike Abraham, Lot was now a town-dweller, but "although he has changed his style of living, he has preserved the virtue of hospitality, characteristic of a pastoral society" (EH).
19:4 ‛al habbáyit
Here ‛al carries the force of 'against'.
minná‛ar w'‛ad zaqen kol ha‛am miqqatze
I.e. everyone. So also in v. 11 miqqaTon w'‛ad gadol.
19:5 w'ned‛a otam
Here and in v. 8 below, as in 4:1, y-d-‛ has a sexual meaning.
19:9 wayyishpoT shafoT
See note on 18:25.
19:13 ki gad'la tza‛aqatam
Here tz'aqa (cf. z'aqa in 18:20.
19:14 way'dabber el xatanaw loqxe v'notaw
How many daughters did Lot have? There is a certain ambiguity in the passage which is hard to resolve for sure. We know that he had two virgin daughters living at home. Now Lot goes out and either speaks to (a) his sons-in-law (xatanaw) who must be married to other daughters, or (b) the fiancés betrothed (xatanaw) to his unmarried daughters (loqxe v'notaw). As regards the sense of loqxe cf. my note about bo na el shifxati in 16:2; here l-q-x is in the form of the participle and may either mean 'the takers of' (i.e. 'married to') or 'who will take' (i.e. 'engaged to').
19:15 w'et shte v'notékha hannimtza'ot
Depending on our answer to that question, hannimtza'ot in this verse either means (a) your two remaining daughters, or (b) the two daughters you have.
19:17 himmalet ‛al nafshékha
'Run for your life.'
al tabbiT axarékha
In preparation for v. 26.
pen tissafe
See 18:23, haaf tispe.
19:20 ut'xi nafshi
The form nafshi, lit. 'my life' or 'my soul', is quite commonly used in BH as a substitute for the first-person-singlar pronoun, see 12:13. It takes third-person feminine agreement on account of the noun néfesh, thus t'xi nafshi 'that I may live.'
19:22 ‛al ken qara shem ha‛ir tzó‛ar
That is, the reason why the town is called tzó‛ar (Zoar), according to this, is that in v. 20 Lot called it mitz‛ar (an insignificant trifle).
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| "Lot's wife", a naturally occurring structure on Mount Sodom (Israel) near the Dead Sea. Source: Wikicommons. Photo: Mark A. Wilson |
The traditional story (which some believe may have actually been the seed from which the myth of Sodom and Gomorrah grew) is that Lot's wife looked back (in defiance of what they were ordered in v. 17) and turned into a pillar of salt (there are pillars of salt to be seen in the vicinity of the Dead Sea, which occasionally look like a woman). The trouble is that if she looked behind her then she didn't look me'axaraw which means 'behind him.' Nobody has resolved this mystery.
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