What Does Genesis 13:13 Mean?
But the men of Sodom were evil and missing the mark before the LORD exceedingly.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
But the men of Sodom were wicked and sinners before the LORD exceedingly.THE KEY
The verse names two dimensions of wrongdoing, harm done and the mark missed, and places both fully before the LORD.
THE MEANING
The verse holds a community’s conduct plainly in view before the LORD: it is harmful and far from the mark. “Exceedingly” leaves no room to shrink its severity. A crowd does not make wrongdoing invisible.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Wrongdoing does not disappear when it belongs to a whole community; the verse says it remains before the LORD exceedingly.
THE ROOT
רָעִים
ra’im
GROWS FROM
רָעַע
ra’a: to be bad, act wickedly, or do harm.
“evil” in this verse is ra’im. This word carries more than a moral label: its root speaks of what is bad and harmful. Beside “sinners,” it names both the harm in the conduct and the way it misses what is right, all exposed before the LORD.
ALSO GROWS
ra: Bad, evil, harmful.
רַע
This adjective shares the root’s language of harm and shows the quality named in the verse.
hēraʿ: To do evil or cause harm.
הֵרֵעַ
This verb makes the root’s force active: the verse describes conduct, not merely a reputation.
חַטָּאִים
chatta’im
GROWS FROM
חטא
chata’: to miss, go wrong, or incur guilt.
“missing the mark” in this verse is chatta’im. The root holds “sinners” together with the idea of missing or going wrong. Here, paired with “wicked” and intensified by “exceedingly,” that language describes a grave shared condition, not a harmless mistake.
ALSO GROWS
chet: A missing, fault, or wrongdoing.
חֵטְא
This noun makes explicit the root’s sense of missing that remains inside the word “sinners.”
chatta’t: Sin; also an offering associated with sin.
חַטָּאת
This branch carries the same root into the language of sin and its addressing, showing how widely the idea of missing extends.
THE PATTERN
Wrongdoing remains visible before the LORD, even when it belongs to a whole community.
And the LORD said, Because the outcry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their falling short is very heavy.The eyes of the LORD are in every place, watching the harm and the good.For all have missed the mark, and fall short of the weight of God.THE THREAD
If you do well, will you not be lifted up? And if you do not do well, falling short crouches at the door. Its reaching is toward you, and you shall rule over it.The word חַטָּאִים (chatta’im, those marked by missing) here and חַטָּאת (chatta’t, sin) there share the root חטא (chata’, to miss or go wrong). Genesis 4:7 pictures that missing as lying at a door, opening “sinners” from a label into a condition already at the threshold.
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