What Does Genesis 18:23 Mean?
And Abraham drew near and said, Will you also sweep away the aligned with the wicked?
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
And Abraham drew near, and said, Wilt thou also destroy the righteous with the wicked?THE KEY
Justice begins when the righteous are not allowed to disappear inside the fate of the wicked.
THE MEANING
The verse places you before a question that refuses to let a crowd erase moral difference: are the righteous swept into the fate of the wicked? Justice here has to reckon with the difference between them, even when destruction is directed at a whole community.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the assumption that a collective verdict makes every person morally interchangeable; the righteous cannot simply vanish inside the wicked.
THE ROOT
צַדִּיק
tsaddiq
GROWS FROM
צדק
ṣ-d-q
Alignment; what is right or just.
English can make “righteous” sound like a private moral badge. This root connects the person to alignment and to justice enacted, making Abraham’s question precise: can the aligned be treated as indistinguishable from the wicked?
ALSO GROWS
tsedeq: Justice; rightness.
צֶדֶק
The related noun names the standard the righteous person embodies: right relation, not merely a label.
tzedakah: Righteousness; justice expressed in action, including just giving.
צְדָקָה
The same root carries rightness into action, showing righteousness as something enacted between people.
וַיִּגַּשׁ
vayyigash
GROWS FROM
נגש
n-g-sh
To approach; to come close.
“drew near” in this verse is vayyigash. The Hebrew verb holds approach and speech together: Abraham comes close and then lays the moral question before God. The nearness is more than movement; it brings the question into direct relation.
ALSO GROWS
nigash: Approached; came near.
נִגַּשׁ
This form of the root describes stepping toward another, making Abraham’s approach deliberate and relational.
higgish: To bring near; to present.
הִגִּישׁ
In its causative form, the root can mean bringing something forward; Abraham’s approach becomes the presentation of an uncomfortable question.
THE PATTERN
Justice distinguishes people rather than letting one person’s guilt erase another’s innocence.
Keep yourself far from a false word; do not strike down the clean and the aligned, for I will not align the wicked.The fathers shall not be put to death for the sons, nor the sons for the fathers; each man shall be put to death for his own falling short.The Lord knows how to bring the reverent out of trial, and to keep the unaligned for the day of judgment, to be cut back.THE THREAD
Far be it from you to do according to this word, to put to death the aligned with the wicked, and the aligned be as the wicked. Far be it from you! Will not the judge of all the earth make judgment?The next verse repeats “the righteous with the wicked” and brings the question into sharper focus: should the righteous be treated as the wicked? It turns the concern here into a direct claim about the justice of the Judge of all the earth.
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