What Does Genesis 18:26 Mean?
And the LORD said, If I find in Sodom fifty aligned ones in the midst of the city, then I will lift all the place for their sake.
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 the LORD said, If I find in Sodom fifty righteous within the city, then I will spare all the place for their sakes.THE KEY
The Hebrew pictures the city’s reprieve as the LORD carrying the whole place for the sake of fifty lives aligned within it.
THE MEANING
This verse holds the reader’s community in view: the lives aligned within it matter to the fate of the whole. The LORD says that finding fifty righteous people within the city means the whole place is carried for their sake.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It dissolves the belief that a community’s brokenness makes the presence of its aligned people irrelevant.
THE ROOT
וְנָשָׂאתִי
ve-nasa'ti
GROWS FROM
נשא
lift, carry, bear
“lift” in this verse is ve-nasa'ti. The word translated “spare” is built on lifting and carrying: the whole place is borne for the sake of the fifty. The same root can name a burden and the LORD as one who bears crookedness, so mercy here has the texture of weight being carried.
ALSO GROWS
massa: burden, load
מַשָּׂא
The same root names what is lifted; the city’s reprieve is pictured as weight carried.
nōśēʾ ʿāwōn: bearing crookedness; forgiving iniquity
נֹשֵׂא עָוֹן
Exodus 34:7 uses this phrase for the LORD bearing iniquity, giving the city’s reprieve the image of carried weight.
צַדִּיק
tsaddiq
GROWS FROM
צדק
rightness, justice, alignment with what is right
The same root names both the aligned person and rightness or justice. The verse places that alignment within the city: the lives of the righteous are part of the community’s condition, not separate from it.
ALSO GROWS
tsedeq: justice, rightness
צֶדֶק
This branch names the right order reflected in the people called righteous.
tzedakah: justice, righteousness
צְדָקָה
The shared root joins a person’s alignment to justice expressed in the world around them.
THE PATTERN
The fate of a whole community can turn on the presence of the aligned within it.
Roam the streets of Jerusalem, and see now, and perceive, and seek in her broad places. If you can find a man, if there is any who executes judgment and seeks steadiness, then I will release her.And he said to cut them down, unless Moses, his chosen, had stood in the breach before him, to turn back his burning from ruining them.Therefore, as through one stumble a downward judgment comes into all people, so also through one act of alignment comes into all people, into the alignment of life.THE THREAD
Guarding faithful love for thousands, carrying crookedness, rebellion, and falling short, and who by no means leaves the guilty clean, visiting the crookedness of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, to the third and to the fourth generation.Exodus names the LORD as “nōśēʾ ʿāwōn”, the one who bears crookedness, rendered “forgiving iniquity.” Genesis uses the same נשא root for the city’s reprieve, so sparing is pictured as carrying what would otherwise weigh upon the whole place.
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