What Does Genesis 18:31 Mean?
And he said, Look now, I have ventured to speak to the Lord. Perhaps twenty will be found there. And he said, I will not ruin it for the sake of the twenty.
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 he said, Behold now, I have taken upon me to speak unto the Lord: Peradventure there shall be twenty found there. And he said, I will not destroy it for twenty’s sake.THE KEY
The fate of a whole city turns on what can still be found within it: twenty lives are enough to hold destruction back.
THE MEANING
When a whole situation seems beyond repair, this verse leaves open the question of what can still be found within it. Twenty lives are enough for the threatened city to be spared; the fate of the whole remains responsive to what is present inside it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that once something is marked for destruction, nothing within it can change what happens to the whole.
THE ROOT
יִמָּצְאוּן
yimmatse'un
GROWS FROM
מצא
matsa
To find, come upon, or discover.
The Hebrew verb means that twenty may be found or present there; their presence is the hinge of the exchange. The city is not treated as a single mass of ruin when lives can still be discovered within it.
ALSO GROWS
matsa: To find or come upon.
מָצָא
This active form makes the search itself visible: the question is what can be found within the threatened place.
nimtsa: To be found, be present, or exist.
נִמְצָא
This form shifts attention from the searcher to what is present there, the lives whose presence changes the city’s fate.
אַשְׁחִית
ashchit
GROWS FROM
שחת
shachat
To ruin, spoil, or corrupt.
This root carries both destruction and corruption, holding ruin together with the act that brings it about. The answer refuses that ruin for the sake of the lives still found within the city.
ALSO GROWS
hishchit: He ruined or corrupted.
הִשְׁחִית
This form uses the same root for corruption and destruction, showing how the word reaches beyond mere disappearance to a state of ruin.
mashchit: Destroyer; one who ruins.
מַשְׁחִית
This form names the agent of ruin and sharpens the contrast with the answer here: the city will not be destroyed for the sake of the twenty.
THE PATTERN
Intercession opens a way of preservation for those within a threatened whole.
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 I sought among them for a man who would build up the wall and stand in the breach before me for the land, so that I would not ruin it, but I found none.Therefore he is also able to deliver to the very end those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to plead for them.THE THREAD
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.The Hebrew root מצא (matsa, find) appears in both verses: Abraham asks whether twenty can be found there, while Jeremiah asks whether one truth-seeking person can be found in Jerusalem. In each, what is found within a threatened city becomes the opening through which the whole may be spared.
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