What Does Genesis 19:7 Mean?
And he said, I pray you, brothers, do not do this evil.
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 said, I pray you, brethren, do not so wickedly.THE KEY
The Hebrew for “act wickedly” returns as “deal worse” in the crowd’s threat, making the evil here concrete as violence rather than an abstraction.
THE MEANING
The verse holds a painful tension in view: the people addressed as brothers are acting in a way named as evil. Shared belonging does not make harm harmless or erase its name.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Belonging to the same family or community makes harmful conduct less real or less nameable.
THE ROOT
תָּרֵעוּ
tārēʿû
GROWS FROM
רָעַע
rāʿaʿ
To act badly, do evil, or cause harm.
“wickedly” in this verse is tārēʿû. The root points to conduct that harms, not merely an evil quality held in the abstract. In Genesis 19:9 the same root appears in the crowd’s threat to “deal worse” with Lot, tying the moral name to the violence they announce.
ALSO GROWS
raʿ: Bad, evil.
רַע
This related form names the quality that the verb in this verse makes active: evil expressed through harmful conduct.
wənārāʿ: And we will deal worse with you (Genesis 19:9).
וְנָרַע
The root returns in the crowd’s threat, showing the harm inside the word Lot uses to name their action.
THE PATTERN
Shared belonging does not require calling harmful conduct good; wrongdoing can be named plainly.
You shall not hate your brother in your heart; you shall surely set your neighbor straight, and not carry falling short upon him.Whoever says to the wicked, "You are aligned," peoples curse him, and nations abhor him.And share nothing in common with the barren works of darkness, but rather expose them.THE THREAD
And they said, Stand back. And they said again, This one came in to sojourn, and he will surely judge. Now we will do more harm to you than to them. And they pressed greatly upon the man, even upon Lot, and came near to shatter the door.The same Hebrew root behind “do not so wickedly” returns in “deal worse.” The repeated root connects Lot’s naming of the harm with the crowd’s explicit threat to intensify it.
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