What Does Genesis 18:20 Mean in the King James?
And the LORD said, Because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grievous;
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The verse places a great outcry beside a heavy missing, letting suffering and wrongdoing testify together.
THE MEANING
A great cry and weighty wrongdoing occupy the same field of vision. Harm is both something people voice and something that carries consequence; neither is lost in the surrounding noise. The verse speaks now wherever a community’s distress and its conduct are being weighed together.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that shared wrongdoing becomes harmless or invisible just because a whole community participates in it.
THE ROOT
כָבְדָה
kavedah
GROWS FROM
כבד
kabad
To be heavy; to carry weight.
“grievous” in this verse is kavedah. The Hebrew pictures their missing as heavy. The same root gives כָּבוֹד (kavod), weight, so the verse uses the language of weight for wrongdoing that carries consequence.
ALSO GROWS
kaved: Heavy, weighty.
כָּבֵד
This is the plain sense beneath “grievous”: the wrongdoing bears weight.
kavod: Weight, presence.
כָּבוֹד
The shared root links grievous heaviness with weight: what happens here is not a weightless abstraction.
זַעֲקַת
za'aqat
GROWS FROM
זעק
za'aq
To cry out; to make an urgent call.
“cry” in this verse is za'aqat. The word is an outcry, not merely sound. Its root recurs when distress is voiced and reaches the one who can respond.
ALSO GROWS
za'aq: To cry out.
זָעַק
The verb shows the cry as an act of calling from distress.
ze'aqah: An outcry.
זְעָקָה
This noun is the same cry-word that returns in the next verse, where the outcry is said to have come to the LORD.
חַטָּאתָם
chatta'tam
GROWS FROM
חטא
chata
To miss; to err.
The word rendered “sin” belongs to the missing family. Here that missing is called heavy, tying failure to weight-bearing consequence rather than leaving it as a floating label.
ALSO GROWS
chata: To miss, to err.
חָטָא
The verb supplies the root sense behind their “sin”: a missing or failure.
chatta't: A missing, an offense; also an offering for missing in ritual contexts.
חַטָּאת
This noun keeps the idea of missing visible in the word translated “sin.”
THE PATTERN
A cry produced by harm is heard, while the harm itself is brought into view.
And the LORD said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows;The righteous cry, and the LORD heareth, and delivereth them out of all their troubles.Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth.THE THREAD
I will go down now, and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it, which is come unto me; and if not, I will know.The noun for “cry,” זְעָקָה (ze’aqah), from זעק (za’aq), repeats in both verses. The next verse says this same outcry has “come unto me,” revealing it as a received signal that is about to be examined.
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