What Does Genesis 18:28 Mean in the King James?
Peradventure there shall lack five of the fifty righteous: wilt thou destroy all the city for lack of five? And he said, If I find there forty and five, I will not destroy it.
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 measures the worth of five aligned lives by the possibility that an entire city remains standing.
THE MEANING
A shortfall of five does not automatically mean destruction: the city’s fate remains open if forty-five righteous people are found. Abraham keeps asking whether their presence can spare everyone, and the answer is still yes. Here, right alignment reaches beyond the people who embody it and touches the fate of the whole community.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that a community’s fate is only the sum of its failures is undone here: the presence of the aligned can matter for everyone.
THE ROOT
צַדִּיקִים
tsaddiqim
GROWS FROM
צדק
ts-d-q
To be right or just; rightness and alignment.
The people called “righteous” are tsaddiqim, people aligned with what is right. The verse gives that alignment a reach beyond themselves: their presence may stand between a whole city and destruction.
ALSO GROWS
tsedeq: Justice, rightness, alignment.
צֶדֶק
This branch shows the shared root beneath the people’s “righteousness” and the idea of what is right.
tsedaqah: Righteousness; just or aligned action.
צְדָקָה
This branch brings the root into action, echoing how the people’s alignment bears on the city’s fate.
THE PATTERN
The alignment of a few can shape the fate of many.
Run ye to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem, and see now, and know, and seek in the broad places thereof, if ye can find a man, if there be any that executeth judgment, that seeketh the truth; and I will pardon it.By the blessing of the upright the city is exalted: but it is overthrown by the mouth of the wicked.Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life.THE THREAD
And the LORD said, If I find in Sodom fifty righteous within the city, then I will spare all the place for their sakes.This verse uses the same צַדִּיקִים (tsaddiqim, righteous or aligned people) and states the original threshold plainly: fifty can mean the whole place is spared. Genesis 18:28 lowers the number by five, showing Abraham’s plea testing how few aligned people may still hold the city from destruction.
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