What Does Genesis 18:31 Mean in the King James?
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 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 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.
“destroy” in this verse is ashchit. 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.
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.And I sought for a man among them, that should make up the hedge, and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I should not destroy it: but I found none.Wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them.THE THREAD
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.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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