What Does Genesis 19:25 Mean in the King James?

And he overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground.

Genesis 19:25 · KJV

The analysis reads the King James wording.

King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.

This verse in the Selah Decoded Version

THE KEY

The verb translated “overthrew” carries the image of turning over, so the verse shows a whole inhabited landscape overturned: cities, people, and the ground’s growth.

THE MEANING

The verse holds the destruction at full scale: the cities are overturned, every inhabitant is destroyed, and the ground’s growth is swept into the ruin. The violence reaches the place, its people, and the living growth the place sustains.

THE ROOT

וַיַּהֲפֹךְ

vayyahafokh

GROWS FROM

הפך

h-p-k

to turn over, overturn, or reverse

“overthrew” in this verse is vayyahafokh. The verb’s root carries the image of turning over, and its related noun ⁨מַהְפֵּכָה⁩ (mahpekah) means overthrow or upheaval. The action and the catastrophic event share one seed, picturing these cities as a world overturned.

ALSO GROWS

haphakh: to turn, overturn, or change

הָפַךְ

This is the root verb’s basic action: the cities are turned over completely.

mahpekah: overthrow, upheaval, or destruction

מַהְפֵּכָה

This related noun names the overturning as a catastrophic event, the same sense used when other verses recall Sodom.

צֶמַח

tsemach

GROWS FROM

צמח

ts-m-ch

to sprout, shoot forth, or grow

“that which grew” in this verse is tsemach. The verse names the growth as tsemach, vegetation sprouting from the ground, so the destruction reaches what the land is producing as well as its inhabitants. The same root holds both the noun for growth and the verb for sprouting.

ALSO GROWS

tsemach: sprout, vegetation, or growth

צֶמַח

This is the growth named in the verse, placing plant life within the devastation’s reach.

yitsmach: it will sprout or grow

יִצְמָח

This verb makes visible the living emergence from the soil contained in the noun tsemach.

THE PATTERN

When the cities are overturned here, the ruin reaches both their inhabitants and the ground’s life-bearing growth.

And that the whole land thereof is brimstone, and salt, and burning, that it is not sown, nor beareth, nor any grass groweth therein, like the overthrow of Sodom, and Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboim, which the LORD overthrew in his anger, and in his wrath:

Deuteronomy 29:23 · KJVIt describes land where nothing is sown or grows and calls that desolation like Sodom’s overthrow.

But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all.

Luke 17:29 · KJVIt presents Sodom’s destruction as reaching everyone remaining there after Lot leaves.

And turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrha into ashes condemned them with an overthrow, making them an ensample unto those that after should live ungodly;

2 Peter 2:6 · KJVIt describes the cities themselves turned to ashes, naming their ruin an overthrow.

THE THREAD

I have overthrown some of you, as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and ye were as a firebrand plucked out of the burning: yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the LORD.

Amos 4:11 · KJV

Amos uses the same root ⁨הָפַךְ⁩ (haphakh, to overturn) and names Sodom and Gomorrah as the measure of devastation. Its firebrand image holds the possibility of a remnant within such ruin, sharpening how completely Genesis describes the cities and their inhabitants being overturned.

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