What Does Genesis 19:28 Mean in the King James?
And he looked toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and toward all the land of the plain, and beheld, and, lo, the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace.
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 smoke is the land’s witness: devastation becomes visible across the distance that separates the viewer from it.
THE MEANING
The gaze runs across the whole plain, and what it discloses is smoke lifting like a furnace plume. The devastation remains visible at a distance, carried by what the burning sends upward.
THE ROOT
קִיטֹר
qitor
GROWS FROM
קטר
qatar
to make smoke; to burn incense
The word for smoke belongs to the same root family as a verb for making smoke or burning incense and a noun for incense. That family keeps the visible plume bound to burning: what rises here is the material trace of fire, in a word family that also names smoke raised as incense.
ALSO GROWS
qatar: to burn incense; to make smoke
קָטַר
The verb names the burning process from which the verse’s plume rises.
qetoret: incense
קְטֹרֶת
This noun shares the smoke-making root family, linking a rising plume with material made by burning.
THE PATTERN
Rising smoke makes the force and devastation of burning visible, even from a distance.
And mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke, because the LORD descended upon it in fire: and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount quaked greatly.It shall not be quenched night nor day; the smoke thereof shall go up for ever: from generation to generation it shall lie waste; none shall pass through it for ever and ever.And again they said, Alleluia. And her smoke rose up for ever and ever.THE THREAD
And mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke, because the LORD descended upon it in fire: and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount quaked greatly.The furnace comparison repeats almost word for word: here the plain’s smoke rises like a furnace; at Sinai, smoke ascends as one when the LORD descends in fire. The echo makes the power at work visible through the same image, while leaving the scenes distinct.
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