What Does Genesis 19:32 Mean in the King James?
Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, that we may preserve seed of our father.
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 word translated “preserve” means “make alive,” so the verse’s language of keeping a future alive stands beside a plan that depends on their father’s intoxication.
THE MEANING
The verse states their aim plainly: to keep their father’s line alive. It sets that aim beside the means they propose, wine, then sex with him, making preservation a plan carried through bodies and intoxication.
THE ROOT
וּנְחַיֶּה
u-neḥayyeh
GROWS FROM
חיה
ḥ-y-h
To live or be alive; in this form, to make alive or keep alive.
“preserve” in this verse is u-neḥayyeh. The Hebrew says, more literally, “that we may make alive seed from our father.” The root makes their stated purpose sound like life-giving, even as the verse shows the troubling means they propose.
ALSO GROWS
chai: Living; alive
חַי
The same root names the living state that the plan claims to preserve.
chayyim: Life
חַיִּים
This branch makes clear that “preserve” here carries the sense of keeping life going, not simply storing or protecting something.
זֶרַע
zera
GROWS FROM
זרע
z-r-ʿ
To sow or scatter seed.
The same Hebrew word means both “seed” and the descendants that come from it. The verse compresses a whole future lineage into “seed,” and the verb “make alive” gives that lineage the role of what must continue.
ALSO GROWS
zara: To sow
זָרַע
The verb makes the noun’s image active: seed is what is scattered so that life may continue.
zorea: One who sows; a sower
זֹרֵעַ
This branch places the seed within a relationship of action and consequence, rather than treating lineage as an abstraction.
THE PATTERN
Seed names a future, but its survival runs through particular bodies and choices.
And Sarai said unto Abram, Behold now, the LORD hath restrained me from bearing: I pray thee, go in unto my maid; it may be that I may obtain children by her. And Abram hearkened to the voice of Sarai.And Onan knew that the seed should not be his; and it came to pass, when he went in unto his brother’s wife, that he spilled it on the ground, lest that he should give seed to his brother.Through faith also Sara herself received strength to conceive seed, and was delivered of a child when she was past age, because she judged him faithful who had promised.THE THREAD
And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.Both verses use זֶרַע (zera, seed). In Genesis 19, seed is the future the daughters intend to keep alive; here, the same word names a future carried forward amid conflict.
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