What Does Genesis 19:7 Mean in the King James?
And said, I pray you, brethren, do not so wickedly.
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 Hebrew for “act wickedly” returns as “deal worse” in the crowd’s threat, making the evil here concrete as violence rather than an abstraction.
THE MEANING
The verse holds a painful tension in view: the people addressed as brothers are acting in a way named as evil. Shared belonging does not make harm harmless or erase its name.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Belonging to the same family or community makes harmful conduct less real or less nameable.
THE ROOT
תָּרֵעוּ
tārēʿû
GROWS FROM
רָעַע
rāʿaʿ
To act badly, do evil, or cause harm.
“wickedly” in this verse is tārēʿû. The root points to conduct that harms, not merely an evil quality held in the abstract. In Genesis 19:9 the same root appears in the crowd’s threat to “deal worse” with Lot, tying the moral name to the violence they announce.
ALSO GROWS
raʿ: Bad, evil.
רַע
This related form names the quality that the verb in this verse makes active: evil expressed through harmful conduct.
wənārāʿ: And we will deal worse with you (Genesis 19:9).
וְנָרַע
The root returns in the crowd’s threat, showing the harm inside the word Lot uses to name their action.
THE PATTERN
Shared belonging does not require calling harmful conduct good; wrongdoing can be named plainly.
Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thine heart: thou shalt in any wise rebuke thy neighbour, and not suffer sin upon him.He that saith unto the wicked, Thou art righteous; him shall the people curse, nations shall abhor him:And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.THE THREAD
And they said, Stand back. And they said again, This one fellow came in to sojourn, and he will needs be a judge: now will we deal worse with thee, than with them. And they pressed sore upon the man, even Lot, and came near to break the door.The same Hebrew root behind “do not so wickedly” returns in “deal worse.” The repeated root connects Lot’s naming of the harm with the crowd’s explicit threat to intensify it.
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