Chapter 19
Drafted by Grok 4.7 on 8 October 2026. First draft. Not independently reviewed. Leningrad Codex, through the Open Scriptures Westminster Leningrad Codex. The written consonants are printed. A Masoretic reading is footnoted when it differs. No Dead Sea reading was substituted unless it was read from a fragment. The Samaritan Pentateuch and the Greek, Syriac, and Latin versions are witnesses, not the default.
1The two messengers came to Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting in the gate of Sodom. Lot saw them, got up to meet them, and bowed, face to the ground.
2He said, “Please, my lords, turn aside to your servant’s house, spend the night, and wash your feet. Then you may rise early and go on your way.” They said, “No. We will spend the night in the square.”
3He pressed them hard, and they turned aside to him and entered his house. He made them a feast and baked unleavened bread, and they ate.
4Before they lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, surrounded the house, from young to old, all the people from every quarter.
5They called to Lot and said to him, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us, and we will know them.”
Notes (1)Hide notes
- Translation
“Know” here is the verb used for sex. The request is to use the guests. It is not a request to be introduced.
6Lot went out to them at the entrance, shut the door behind him,
7and said, “Please, my brothers, do not do such evil.
8Look, I have two daughters who have not known a man. Please let me bring them out to you, and do to them what is good in your eyes. Only do nothing to these men, for they have come under the shelter of my roof.”
9They said, “Get back.” And they said, “This one came to stay, and he keeps acting as a judge. Now we will do worse to you than to them.” They pressed hard against the man, against Lot, and came near to break the door.
10The men reached out their hands and brought Lot into the house to them, and shut the door.
11The men at the entrance of the house they struck with blindness, from small to great, so that they wore themselves out looking for the entrance.
12The men said to Lot, “Who else do you have here? A son-in-law, your sons, your daughters, anyone who belongs to you in the city, bring them out of the place,
13for we are about to ruin this place, because their cry has grown great before Yahweh, and Yahweh has sent us to ruin it.”
14Lot went out and spoke to his sons-in-law, who were to marry his daughters, and said, “Get up, get out of this place, for Yahweh is about to ruin the city.” He seemed to his sons-in-law to be joking.
15As dawn came up, the messengers pressed Lot, saying, “Get up, take your wife and your two daughters who are here, or you will be swept away in the punishment of the city.”
16He lingered. The men seized his hand, and his wife’s hand, and the hands of his two daughters, in Yahweh’s pity on him, and they brought him out and set him outside the city.
17When they had brought them outside, he said, “Escape for your life. Do not look behind you, and do not stop anywhere in the plain. Escape to the hill country, or you will be swept away.”
18Lot said to them, “Please, not so, my lord.
19Look, your servant has found favor in your eyes, and you have made great your loyalty, which you have done for me by keeping me alive. I cannot escape to the hill country, or the disaster will catch me and I will die.
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Hesed is printed “loyalty.” See the glossary. This is its first use in the book.
20Look, this city is near enough to flee to, and it is a small one. Please let me escape there. Is it not a small one? And I will stay alive.”
21He said to him, “Look, I grant you this too. I will not overturn the city you have spoken of.
22Hurry, escape there, for I cannot do anything until you arrive there.” Therefore the name of the city was called Zoar.
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- Translation
Zoar sits next to the word “small,” mitsar. Lot asked for the small city. The name keeps that.
23The sun had risen over the earth when Lot came to Zoar.
24Yahweh rained on Sodom and on Gomorrah sulfur and fire from Yahweh, from the sky.
25He overturned those cities, and the whole plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew on the ground.
26His wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.
27Abraham went early in the morning to the place where he had stood before Yahweh.
28He looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah and toward all the land of the plain, and he saw, and look, the smoke of the land went up like the smoke of a kiln.
29When God ruined the cities of the plain, God remembered Abraham and sent Lot out from the middle of the overthrow, when he overturned the cities in which Lot had lived.
30Lot went up from Zoar and lived in the hill country, and his two daughters with him, for he was afraid to live in Zoar. He lived in a cave, he and his two daughters.
31The firstborn said to the younger, “Our father is old, and there is no man on the earth to come in to us in the way of all the earth.
32Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, and we will keep offspring alive from our father.”
33They made their father drink wine that night, and the firstborn went in and lay with her father. He did not know when she lay down or when she got up.
34The next day the firstborn said to the younger, “Look, I lay with my father last night. Let us make him drink wine tonight also, and you go in and lie with him, and we will keep offspring alive from our father.”
35They made their father drink wine that night also, and the younger got up and lay with him. He did not know when she lay down or when she got up.
36Both the daughters of Lot became pregnant by their father.
37The firstborn bore a son and named him Moab. He is the father of Moab to this day.
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Moab sounds like “from a father.” The sentence gives the name and the birth. It does not spell the pun out.
38The younger also bore a son and named him Ben-ammi. He is the father of the Ammonites to this day.