Genesis 18:22

Summary

Genesis 18:22 narrates the departure of "the men" from the scene toward Sodom, while Abraham remains standing before Yehovah. The verse marks a transition point between the preceding dialogue and the following exchange between Abraham and Yehovah.

Key words

• va-yyifnu ("and they turned away", H6437G) — qal verb with narrative vav, indicating sequential action: the turning-away happens as the next event in the story chain.
• ha-'anashim ("the men", H0582) — masculine plural noun with definite article, identifying the subjects who turn and depart as a defined, previously mentioned group.
• Sedomah ("Sodom", H5467 + directional he H9011) — the place name combined with the directional suffix, giving the sense "toward Sodom" or "Sodom-ward" rather than simply naming the location.
• 'odennu ("still he", H5750 + H9043) — a construct form with pronominal suffix, functioning adverbially to mean "he was still" — it frames Abraham's continued presence in contrast to the departing men.
• 'omed ("standing", H5975G) — qal participle, masculine singular, describing an ongoing state rather than a completed action, consistent with 'odennu to portray Abraham as remaining in a fixed posture.

What the text says

The verse is built from two parallel clauses joined by narrative vav-chains, both describing movement, followed by a third clause marked by the conjunction ve- ("and/but") that shifts to Abraham's static position. The first two verbs, va-yyifnu ("they turned away", H6437G) and va-yyelekhu ("they went", H1980G), both carry the narrative vav construction typical of sequential storytelling in Biblical Hebrew — each action follows directly from the previous one in the flow of the account. The subject of these two verbs is ha-'anashim ("the men", H0582), a plural noun with the definite article marking them as the same men mentioned earlier in the surrounding narrative.

The third clause reverses the grammatical structure: instead of a narrative vav plus finite verb, it uses ve- plus the proper noun 'Avraham to open a disjunctive clause, followed by 'odennu 'omed ("he was still standing"). The participle 'omed (H5975G) denotes a continuing state rather than a single completed action, and combined with 'odennu ("still he", H5750/H9043) it emphasizes duration — Abraham's position is not new information but the continuation of something already established in the preceding verses. The syntactic contrast between the two departing men (finite narrative verbs) and Abraham (participle + "still") linguistically distinguishes ongoing presence from completed departure within the same verse.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew ha-'anashim ("the men") is rendered by BSB as "the two men," a specification not present in the Hebrew text itself, which simply has the plural noun with definite article. The LXX (οἱ ἄνδρες) and Vulgate (implied by "se," referring back to the men) follow the Hebrew's unspecified plural more closely, without the numeral "two."