Genesis 18:24

Summary

Abraham poses a hypothetical to God: if fifty righteous people exist within the city, will God nonetheless destroy it, or will he spare the place for the sake of those fifty righteous ones. The verse combines a conditional supposition with a rhetorical, emphatic question.

Key words

• 'ulai ("perhaps", H0194) — opens the clause as a tentative supposition, not a statement of fact, softening Abraham's proposal.
• tispeh ("will you sweep away", H5595) — Qal imperfect, 2nd person masculine; imperfect aspect frames this as an open, future/hypothetical action addressed directly to God.
• tissa ("will you forgive/lift up/spare", H5375H) — also Qal imperfect 2ms; paired with tispeh through ve-lo ("and not", H9002+H3808) to form a double question about destruction versus sparing.
• lema'an ("for the sake of", H4616) — introduces the purpose/cause clause explaining the grounds on which sparing might occur, namely the presence of the righteous.
• qirbah ("its midst", H7130G) with suffix -h ("her/its", H9024) — construct noun plus pronominal suffix referring back to ha-'ir ("the city", H5892B), tying the final relative clause back to the city's interior.

What the text says

The verse divides into three linked units. First, 'ulai yesh chamishim tzadiqim be-tokh ha-'ir ("perhaps there are fifty righteous within the city") sets up a hypothetical numeric condition using the existential yesh (H3426) rather than a verb "to be," a common Hebrew way of asserting presence. Second, the interrogative ha (H9008) combines with the interjection 'aph (H0637) to produce an intensified rhetorical question — "will you indeed...?" — governing the verb tispeh. This is followed by ve-lo tissa, a second imperfect verb joined by ve-lo ("and not"), producing a paired question: will you sweep away, and will you not spare, the place (la-maqom, H4725/H9005). Third, lema'an introduces the conditioning clause: the sparing (or not) is tied "for the sake of" the fifty righteous, repeating chamishim ha-tzadiqim with the definite article this time (ha-tzadiqim, "the righteous," H9009+H6662), referring back to the group just introduced. The relative clause 'asher be-qirbah ("who are in her midst") closes the sentence, with the pronominal suffix -ah pointing back to ha-'ir ("the city").

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the opening as a straightforward conditional, ἐὰν ὦσιν πεντήκοντα... δίκαιοι ("if there are fifty... righteous"), omitting an equivalent for 'ulai ("perhaps"). The LXX also makes αὐτούς ("them," referring to the righteous or inhabitants) the object of "will you destroy," where the Hebrew tispeh has no explicit stated object at that point, with la-maqom ("the place") functioning as object only of tissa ("spare"). The Vulgate's peribunt simul ("will they perish together") shifts the verb from second-person address to God ("will you sweep away") to a third-person statement about what will happen to the inhabitants, differing from the direct second-person question preserved in the Hebrew.