Genesis 18:29

Summary

The verse continues the negotiation between Abraham and the LORD over the fate of a city, introducing a new hypothetical number of righteous inhabitants — forty — and recording a second divine assurance that punishment will be withheld for their sake.

Key words

• yosef ("he repeated", H3254G) — hiphil causative narrative form, literally "he continued/added," combined with od ("again", H5750) to mark that this is a renewed act of speaking, not the first.
• yimmatze'un ("they will be found", H4672) — niphal (passive) imperfect with paragogic nun, giving the verb an emphatic or extended sound; the passive voice frames the forty as a hypothetical discovered group rather than agents.
• 'ulai ("perhaps", H0194) — adverb of uncertainty opening Abraham's conditional clause, signaling a tentative proposal rather than a statement of fact.
• lo' e'eseh ("I will not do [it]", H6213A) — qal imperfect first person with the negation lo' (H3808); the verb 'asah ("to do") is left without an explicit object in the Hebrew, requiring the reader to supply "it" from context (the destructive action mentioned earlier in the exchange).
• ba'avur ("for the sake of", H5668) — construct noun functioning prepositionally, linking the withheld action directly to the specified group, here "the forty" (ha-'arba'im, H0705 with article H9009).

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence structure shows a chain of narrative vav-forms (va-yosef, va-yomar, va-yomer) that mark successive, sequential actions: Abraham resumes speaking, states his hypothesis, and receives a reply. The verb yosef ("he repeated") combined with od ("again") explicitly marks this as a continuation of a prior exchange, rather than a new topic — the grammar itself encodes the back-and-forth structure of the conversation.

Abraham's clause uses the niphal (passive-reflexive) form yimmatze'un ("they will be found") with the paragogic nun, an archaic or emphatic ending that adds weight to the verb without changing its basic meaning. The passive voice puts focus on the discovery of the forty rather than on who does the finding. The response uses lo' e'eseh ("I will not do"), a bare qal imperfect without a stated object in the Hebrew — the text assumes the reader knows what "it" refers to from the preceding narrative (the destructive action under discussion). The prepositional phrase ba'avur ha-arba'im ("for the sake of the forty") closes the verse by tying the withheld action causally to the specified number.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the negated verb as ou mē apolesō ("I will surely not destroy"), supplying an explicit object ("destroy") where the Hebrew lo' e'eseh ("I will not do") leaves the action unspecified. The Vulgate similarly supplies non percutiam ("I will not strike"), and even adds a clarifying question, quid facies? ("what will you do?"), not present in the Hebrew or the Masoretic sequence of verbs. These renderings interpret the implied object of "do" as an act of destruction, a specification the Hebrew text itself does not state directly.