Genesis 18:30

Summary

Abraham continues his negotiation with the Lord over the fate of Sodom, asking permission to speak again and proposing that thirty righteous people might be found there. The Lord responds that he will not act against the city if thirty are found.

Key words

• yichar ("it burn", H2734) — qal jussive of the verb "to burn," used idiomatically with "anger" implied; the jussive form expresses a wish ("let it not burn/be angry") rather than a statement of fact.
• na' ("please", H4994) — an interjection of entreaty attached to the negative 'al, softening the request and marking Abraham's deferential tone.
• 'adabberah ("let me speak", H1696G) — piel form with a cohortative sense ("let me speak"), the intensive stem giving weight to the act of speaking, distinct from a simple statement.
• yimmatze'un ("they will be found", H4672) — niphal (passive) imperfect with paragoglic nun (H9013), which adds rhetorical emphasis; the passive voice frames the righteous as objects that "are found" rather than agents.
• sham ("there", H8033G) — repeated adverb anchoring the hypothetical count to the specific location, Sodom, in both Abraham's question and the Lord's answer.

What the text says

The verse is built as two paired speech units, each introduced by vayyomer ("and he said", H0559), a standard narrative verb form that simply moves the dialogue forward without naming the speaker explicitly in either case — the referents (Abraham, then the Lord) are understood from context established earlier in the chapter. Abraham's speech opens with a negated jussive, 'al na yichar ("let it not please burn"), a common Hebrew idiom for requesting that someone not become angry, followed by the cohortative 'adabberah ("let me speak"), which grammatically expresses Abraham's own wish to continue rather than a plain future action.

The hypothetical proposal itself uses 'ulai ("perhaps", H0194) to introduce uncertainty, paired with the niphal passive yimmatze'un ("they will be found") — the righteous are framed as something that might be "found" in the city, not as agents performing an action. The paragogic nun ending on this verb is a stylistic emphatic marker without changing its basic meaning. The Lord's reply mirrors the structure of previous exchanges in the chapter: a negated imperfect, lo' 'e'eseh ("I will not do"), conditioned by 'im ("if") plus 'emtza' ("I will find"), an active qal form contrasting with Abraham's earlier passive yimmatze'un — here the Lord speaks of finding directly, rather than the righteous "being found."

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the Hebrew idiom of anger (yichar, "it burn") as Mē ti ("nothing at all"), omitting the burning/anger imagery and instead framing the request differently. The Vulgate preserves the sense of anger with indigneris ("you be indignant"), closer to the Hebrew idiom. The LXX also renders the Lord's reply as ou mē apolesō ("I will surely not destroy"), specifying destruction explicitly, whereas the Hebrew lo' 'e'eseh ("I will not do") is more general, and the Vulgate's non faciam ("I will not do") follows the Hebrew's generality rather than the LXX's specificity.