Genesis 19:10

Summary

Genesis 19:10 narrates how "the men" inside the house reach out, pull Lot in with them, and close the door behind him. The verse uses three sequential verbs in the Hebrew narrative chain to depict rapid, decisive action.

Key words

• va-yishlechu ("and they stretched out", H7971) — qal narrative form; the vav-consecutive links this action as the first event in the sequence, "and then they stretched out."
• yadam ("their hand", H3027) — singular noun with plural suffix "their"; Hebrew idiom uses the singular yad even for multiple people acting together, unlike English "hands."
• va-yavi'u ("and they brought/caused to enter", H0935) — hiphil (causative) narrative form; the causative stem indicates the men caused Lot to come in, i.e., "pulled him in," rather than Lot entering on his own.
• ha-baytah ("toward the house", H1004 + directional he) — the suffix -ah (H9011) marks direction "toward the house," reinforcing motion inward.
• sagaru ("they closed", H5462) — qal perfect (completed action), contrasting with the preceding narrative-chain verbs; it marks the final, completed state after the sequence of actions.

What the text says

The verse is built on a chain of three actions connected by the narrative vav construction (va-yishlechu, va-yavi'u), typical of Biblical Hebrew storytelling, where each verb form signals "and then this happened" in sequence. The subject throughout is ha-anashim ("the men", H0582), left unspecified in this verse itself as to their nature — simply "the men" with the definite article, referring back to characters already introduced in the narrative.

The use of the hiphil stem in va-yavi'u ("they caused to come/brought") is significant: it is not a simple "they entered" (qal) but a causative action — the men caused Lot to enter, implying they acted upon him rather than he acting himself. This aligns with the physical action described in the prior clause, where yadam ("their hand") is stretched out (va-yishlechu) — the singular yad covering the collective "hand" of multiple men, a common Hebrew idiom not requiring a plural form to indicate multiple hands.

The final clause shifts grammatical aspect: sagaru ("they closed") is a qal perfect, not another narrative-chain form, marking this as the concluding, completed action — the door is shut, ending the sequence of movement with a static result.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the sequence with participles and finite verbs (ἐκτείναντες... εἰσεσπάσαντο... ἀπέκλεισαν, "having stretched out... they drew in... they shut"), using εἰσεσπάσαντο ("drew in," a strong "pulling" verb) for the Hebrew hiphil va-yavi'u, which may emphasize forceful drawing-in more explicitly than the Hebrew's general causative "brought." The LXX also adds τοῦ οἴκου ("of the house") after θύραν ("door"), specifying "the door of the house," where the Hebrew simply has ha-delet ("the door", H1817) without further qualification. The Vulgate's introduxerunt ("they led in") corresponds to the causative sense of va-yavi'u but lacks the physical "pulling" nuance found in the LXX's εἰσεσπάσαντο.