Genesis 19:11

Summary

The verse describes how the two visitors (implied agents from the prior context) struck the men crowded at the entrance of Lot's house with a sudden blindness, affecting everyone regardless of age, so that these men exhausted themselves trying to find the doorway.

Key words

• hiKu ("they struck", H5221) — Hiphil perfect of the causative verb, indicating a completed action deliberately caused by the subject upon the men; the causative (Hiphil) stem marks this as an inflicted state rather than a simple action.
• sanveRim ("sudden blindness", H5575) — masculine plural noun, a rare term for a blinding affliction; its plural form may intensify the totality or repeated nature of the affliction across the group.
• miKaton ... gaDol ("from small ... great", H6996B, H1419A) — a merism (a small/great pairing) expressing the full range of the men, from least to greatest, showing the blindness affected all present without exception.
• yil'U ("they became weary", H3811) — Qal verb introduced by the narrative va (H9001), continuing the story sequence; it marks the resulting weariness as a direct narrative consequence of the blindness.
• limTzo' ("to find", H4672) — Qal infinitive construct with prefixed li ("to"), expressing purpose or goal: the wearying occurred specifically in their attempt "to find" the entrance.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence opens with the direct object marked by 'et (H0853) attached to ha'anaShim ("the men", H0582), fronting the object before the verb hiKu — a common construction that places emphasis on who receives the action. The men are further specified by a relative clause, 'aSher-Petach haBayit ("who [were at] the entrance of the house"), using Petach (H6607) in construct form to link it to haBayit ("the house", H1004B).

The verb hiKu ("they struck") governs the instrument ba-sanveRim ("with sudden blindness"), using the preposition ba (H9003, "with/in") to mark the means by which the striking occurred. The phrase miKaton ve'ad-gaDol ("from small and unto great") functions as a merism, a rhetorical device using two extremes to denote the whole range of the affected group — not necessarily indicating literal age classes but totality of persons struck.

The clause continues with the narrative va prefixed to yil'U ("and they became weary"), a Qal form indicating the natural, non-causative reaction of the men themselves — contrasted with the causative Hiphil hiKu used earlier for the action done to them. The infinitive limTzo' ("to find") expresses the purpose of their exertion, and haPatach ("the entrance") at the clause's end mirrors Petach from the earlier relative clause, framing the passage with references to the same location.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders sanveRim ("sudden blindness", H5575) as ἀορασίᾳ ("blindness"), a more general term without the connotation of suddenness explicit in the Hebrew root. The Vulgate's cæcitate ("blindness") similarly generalizes the term. Where the Hebrew specifies the location as Petach haBayit ("entrance of the house"), the LXX phrases it as "the men being at the door of the house," a syntactic expansion not present as a separate relative clause in the same form in Hebrew.