Genesis 19:13

Summary

The two visitors explain to Lot why they must act: they are on the verge of destroying "this place," because the outcry associated with its inhabitants has become great before Yehovah, who has consequently sent them to carry out the destruction.

Key words

• mashchitim ("about to destroy", H7843) — hiphil participle, plural, paired with the pronoun anachnu ("we"). This is not a simple verb tense but a participial construction expressing an action in progress or imminent, closer to "we are destroyers" than to a plain future.
• ga'delah ("it is great", H1431) — qal perfect, third person feminine singular. The feminine form agrees with tza'akatam ("their outcry", H6818), a feminine noun, confirming what has become "great."
• tza'akatam ("their outcry", H6818) — feminine singular noun in construct form with the suffix -am ("their"), literally "the outcry of them."
• et penei YHWH ("with/before the face of Yehovah", H6440G) — construct plural noun penei ("face of") governed by the preposition et ("with", H0854, distinct from the object-marker et of H0853 used earlier in the verse). This is an idiomatic expression situating the outcry in Yehovah's presence.
• yeshallechenu ("he has sent us", H7971G) — piel verb with narrative vav, marking sequential action: after the outcry reaching Yehovah's presence, the sending follows.

What the text says

The verse is built on two causal clauses introduced by ki ("for", H3588A), followed by a narrative clause introduced by the vav-consecutive. The first ki-clause uses the participial construction mashchitim anachnu rather than a finite verb, which grammatically frames the destruction as an action already underway or about to unfold, not merely a future event. The second ki-clause supplies the stated reason: the outcry (tza'akatam) "is great" (ga'delah), using the qal perfect to mark this as a completed state of affairs. The phrase et penei YHWH situates this outcry as having reached Yehovah's presence, though the Hebrew does not specify against whom the outcry is directed — only that it belongs to "them" (the suffix -am).

The final clause shifts to narrative sequence with the vav-consecutive verb yeshallechenu, piel form of the same root used for "sent," indicating that the sending is a direct, intensive consequence of the outcry. The concluding infinitive lesha'chatah ("to destroy it/her") carries a feminine singular suffix, which does not match the grammatically masculine noun maqom ("place", H4725) used earlier in the verse — suggesting the suffix may refer back to a feminine referent such as "the city" rather than "the place" literally named in the clause.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders mashchitim anachnu as ἀπόλλυμεν ("we are destroying"), a finite present-tense verb, where the Hebrew uses a participial construction. For ga'delah ("it is great"), the LXX has ὑψώθη ("was raised up"), a different verb altogether, and the Vulgate has increverit ("has increased"), also diverging from the Hebrew term. The Hebrew phrase et penei YHWH ("with the face of Yehovah") appears in the LXX as ἐναντίον κυρίου ("before the Lord"), a comparable but not identical spatial idiom. Finally, the concluding infinitive's feminine singular suffix (rendering "her/it") corresponds to Vulgate's illos ("them," plural, referring to the inhabitants) — a shift in referent from a singular entity in the Hebrew to a plural group in the Latin.