Genesis 19:24

Summary

The verse states that Yehovah caused sulfur and fire to rain down on Sodom and Gomorrah, and specifies that this rain came "from Yehovah" out of the heavens. The sentence contains a double reference to the divine name, once as the subject of the action and once as the source of what fell.

Key words

• him.Tir ("he caused to rain", H4305) — hiphil perfect verb, causative stem indicating that the subject actively brought about the raining, not a passive occurrence.
• ga.fe.Rit ("sulfur", H1614) — feminine singular noun, one of the two substances named as falling on the cities.
• 'Esh ("fire", H0784) — common gender singular noun, joined to "sulfur" by the conjunction va ("and", H9002).
• me'Et (from me. "from", H9006 + 'Et "with", H0854) — compound preposition indicating source ("from with/from"), used before the second occurrence of Yehovah.
• sha.Ma.yim ("heavens", H8064) — masculine plural noun with definite article ha ("the", H9009), marking the place of origin of the substances.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence opens with va-Yehovah ("and Yehovah"), placing the divine name immediately after the conjunction as the grammatical subject of the hiphil perfect verb him.Tir ("he caused to rain", H4305). The hiphil stem marks the action as causative: the subject brings about the raining rather than simply experiencing it. The objects of this causation, ga.fe.Rit ("sulfur", H1614) and 'Esh ("fire", H0784), are joined by the conjunction va and follow the double prepositional phrase 'al-se.Dom ve-'al-'a.mo.Rah ("on Sodom and on Gomorrah"), each place preceded by its own 'al ("on", H5921A).

After naming the substances, the text adds a second phrase: me'Et Yehovah min-ha-sha.Ma.yim ("from Yehovah, from the heavens"). This repeats the divine name a second time, now governed by the preposition me'Et ("from with", H9006+H0854), and adds a further prepositional phrase min-ha-sha.Ma.yim ("from the heavens", H4480A+H9009+H8064), specifying the heavens as the point of origin using the definite article on sha.Ma.yim. The repetition of Yehovah as both the initial subject and the later stated source is a feature of the Hebrew clause structure itself, without additional explanatory material in the source text.

Differences between versions

The LXX (Swete) renders the sequence as "sulfur and fire" (θεῖον καὶ πῦρ), matching the Hebrew order of ga.fe.Rit then 'Esh, and preserves the double reference with παρὰ κυρίου ("from the Lord"). The Vulgate follows the same order, "sulphur et ignem a Domino de caelo". The SBLIBRE Spanish translation reverses the order to "fuego y azufre" ("fire and sulfur"), differing from the Hebrew sequence ga.fe.Rit ("sulfur") before 'Esh ("fire"), while RV1909 and BSB retain the Hebrew order "azufre y fuego" / "sulfur and fire".