Genesis 19:32

Summary

Genesis 19:32 records the words of Lot's elder daughter proposing a plan: to give their father wine to drink, to lie with him, and so preserve offspring from him. The verse is a chain of cohortative-type verbs expressing collective intention and purpose.

Key words

• le.Kha ("come", H1980K) — qal imperative directed at a companion, functioning as an attention-getting call rather than literal motion; the following element h (paragogic he, H9012) adds emphasis to the form.
• nash.Keh ("let us make drink", H8248H) — hiphil imperfect, causative stem: the subject causes another to drink, not merely drinks itself.
• nish.ke.Vah ("let us lie", H7901I) — listed here as an infinitive form joined by ve ("and", H9002), continuing the sequence of proposed actions.
• ne.chai.Yeh ("we may preserve alive", H2421) — piel imperfect with prefixed vav, an intensive stem denoting active preservation of life, introducing the purpose of the prior actions.
• Za.ra' ("seed/offspring", H2233H) — masculine singular noun, the object of preservation, appearing without the direct object marker 'et that marked 'a.Vi.nu ("our father") earlier in the verse.

What the text says

The verse is built as a sequence of three verbal actions joined by ve ("and"): giving drink (nash.Keh), lying down (nish.ke.Vah), and preserving (ne.chai.Yeh). The first two are introduced by the summons le.Kha ("come") with its emphatic paragogic he, marking the utterance as a proposal calling for joint action. The causative hiphil of nash.Keh specifies that the father is made to drink by the daughters' agency, rather than drinking on his own initiative. The final clause, introduced by me ("from", H9006) before 'a.Vi.nu ("our father"), states the source of the Za.ra' ("seed") to be preserved — note that this noun stands without the object marker 'et that appears earlier with 'a.Vi.nu, a grammatical asymmetry visible in the word-by-word data. The piel stem of ne.chai.Yeh emphasizes an intensive, purposeful act of keeping alive/continuing a line, distinct from a simple qal "to live."

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the final verb as ἐξαναστήσωμεν ("let us raise up") where the Hebrew has ne.chai.Yeh ("let us preserve alive"), a different verbal image (raising up vs. keeping alive) for the same purpose clause. The Vulgate uses inebriemus ("let us make drunk") for nash.Keh ("let us make [him] drink"), adding an explicit notion of drunkenness not lexically present in the causative "to give to drink" itself. The Vulgate also frames the final clause with ut servare possimus ("so that we may be able to preserve"), introducing a modal "ability" nuance not present in the Hebrew's direct purpose form.