Genesis 19:5

Summary

The men of Sodom call out to Lot, asking where the visitors who arrived at his house that night are located. They demand that Lot bring the men outside so that they can "know" them, using the verb yada which carries both a literal and a sexual sense in Hebrew.

Key words

• yiqre'u ("they called", H7121I) — qal narrative form, continuing the sequence of past narrated action begun by the preceding vav.
• ho.tzi.'em ("bring [them] out", H3318H) — hiphil (causative) imperative; the causative stem marks that the men are demanding Lot cause the visitors to go outside, not simply come out on their own.
• nede'ah ("let us know", H3045) — the root yada, joined here to the preceding imperative by the conjunction ve ("so"), expressing the purpose or intended result of bringing the men out.
• 'anashim ("men", H0582) — masculine plural noun, preceded by the definite article ha ("the"), specifying particular known individuals (the visitors already mentioned in the narrative).
• asher ("who/that", H0834A) — relative particle introducing the clause that identifies which men are meant: "who came to you this night."

What the text says

The verse opens with two narrative verbs in sequence, yiqre'u ("they called", H7121I) and yo'meru ("they said", H0559), both governed by the narrative vav that marks continuous past action — "and they called... and then they said." This sets up direct speech introduced by the interrogative ayyeh ("where?", H0346), followed by the definite noun phrase ha-'anashim ("the men", H0582) and a relative clause using asher (H0834A) with the perfect verb ba'u ("they came", H0935G), which marks completed action — the men's arrival is treated as an accomplished fact prior to the moment of speaking.

The demand itself uses two verb forms in sequence: the hiphil imperative hotzi'em (H3318H), "bring them out," followed by the cohortative-type form nede'ah (H3045), "let us know/so that we may know," linked by the conjunction ve. The root yada (H3045) in Biblical Hebrew has a broad semantic range that includes ordinary cognitive "knowing" as well as, in certain contexts, physical/sexual intimacy. The text as given does not lexically disambiguate which sense is intended; that determination depends on how each version below renders it.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew nede'ah (H3045, "let us know") is rendered by the LXX as συγγενώμεθα ("that we may have relations/be intimate with"), an explicit sexual verb. The Vulgate uses cognoscamus ("that we may know"), a Latin verb that, like the Hebrew root, can carry either a neutral or a euphemistic sexual meaning depending on context. The Hebrew text itself preserves this same ambiguity without lexically resolving it.