Genesis 19:7

Summary

Lot addresses the men of Sodom surrounding his house, using a polite but urgent negative construction to ask them not to act wickedly. The verse consists of a narrative introduction followed by direct speech containing a vocative and a prohibition.

Key words

• va-yomer ("and he said", H0559) — qal narrative form marking the transition into direct speech within the story sequence.
• 'al ("may not", H0408) — negative particle used with the following verb to form a prohibition, distinct from the more absolute negative lo.
• na' ("please", H4994) — a particle of entreaty attached to the negation, softening the command into a plea or urgent request.
• 'achai ("my brothers", H0251G + H9020) — plural construct noun with 1st-person singular suffix, a vocative address to the crowd.
• tare'u ("you do evil", H7489A) — hiphil (causative) imperfect, 2nd person masculine plural, expressing an action not yet completed or one still in progress that Lot seeks to prevent.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is short and tightly constructed: a narrative verb (va-yomer) introduces speech consisting of only two clause elements — the vocative 'achai ("my brothers") and the prohibition 'al na' ... tare'u ("please do not act wickedly"). The particle na' attached to the negation 'al is significant grammatically: it does not change the meaning of the prohibition itself but marks it as a request rather than a flat command, giving the utterance a tone of appeal rather than authority.

The verb tare'u is a hiphil imperfect from the root behind "to be evil," so its causative stem indicates "to cause evil" or "to act wickedly," and the imperfect aspect presents the action as not yet finished — appropriate since Lot is trying to stop something from happening rather than describing something already done. The verb itself does not specify an object; it functions intransitively here, describing a manner of action ("act evilly") rather than performing evil upon a stated thing.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the appeal with Μηδαμῶς ("by no means") followed by the vocative ἀδελφοί ("brothers") and a separate prohibition μὴ πονηρεύσησθε ("do not act wickedly"), and it adds the phrase πρὸς αὐτούς ("to them"), specifying an addressee not explicit in the Hebrew clause itself. The Vulgate doubles the negative imperative with Nolite... nolite ("do not... do not") and adds the demonstrative hoc ("this"), producing "do not do this evil" (malum hoc facere), which supplies a specific object where the Hebrew verb tare'u leaves the wrongdoing unspecified and verbal in form.