Kejadian 18:20-21

18:20 So the Lord said, “The outcry against ¹  Sodom and Gomorrah is so great and their sin so blatant ²  18:21 that I must go down ³  and see if they are as wicked as the outcry suggests. ⁴  If not, ⁵  I want to know.”

Kejadian 19:5

19:5 They shouted to Lot, ⁶  “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so we can have sex ⁷  with them!”

[18:20]  ¹ tn Heb “the outcry of Sodom,” which apparently refers to the outcry for divine justice from those (unidentified persons) who observe its sinful ways.

[18:20]  ² tn Heb “heavy.”

[18:21]  ³ tn The cohortative indicates the Lord’s resolve.

[18:21]  sn I must go down. The descent to “see” Sodom is a bold anthropomorphism, stressing the careful judgment of God. The language is reminiscent of the Lord going down to see the Tower of Babel in Gen 11:1-9.

[18:21]  ⁴ tn Heb “[if] according to the outcry that has come to me they have done completely.” Even the Lord, who is well aware of the human capacity to sin, finds it hard to believe that anyone could be as bad as the “outcry” against Sodom and Gomorrah suggests.

[18:21]  ⁵ sn The short phrase if not provides a ray of hope and inspires Abraham’s intercession.

[19:5]  ⁶ tn The Hebrew text adds “and said to him.” This is redundant in English and has not been translated for stylistic reasons.

[19:5]  ⁷ tn The Hebrew verb יָדַע (yada’, “to know”) is used here in the sense of “to lie with” or “to have sex with” (as in Gen 4:1). That this is indeed the meaning is clear from Lot’s warning that they not do so wickedly, and his willingness to give them his daughters instead.

[19:5]  sn The sin of the men of Sodom is debated. The fact that the sin involved a sexual act (see note on the phrase “have sex” in 19:5) precludes an association of the sin with inhospitality as is sometimes asserted (see W. Roth, “What of Sodom and Gomorrah? Homosexual Acts in the Old Testament,” Explor 1 [1974]: 7-14). The text at a minimum condemns forced sexual intercourse, i.e., rape. Other considerations, though, point to a condemnation of homosexual acts more generally. The narrator emphasizes the fact that the men of Sodom wanted to have sex with men: They demand that Lot release the angelic messengers (seen as men) to them for sex, and when Lot offers his daughters as a substitute they refuse them and attempt to take the angelic messengers by force. In addition the wider context of the Pentateuch condemns homosexual acts as sin (see, e.g., Lev 18:22). Thus a reading of this text within its narrative context, both immediate and broad, condemns not only the attempted rape but also the attempted homosexual act.