to be heavy · verb, qal perfect, 3rd person feminine singular
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Genesis 19:13 For we will destroy this place, because the cry of them is waxen great before the face of the LORD; and the LORD hath sent us to destroy it.
Isaiah 3:9 The shew of their countenance doth witness against them; and they declare their sin as Sodom, they hide it not. Woe unto their soul! for the…
Ezekiel 16:49-50 Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neith…
Genesis 4:10 And he said, What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground.
Genesis 13:13 But the men of Sodom were wicked and sinners before the LORD exceedingly.
James 5:4 Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which…
Isaiah 5:7 For the vineyard of the LORD of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah his pleasant plant: and he looked for judgment, but behol…
Jeremiah 14:7 O LORD, though our iniquities testify against us, do thou it for thy name’s sake: for our backslidings are many; we have sinned against thee…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Genesis 18:16-22
The messengers from heaven had now despatched one part of their business, which was an errand of grace to Abraham and Sarah, and which they delivered first; but now they have before them work of another nature. Sodom is to be destroyed, and they must do it, Gen 19:13. Note, As with the Lord there is mercy, so he is the God to whom vengeance belongs. Pursuant to their commission, we here find, 1. That they looked towards Sodom (Gen 18:16); they set their faces against it in wrath, as God is said to look unto the host of the Egyptians, Exo 14:24. Note, Though God has long seemed to connive at sinners, from which they have inferred that the Lord does not see, does not regard, yet, when the day…
the Lord said, Shall I hide--The chief stranger, no other than the Lord, disclosed to Abraham the awful doom about to be inflicted on Sodom and the cities of the plain for their enormous wickedness.
Adam Clarke on Genesis 18:20
Because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah - See note on Gen 13:13.
John Gill on Genesis 18:20
And the Lord said,.... The Targum of Jonathan adds, to the ministering angels, the two angels that were with him in the likeness of men; or to Abraham, at least in his hearing, by which he understood that Sodom and other cities were about to be destroyed for their sins:
because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great; either of Lot in it, whose righteous soul was vexed with the filthy conversation of the wicked, and cried to heaven against them; or of the inhabitants that were oppressed by others, either in their bodies, being forced to submit to their unnatural usage of them, or in their estates, of which they wronged them; particularly the cry of the poor among them, whom they suffered to…
It was not that God, who had just said, "their sins were very grave," did not know that they had sinned. This was an example to judges not to prejudge a case, even based on very reliable hearsay. For if he who knows all set aside his knowledge lest he exact vengeance without full knowledge before the trial, how much more should they set aside their ignorance and not effect judgment before the case is heard.
The cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is multiplied, he said. Well did he say that sins can cry out. Great surely is the cry of sinners as it mounts from earth to heaven. But why does he say that the sins of people cry out? It is because God says his ears are assaulted by the cries of our sins that the punishment of sinners be not delayed. Truly is it a cry, and the cry is great when the love of God is overpowered by the cries of sins to the extent that he is forced to punish the sinners. The Lord shows how unwilling he is to punish even the gravest sinners when he said that the cry of Sodom ascended to him. This means: My mercy urges me to spare them, but the cry of their sins compels me to punish them.
Then, to teach the whole human race that even if their sins are exceedingly great and confessed to be such, he does not pronounce sentence before proof is manifest, he says, "I am going down to see if their deeds correspond to the outcry reaching me, so as to know if it is true or not." What is meant by the deliberation of the expression? "I am going down to see if their deeds correspond to the outcry reaching me, so as to know if it is true or not." What is meant by the considerateness of the expression? "I am going down to see." I mean, does the God of all move from place to place? No indeed! It doesn't mean this; instead, as I have often remarked, he wants to teach us by the concreteness of the expression that there is need to apply precision and that sinners are not condemned on hearsay nor is sentence pronounced without proof.
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Abraham — Father of a multitude, son of Terah, named (Gen. 11:27) before his older brothers Nahor and Haran, because he was the heir of the promises. Till the age of seventy, Abram sojourned among his kindred…
Angel — A word signifying, both in the Hebrew and Greek, a “messenger,” and hence employed to denote any agent God sends forth to execute his purposes. It is used of an ordinary messenger (Job 1:14: 1 Sam.…
Communion — Fellowship with God (Gen. 18:17-33; Ex. 33:9-11; Num. 12:7, 8), between Christ and his people (John 14:23), by the Spirit (2 Cor. 13:14; Phil. 2:1), of believers with one another (Eph. 4:1-6). The…
Gomorrah — Submersion, one of the five cities of the plain of Siddim (q.v.) which were destroyed by fire (Gen. 10:19; 13:10; 19:24, 28). These cities probably stood close together, and were near the northern…
Communion · .Abraham — .Abraham
Condescension Of God · Enters into covenant with Abraham — Enters into covenant with Abraham
God · .To Abraham — .To Abraham
Gomorrah · Wickedness of — Wickedness of
Sins, National · Exemplified: Sodom and Gomorrah — Exemplified: Sodom and Gomorrah
Sodom · Abraham’ s intercession for — Abraham’ s intercession for
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
John Calvin on Genesis 18:20
The cry of Sodom. The Lord here begins more clearly to explain to Abraham his counsel concerning the destruction of the five cities; although he only names Sodom and Gomorrah, which were much more famous than the rest. But before he makes mention of punishment, he brings forward their iniquities, to teach Abraham that they justly deserved to be destroyed: otherwise the history would not tend to instruction. But when we perceive that the anger of God is provoked by the sin of man, we are inspired with a dread of sinning. In saying that the "cry was great," [416] he indicates the grievousness of their crimes, because, although the wicked may promise themselves impunity, by concealing their evi…
"The cry of Sodom and Gomorrah, yea it is great; and their sin, yea it is very grievous." The cry is the appeal for vengeance or punishment, which ascends to heaven (Gen 4:10). The כּי serves to give emphasis to the assertion, and is placed in the middle of the sentence to give the greater prominence to the leading thought (cf. Ewald, 330).
Tyndale Open Study Notes on Genesis 18:20-21
The omniscient God was cautious in his judgment: He knew the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah, but this close scrutiny communicated God’s justice in human terms—he would not destroy the people of the plain unless he was absolutely sure they were wicked.
18:20 a great outcry: See Ezek 16:49-50.
Rashi on Genesis 18:11
חדל להיות means [that] it had ceased from her.
אורח כנשים means the way of menstruation.
