Genesis 19:24 literally reads: "YHWH brought down fire and brimstone upon Sodom and Gomorrah from YHWH out of the heavens", if translated directly from Hebrew. It is a clumsy construction that makes it look as if there are two YHWHs. The Vulgate, Septuagint, and all modern Bibles worsen the problem by translating YHWH into "LORD".
The first commentators ignored this as trivial. For them it was the story that was paramount.
The second-century-BCE Book of Jubilees
condensed all of it to "And in that month [in which Isaac was named], YHWH executed the judgement of Sodom and Gomorrah and Zeboiim and all
the district of the Jordan. And he burned them with fire and brimstone and he annihilated them
till this day
" (16:5), leaving no trace of the duality. 3 Maccabees did the same (2:5).
But Christians, particularly Monophysites, had a desperate need for passages like this. They were engaged in a running battle with Jews, and later Muslims, over whether the divine Christ was not only predicted in Jewish Scripture, but prefigured as already in existence. Monophysites were additionally keen to show Christ's identity with YHWH, against other Christians who were willing to accept a more separate nature. When the Muslims arrived, Christians faced an adversary who claimed descent from Ismail and denied the Jewish prophets, as the Samaritans had done before them. Accordingly the Christians needed to find their proof in a text on which even an Ismailite could agree - Abraham's portion of the Book of Genesis. They rediscovered the two LORDs in Genesis 19:24, and concluded that one LORD must have been Christ.
One such apologetic work was the epistle of John the Monophysite to the Christians of Iraq, in 639 CE (here for a fuller view):
And the glorious Amir said, "What were the views and the belief of Abraham and Moses?" Our blessed Father answered.... And the Amir said, "Why did they not write clearly and show their belief about the Christ?" and our blessed Father answered.... When the Amir heard these things, he only asked whether the Christ born of Mary was God, and whether God had a son, and whether this could be proven by the Torah and by reason. And our blessed Father said, "Not only Moses, but all the holy prophets have previously related these points of the Christ...." And the glorious Amir said that he would not accept the proof of these points by quotations from the prophets; but only required that it should be proven to him by quotations from Moses that the Christ was God. And the blessed Father among other quotations, brought forth the following from Moses, "Then the Lord from before the Lord brought down fire and brimstone upon Sodom and Gomorrah;" [Gen 19:24] and the glorious Amir required that this quotation should be shown to him from the Book. And our Father showed it to him ... in the complete Greek and Syriac Books. In that assembly, some Hagarians were present with us, and saw the text with their own eyes, and the existence of the glorious name of the Lord twice. And the Amir called a certain Jew, who was believed by the Jews to be a Knower of Books, and asked him if this was literally true in the Torah; and the Jew answered, "I do not know with certainty."
It may have seemed silly to the authors of Jubilees and 3 Maccabees to derive a theology from a grammatical error. But perhaps the Monophysites were onto something when they posited two Beings in the two mentions of YHWH.
The latter phrase in which YHWH appears represents the Deuteronomist's creed
that "YHWH your God is God in heaven above and on the earth below
" (Joshua 2:11).
In Genesis, the God of Heaven and YHWH in Heaven are used interchangeably.
The Deuteronomist's edition of the Books of Moses ended with Deuteronomy itself,
of which 29:23 took Genesis 19:24 as a cautionary example. Both verses underlined exactly Who
carried out the execution of the Sodomites - YHWH, the God of Heaven.
In Canaanite thought, the god of the Heavens was of course not YHWH. He was 'El, the Sky God, father to Ba'al and 'Astaret. Even Deuteronomy drew a distinction between YHWH and God in 32:7-9 (in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Septuagint - see Deliriumsrealm's site - but already "fixed" in Hebrew by the time of the Vulgate translation).
That YHWH was God further escaped the pre-Deuteronomistic prophets. In Amos 4:11, Isaiah 13:19, and Jeremiah MT 50:40, YHWH says, "God ('El) overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah", drawing a distinction between Himself and the Lord of the Heavens. As to the first of these, the NIV translators felt so troubled that they replaced 'El with the first person singular. Zephaniah 2:9, Ezekiel 16:46-56, Lamentations 4:6, Jeremiah MT 49:18, and Isaiah 1:9-10, 3:9 also mention Sodom, but do not say whether it was YHWH who destroyed it. Not until Deuteronomy would anyone dare say that YHWH destroyed the Cities Himself.
I conclude that the tradition first had it that "the God of the Heavens" did the deed, and that both the Prophets and the text that preceded Genesis described it as such. In Judah, the next development was that the local deity YHWH had gotten offended by the sinful cities, and called upon His powerful Father in Heaven to handle it. By the time of the Septuagint - probably during the time of the Deuteronomist - the scribes fixed this ancient relic of henotheism, and had YHWH do it Himself.
And there it would have rested, were it not for Monophysite Christianity and its duel with Islam. The Jews must have been taken by surprise by this passage in their Torah, neglected for a thousand years or more. It was only natural that they responded with confusion in this first encounter with the Amir.
Any thoughts? e-mail me :^)
zimriel@sbcglobal.netThe first version of this project was written 9 Feb 2003.