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Genesis 18 describes "אנשים [=men]" who came to visit Abraham. Chapter 19 starts "And the two מלאכים [=messengers, or angels] arrived at Sodom…" and proceeds to call them, too, "אנשים". Rashi and ...
Question
parshat-vayera
#1: Initial revision
by
msh210
·
2021-06-06T09:11:55Z (almost 3 years ago)
Were Abraham's and Lot's guests the same?
Genesis 18 describes "אנשים [=men]" who came to visit Abraham. Chapter 19 starts "And the two מלאכים [=messengers, or angels] arrived at Sodom…" and proceeds to call them, too, "אנשים". _Rashi_ and many other commentaries to 19:1 take for granted that these were the same men as in chapter 18, which indeed seems the obvious reference of the definite article "_the_ two מלאכים". I wonder whether any classical commentaries differ and how they explain the definite article. Or, on the contrary, I wonder whether there's any support _from the text itself_, besides that definite article, for the claim that the chapter-19 people (or beings) were the same as the chapter-18 ones.