Hebrew word · H2018

הֲפֵכָה

hahafekhah

overthrow

The verb means to turn, turn over, overturn, turn upside down, or change into something else. The noun hafekhah (only here) means "an overturning". The related noun mahpekhah became the fixed term for what happened to Sodom.

Appears once in the Hebrew Old Testament. ·

What it means

overthrow

Abridged from Brown, Driver and Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (1906), via STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0).

In depth

From the study of Genesis 19:29

Range of meaning

The verb means to turn, turn over, overturn, turn upside down, or change into something else. The noun hafekhah (only here) means "an overturning". The related noun mahpekhah became the fixed term for what happened to Sodom.

Against the English

KJV, WEB, ESV and NASB keep "overthrow". BSB and NIV use "catastrophe", which happens to come from the Greek word for "overturning" (katastrophē) used by the Septuagint here. Neither English word keeps the Hebrew repetition ("out of the overturning, in the overturning").

How it drifted

Today "overthrow" mostly suggests removing a government. In older English it kept the physical sense of throwing something down or over. "Catastrophe" has lost its root picture.

Used elsewhere in the period

Sodom's "overturning" became shorthand for total, God-sent destruction: Deut 29:23 (Heb 29:22), Isa 13:19, Jer 49:18; 50:40, Amos 4:11 ("as when God overturned Sodom and Gomorrah"), Lam 4:6 ("overturned as in a moment"). Outside Israel the same root appears in curse formulas, for example the Phoenician Ahiram sarcophagus inscription: "may the throne of his kingship be overturned". The Septuagint uses katastrophē, and 2 Pet 2:6 picks up the same word for Sodom.

Where it appears

Genesis · 1

  1. Genesis 19:29 הַהֲפֵכָ֔ה the overthrow

    So when God destroyed the cities of the plain, He remembered Abraham, and He brought Lot out of the catastrophe that destroyed the cities where he had lived.

    Here: "The overturning": a noun found only here in the Hebrew Bible, from the verb "turn over". It pictures the cities turned upside down. Later writers use a related noun as the fixed phrase for Sodom's fate.

Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.