Genesis18chapter 18

This chapter opens the fourth portion of the annual cycle, and the portion runs from its first verse to the end of Genesis 22 (src/lib/hebraic/readings.ts). A congregation hears the visit at the oaks, the destruction of Sodom, the birth of Isaac and the binding on one Sabbath. The card above carries the portion and the prophetic reading set beside it.

The corpus holds no English text for any comment on this chapter, so nothing of the classical commentary is quoted here. Rashi comments on every one of the first twenty four verses, and each comment is cited and linked and read at the source. They run from Rashi on Genesis 18:1:1 on the appearing at the oaks to Rashi on Genesis 18:24:1 on the fifty righteous men.

Those comments cover the three visitors in the second verse, and the running to meet them and the meal in the fourth to the eighth. They cover the word about Sarah in the tenth verse, her laughter in the twelfth and the question of whether anything is too hard for God in the fourteenth. They cover the reason God tells Abraham what He will do, in the seventeenth to the nineteenth, and the pleading over the city from the twenty third verse on.

The licence Sefaria reports for that English version of Rashi keeps the text out of this corpus, and this site holds no other checked edition of his comment on this chapter. The references stand here, and the comment is read at Sefaria.

The corpus records forty places where the Midrash and the Talmud cite this chapter, twenty seven under Midrash and thirteen under Talmud. It carries the locator for each one with no text, so the references stand here and the sayings are read at the source.

The Talmud weight of the chapter is the second heaviest of these twenty five, and it falls on the welcome Abraham gave the three men. Six of the thirteen locators stand on the second to the seventh verses, at Bava Metzia 86b:19, 86b:18, 86b:14 and 87a:4, at Avot DeRabbi Natan 13:3, and at its second recension 45:2. The tractate is cited again at Bava Metzia 86b:13 on the sixteenth verse.

Avot DeRabbi Natan carries the rest of the Talmud locators. It reads the ninth verse at 34:5, the twenty first at 34:6 and the twenty sixth at 37:12. Its second recension reads the twelfth verse at 37:1, the twentieth at 37:9 and the last at 40:5.

Bereshit Rabbah reads the second verse at 44:11, the third at 48:10, the eleventh at 56:5 and the thirteenth at 20:6. It reads the fourteenth verse at 48:19, the fifteenth at 48:20, the eighteenth at 49:3 and the twenty second at 49:7. It reads the twenty fourth verse at 49:9, the twenty eighth at 49:12 and the thirtieth at 49:13.

Aggadat Bereshit reads the first verse at 19:1 and 19:2, the sixth at 34:1 and the tenth at 28:3. It reads the seventeenth verse at 21:1, the nineteenth at 24:1, the twenty third at 18:1 and the twenty fifth at 22:1. Bamidbar Rabbah reads the fourth verse at 14:2, the fifth at 20:17, the seventh at 13:14 and the twenty seventh at 13:3. Midrash Sekhel Tov reads the twenty ninth and thirty first verses at the locators of the same names, and Midrash Lekach Tov reads the thirty second at Genesis 18:32:1.