Paragraph 17:28–30

For the background to this paragraph, see Genesis chapters 18 and 19. This paragraph is similar to 17:26–27.

17:28a

It was the same in the days of Lot: Here Jesus introduced another illustration of how the situation will be when the Son of Man returns. Just as the people of Noah’s time were unprepared for the flood, the people of Lot’s time were unprepared for the disaster that killed them. In the same way, people will be unprepared when Jesus returns.

Jesus compared the people living during the times of Noah and Lot to the people who will be living when the Messiah will return. In some languages it may be necessary to make this explicit:

⌊What people will be doing when I will return will be⌋ like what people were doing when Lot was alive.

in the days of Lot: The phrase in the days of Lot refers to the time thousands of years ago when Lot lived. Lot was a nephew of Abraham. You may need to make it clear that the time when Lot lived was a long time before Jesus said these words. For example:

the time ⌊long ago⌋ when Lot was alive

17:28b–c

This part of the verse shows that people continued to do the things that they usually did. In some languages it may be helpful to make this explicit. For example:

People went about their daily business—eating and drinking, buying and selling, farming and building (New Living Translation (2004))

People were eating and drinking: The Greek phrase that the Berean Standard Bible translates as People were eating and drinking was also used in 17:27a. See the note on 17:27a. There it referred to people in Noah’s time. Here it refers to the people living in the same town as Lot. The name of this town (Sodom) is mentioned in 17:29.

buying and selling, planting and building: These verbs are other examples of normal activities that people did in the town where Lot lived.

buying and selling: The verbs buying and selling are general verbs that can refer to buying or selling anything. In some languages it may be natural to translate these two verbs with a more general expression that includes both buying and selling. For example:

trading ⌊with each other⌋

The point is that people were doing what they usually did to earn money in order to live.

planting and building: In some languages it may be more natural to include the object of one or both of these verbs. For example:

planting ⌊seeds/gardens⌋ and building ⌊houses⌋

© 2009, 2010, 2013 by SIL International®
Made available under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License (CC BY-SA) creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0.
All Scripture quotations in this publication, unless otherwise indicated, are from The Holy Bible, Berean Standard Bible.
BSB is produced in cooperation with Bible Hub, Discovery Bible, OpenBible.com, and the Berean Bible Translation Committee.