Sophiee wrote:
"Thomas, you admit yourself that you don't speak Hebrew and then you assert that you understand Genesis 18 better than those who do."

One of the things that I neglected to mention among my activities is that I have had the experience of translating three books from English to Spanish, and I teach regularly in both languages. I also teach English to a few Korean students. This doesn't mean I understand Hebrew, but it does mean that I understand something about language learning. I have had the experience of Korean students explaining to me (a 51 year old native English speaker with 8 years of U.S. university study) a word in English that I did not understand, that they had simply looked up in the dictionary. This has happened more than once. Sometimes it is because I had just never heard the word and sometimes it was because I had understood a fringe meaning of a word but not the core meaning. Vice versa, I have had the experience of correcting a native speaker in Spanish, even though I did not get to really learn Spanish until after the age of 30. I can be wrong, but just because you are a Hebrew speaker does not mean that you are right in every interpretation of the Hebrew Tanach. I am not being arrogant when I assert this. I assert this because I know how languages and the human mind work in general, which my humiliating experience with my young Korean students taught me.

Another example is that I am not a medical doctor, but neither do I believe anything that a medical doctor tells me about the human body. After all, some medical doctors told their patients to drink blood to get more iron.

When I made the last post I was in a hurry. As I now take the opportunity to read the Judaica Press translation and the rationale behind the interpretation by Rachi, some alarm bells ring in my head. I have doubts about this interpretation of Genesis 1. Netanel's explanation of Genesis 12:10 seems correct and it seems that I was wrong in my reading of that. I wonder, though, if the principle I was using to read Genesis 18:1 is completely wrong, even if I didn't choose the right examples. I remember bumping into this idea quite a lot. How about Genesis 22:1: 'And it came to pass after these things, that God tested Abraham, and He said to him, "Abraham," and he said, "Here I am."' ? Does that mean that God finished testing Abraham before He began to speak? It seems to be a similar grammatical construction as Genesis 18:1-2: 'Now the Lord appeared to him in the plains of Mamre and he was sitting at the entrance of the tent when the day was hot
2. And he lifted his eyes and saw, and behold, three men were standing beside him ..."

It seems to me that if the Lord's test in Genesis 22 involved the request to sacrifice Isaac, then the appearance of the Lord to Abraham in Genesis 18 can involve the appearance of the three men. If you can give me an explanation of this that I can understand that indicates that the grammar is not what I think it is, and that I can check out from a confirming source, I might have to accept correction, but don't just tell me to believe you because you speak Hebrew.