Struck with blindness

Struck with blindness is how most modern English translations interpret Genesis 19:11 , when angels made it impossible for evildoers in Sodom to find the doorknob on Lot's home. They wore themselves out trying. (The King James Version uses the phrase "smote ... with blindness."

But blindness dies not make it impossible to find and open a door, or wear themselves out trying. Moreover, the Hebrew term used is a rare one and its translation as "blindness" is merely inferred.

A more precise translation benefiting from modern quantum mechanics would be that the Sodom evildoers were deprived of their awareness, their full consciousness needed to eliminate quantum uncertainty about the location of the doorknob. They can try forever but without being able to collapse the wave function of the door it never has a certain location for them.

Hebrew term

The Hebrew term is סַּנְוֵרִ֔ים (bas-san-wê-rîm), which is used in only one other verse in the entire Old Testament, and which is not used in other references for blindness. It appears to be unknown outside of the two verses in the Old Testament, such as Hebrew literature. Thus its meaning needs to be inferred from its context in Genesis 19:11. That context is an inability to discern the location of the doorknob on Lot's door, not a general blindness.

The context of the Sodom residents wearing themselves groping for the door implies that they could see images of its doorknob, but it repeatedly eluded them as they tried to grasp it.