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8:1 Now YHVH was seen by him by the oaks of Mamre
as he was sitting at the entrance to his tent at the heat of the day.
and the LORD appeared unto him.
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The Rabbis connect this chapter with the preceding, and declare that God visited the Patriarch during the indisposition which resulted from his circumcision. From this passage they deduce the duty of visiting the sick.
in the tent door. Abraham was watching for passers-by to offer them hospitalit, an occupation in which he delighted.
[EF] entrance to his tent: Also used in vv. 2 and 10, it may hint at the important events being portrayed: the “entrance to the tent” is often a sacred spot in subsequent books of the Bible.
[RA] And the LORD appeared. The narrator at once apprises us of the divine character of Abraham’s guests, but when Abraham peers out through the shimmering heat waves of the desert noon (verse 2), what he sees from his human perspective is three “men.” The whole scene seems to be a monotheistic adaptation to the seminomadic early Hebrew setting of an episode from the Ugaritic Tale of Aqhat (tablet V:6-7) in which the childless Dan’el is visited by the craftsman-god Kothar. As Moshe Weinfeld has observed, there are several verbal links between the two texts: Dan’el also is sitting by an entrance, overshadowed by a tree; he also “lifts up his eyes” to behold the divine visitor; and similarly enjoins his wife to prepare a meal from the choice of the flock.
2 He lifted up his eyes and saw: here, three men standing over against him. When he saw them,
he ran to meet them from the entrance to his tent and bowed to the earth. three three men. One to announce the tidings of the birth of Isaac; the second to destroy Sodom; and the third to rescue Lot. ‘An angel is never sent on more than one errand at a time’ (Midrash).
[EF] three men: See note on 16.7. over against him: Heb. alav could mean “over” or “next to” him.
3 and said:
My lords,
pray if I have found favor in your eyes,
pray do not pass by your servant!
my lord. Abraham speaks to the one who appeared to be the chief of the three men.
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[EF] My lords: Some use ‘My Lord.”
[RA] My lord. The Masoretic Text vocalizes this term of courtly address (not YHWH) to read “my lords,” in consonance with the appearance of three visitors. But the vocative terms that follow in this verse are in the singular, and it is only in verse 4 that Abraham switches to plural vers. Rashi, plausibly, suggests that Abraham initially addresses himself to “the greatest” of the three. As verses 10 and 13-15 make clear, that greatest one is God Himself, who will tarry to speak with Abraham while the two-human-seeming angels of destruction who accompany Him head down to the cities of the plain.
4 Pray let a little water be fetched, then wash your feet and recline under the tree;
wash your feet. A refreshing comfort to travellers who wore sandals; XIX,2;XXIV,32; XLIII,24.
recline yourselves. While the meal was being prepared for them, they could enjoy the shade of the tree in front of his tent (see v.1).
[EF] wash your feet: Customary for weary travelers in the ancient world.
[RA] Let a little water be fetched. With good reason, the Jewish exegetical tradition makes Abraham figure as the exemplary dispenser of hospitality. Extending hospitality, as the subsequent contrasting episode in Sodom indicates, is the primary act of civilized intercourse. The early Midrash (Abot di Rabbi Nathan) aptly noted that Abraham promises modestly, a little water and a morsel of bread, while hastening to prepare a sumptuous feast. “Fetch” appears four times in rapid succession, “hurry” three times, as indices of the flurry of hospitable activity.
5 let me fetch (you) a bit of bread, that you may refresh your hearts,
then afterward you may pass on—
for you have, after all, passed your servant’s way!
They said:
Do thus, as you have spoken.
and I will fetch a morsel of bread. It is a mark of the good man, declare the Rabbis, to perform more than he promises. The Patriarch belittles the fare he offers to provide for his guests, but gives them of his best.
state ye your heart. Refresh your strength.
forasmuch as. Seeing that you are in haste, for otherwise you would not be passing my tent in the heat of the day.
6 Avraham hastened into his tent to Sara and said:
Make haste! Three measures of choice flour!
Knead it, make bread-cakes!
and Abraham hastened. Note also the instruction to Sarah, ‘make ready quickly.’
7 Avraham ran to the oxen,
he fetched a young ox, tender and fine, and gave it to a serving-lad, that he might hasten to make it ready;
unto the servant. lit. ‘the lad’, Ishmael, whom Abraham was thus instructing in the duties of hospitality (Midrash). Such instruction in the duty of hospitality to strangers may appear superfluous in the eyes of some parents and teachers today. They are in error. In Western countries, the old Bible command, Love ye the stranger (Deut. X,19), is honoured more in the breach than in the observance. The vulgar, high and low, deem it ‘patriotic’ to despise aliens, and find their foreign manners and language contemptible.
8 then he fetched cream and milk and the young ox that he had made ready, and placed it before
them.
The verse may be understood as meaning that the guests were given curd and milk to slake their thirst and refresh them (Judges, IV,19), and then followed the meal proper, which consisted of the calf. This procedure would be quite in accord with the dietary laws.
and he stood by them. In the East, the host does not sit with his guests, but stands and attends to their needs.
and they did eat. This is the only place in the Bible where the celestial beings are mentioned as partaking of food, or as appearing to do so. The Rabbis deduced from this, that it is necessary to conform to the social habits of the people in whose midst one lives.
9 They said to him:
Where is Sara your wife?
He said:
Here in the tent.
Now he said:
in the tent. The Talmud sees herein praise of Sarah, the highest excellence of a wife being her domesticity.
[RA] Where is Sarah. The fact that the visitors know her name without prompting is the first indication to Abraham (unless one assumes a narrative ellipsis) that they are not ordinary humans.
10 I will return, yes, return to you when time revives,
and Sara your wife will have a son!
Now Sara was listening at the entrance to the tent, which was behind him.
and He said. One of the angels.
cometh round. lit. ‘reviveth’—this time next year.
and Sarah heard in the tent door. More accurately, ‘now Sarah was listening at the entrance of the tent.’
[EF] when time revives: An idiom for “next year.” B-R uses “at the time of life-bestowing.”
[RA] he said, “I will surely return.” Evidently, one of the three visitors, unless the text reflects a fusion of two traditions, one in which there were three visitors, another in which there was one (which old then explain the switch from singular to plural early in the story).at this very season. This phrase or its equivalent, recurs in the various annunciation type-scenes, of which this is the first instance. The narrative motifs of the annunciation type-scene, in sequence, are: the fact of barrenness, the promise of a son by God or angel or holy man, and the fulfillment of the promise in conception and birth. But only here is the emphatically matriarchal annunciation displaced from wife to husband, with the woman merely eavesdropping on the promise; only here is the barren woman actually postmenopausal; and only here is there a long postponement, filled in with seemingly unrelated episodes, until the fulfillment of the promise (chapter 21). Thus the patriarch takes over the center-stage location of the matriarch, and the difficult–indeed, miraculous–nature of the fulfillment is underscored.
11 And Avraham and Sara were old, advanced in days,
the way of women had ceased for Sara.
[EF] the way of women: The menstrual period.
12 Sara laughed within herself, saying:
After I have become worn, is there to be pleasure for
me? And my lord is old!
[EF] pleasure: Sexual.
[RA] 11-13. This sequence of three utterances is a brilliant example of how much the definition of position and character can be achieved in biblical narrative through variation in repetition. First the narrator informs us, objectively and neutrally, of Abraham’s and Sarah’s advanced age, stating the fact, repeating it with the emphasis of a synonym, and reserving for last Sarah’s menopausal condition, which would appear to make conception a biological impossibility. When Sarah repeats this information in her interior monologue, it is given new meaning from her bodily perspective as an old and barren woman: her flesh is shriveled, she cannot imagine having pleasure again (the term ‘ednah is cognate with Eden and probably suggests sexual pleasure, or perhaps even sexual moistness), and besides–her husband is old. The dangling third clause hangs on the verge of a conjugal complaint: how could she expect pleasure, or a child, when her husband is so old? Then the LORD, having exercised the divine faculty of listening to Sarah’s unspoken words, her silent laughter of disbelief, reports them to Abraham, tactfully editing out (as Rashi saw) the reference to the patriarch’s old age and also suppressing both the narrator’s mention of the vanished menses and Sarah’s allusion to her withered flesh–after all, nothing anaphrodisiac is to be communicated to old Abraham at a moment when he is expected to cohabit with his wife in order at last to beget a son.
13 But YHVH said to Avraham:
Now why does Sara laugh and say: Shall I really give birth,
now that I am old?
shall I . . . who am old? Sarah had referred both to her and to Abraham’s extreme age. God only mentioned the reference to herself. This was done so as not to give cause for quarrel between husband and wife, say the Rabbis.
14 Is anything beyond YHVH?
At that set-time I will return to you, when time revives, and Sara will have a son.
is anything too hard for the LORD? Or, ‘Is anything too wonderful for the LORD?’
15 Sara pretended (otherwise), saying:
No, I did not laugh.
For she was afraid.
But he said:
No, indeed you laughed.
[RA] I did not laugh. . . Yes, you did laugh. Sarah’s fearful denial and God’s rejection of it afford an opportunity to foreground the verb of laughter, tsaaq, already stressed through Abraham’s laughter in chapter 17, which will become the name of her son. After the birth, Sarah will laugh again, not in bitter disbelief but in joy, though perhaps not simply in joy, as we shall have occasion to see in chapter 21.
16 The men arose from there, and looked down upon the face of Sedom,
and Avraham went with them to escort them.
to bring them on the way. The final act of courtesy of a gracious host.
17-33. ABRAHAM’S INTERCESSION FOR SODOM
17 Now YHVH had said (to himself):
Shall I cover up from Avraham what I am about to do?
the LORD said. Equivalent to ‘the LORD thought’—a usage often found in the Bible.
18 For Avraham is to become, yes, become a nation great and mighty (in number),
and all the nations of the earth will find blessing through him.
blessed in him. See on XII,3.
[RA] And the LORD had thought. The verb ‘amar, “say,” is sometimes used elliptically for ‘amar belibo, “said to himself,” and that seems clearly the case here. With the two divine messengers about to be sent off on their mission of destruction, God will be left alone with Abraham, and before addressing him, He reflects for a moment on the nature of His covenantal relationship with the patriarch and what that dictates as to revealing divine intention to a human partner. Abraham is in this fashion thrust into the role of prophet, and God will so designate him in chapter 20.
19 Indeed, I have known him,
in order that he may charge his sons and his household after him:
they shall keep the way of YHVH,
to do what is right and just,
in order that YHVH may bring upon
Avraham what he spoke concerning him.
for I have known him. i.e. regarded and chosen him; Amos III,2. ‘You only have I known of all the families of the earth’; Psalm I,6, ‘The LORD regardeth the way of the righteous.’ God’s choice of Abraham is no arbitrary election.
command to the children. Or, ‘charge his children.’ An important doctrine is here taught in connection with the word’ command’, which has played a conspicuous part in Jewish life. It is the sacred duty of the Israelite to transmit the Jewish heritage to his children after him. The last injunction of the true Jewish father to his children is that they walk in ‘the way of the LORD’ and live lives of probity and goodness. These injunctions were often put in writing; and this custom has given rise to a distinct type of literary production, the Jewish Ethical Will.
[RA] to do righteousness and justice. This is the first time that the fulfillment of the covenantal promise is explicitly contingent on moral performance. The two crucial Hebrew nouns, tsedeq and mishpat, will continue to reverberate literally and in cognate forms through Abraham’s pleas to God on behalf of the doomed cities, through the Sodom story itself, and through the story of Abraham and Abimelech that follows it.
20 So YHVH said:
The outcry in Sedom and Amora-how great it is!
And their sin-how exceedingly heavily it weighs!
the cry of Sodom. The cries of those who suffered from the atrocious wickedness of the inhabitants of Sodom and who implored Heaven’s vengeance against their cruel oppressors (Ezek. XVI,49). the following legend graphically describes their hatred of all strangers and their fiendish punishment of all who departed from their ways. A girl, overcome by pity, supplied food to a poor stranger. On detection, she was stripped, bound, daubed with honey and palced on the roof under the burning sun to be devoured by the bees.
their sin. Exemplified in the narrative of the next chapter.
[RA] outcry. The Hebrew noun, or the verb from which it is derived, tsa’aq or za’aq, is often associated in the Prophets and Psalms with the shrieks of torment of the oppressed.
21 Now let me go down and see:
if they have done according to its cry that has come to me–
destruction!
I will go down now. An anthropomorphic expression, as in XI,7, to convey the idea that before God decided to punish the dwellers of the cities, ‘He descended,’ as it were, to obtain ocular proof of, or extenuating circumstances for, their crimes.
[EF] destruction: Some read “altogether (according to its cry)”
[RA] Let Me go down. The locution indicating God’s descent from on high echoes the one in the story of the Tower of Babel.
dealt destruction. Some construe the Hebrew noun as an adverb and render this as “done altogether.” But the verb “to do” (‘asah) with the noun kalah as direct object occurs a number of times in the Prophets in the clear sense of “deal destruction.”
22 The men turned from there and went toward Sedom,
but Avraham still stood in the presence of YHVH.
from thence. From the place to which Abraham had accompanied them.
[EF] but Avraham still stood in the presence of YHWH: Some manuscripts read “But YHWH still stood in the presence of Avraham.” The subject of the sentence has been reversed by scribes who were uncomfortable with the passage’s human portrayal of God.
[RA] while the LORD was still standing before Abraham. The Masoretic Text has Abraham standing before the LORD, but this reading is avowedly a scribal euphemism, what the Talmud calls a tiqun sofrim, introduced because the original formulation smacked of lese-majeste.
23 Avraham came close and said:
Will you really sweep away the innocent along with the guilty?
The remainder of the chapter forms one of the sublimest passages in the Bible or out of the Bible. Abraham’s plea for Sodom is a signal illustration of his nobility of character. Amid the hatreds and feuds of primitive tribes who glorified brute force and despised pity, Abraham proves true to his new name and embraces in his sympathy for all the children of men. Even the wicked inhabitants of Sodom were his brothers, and his heart overflows with sorrow over their doom. The unique dialogue between God and Abraham teaches two vital lessons: first, the supreme value of righteousness: and, secondly, God’s readiness to pardon (Ezek. XXXIII,11), if only He can do so consistently with justice.
drew near. By the act of prayer (Abarbanel).
righteous. . . wicked. i.e. ‘innocent . . . guilty.’ Abraham rests his case in the conviction but only in accordance with perfect justice. In an indiscriminate destruction, however, all the inhabitants, whether good or wicked, would share the same fate. Abraham pleads that as it would not be just to destroy the righteous, therefore, in order to save the righteous, the judgment which had been pronounced over the cities should be stayed (Ryle). This intercession on behalf of Sodom and Gomorrah—Abraham arguing with God, yea, bargaining with Him, to save their depraved inhabitants from merited destruction—is the highest spiritual pinnacle reached by the Patriarch. Its grandeur exceeds even the willingness to sacrifice his son at the Divine bidding. Within his breast there was a conflict between his sense of justice that the wicked must pay the penalty of their misdeeds, and his anguish at the thought that human beings were about to perish.
[RA] And Abraham stepped forward. The verb, often used for someone about to deliver a legal plea, introduces an Abraham who is surprisingly audacious in the cause of justice, a stance that could scarcely have been predicted from the obedient and pious Abraham of the preceding episodes.
the innocent. The term tsadiq has a legal usage—the party judged not guilty in the court of law, though it also has the moral meaning of “righteous.” Similarly, the term here for guilty, rasha’, also means wicked.” Tsadiq is derived from the same root as tsedaqah, “righteousness,” the very term God has just used in His interior monologue reflecting on what it is the people of Abraham must do.
24 Perhaps there are fifty innocent within the city,
will you really sweep it away?
Will you not bear with the place because of the fifty innocent that are in its midst?
25 Heaven forbid for you to do a thing like this,
to deal death to the innocent along with the guilty,
that it should come about: like the innocent, like the guilty,
Heaven forbid for you!
The judge of
all the earth-will he not do what is just?
far from Thee. i.e. it would be unworthy of Thee (Mendelssohn).
shall not the Judge of all the earth do justly? These words have been well described as an epochal sentence in the Bible (Zangwill). They make Justice the main pillar of God’s Throne: without it, the whole idea of the Divine totters. Justice, it is true, is not the only ethical quality in God or man, nor is it the highest quality: but it is the basis for all the others. ‘That which is above justice must be based on justice, and include justice, and be reached through justice’ (Henry George). Only Israel, the justice-intoxicated people, in time became ‘merciful children of merciful ancestors.’ The boldness of the Patriarch’s ringing challenge, the universality of the phrase ‘all the earth’, an the absolute conviction that the infinite might of God must be controlled by the decrees of Justice—that, in fact, an unjust God would be a contradiction in terms—are truly extraordinary. Despite the lapse of thousands of years, mankind has not yet fully grasped this lofty conception of God and its ethical consequences in human society. ‘When Abraham could not find fifty righteous men in Sodom, and pleaded on behalf of forty, thirty, twenty, ten, that the great city might be spared, do you think God did not know all the time that there were not even ten righteous men in Sodom? But God wanted our father Abraham to show whether he was a man or no; and didn’t he show himself a man!’
[EF] Heaven forbid: Lit. “May you have a curse,” an ironic turn of phrase in this situation. like the innocent, like the guilty: Or “innocent and guilty alike.”
[RA] the Judge of all the earth. The term or “judge,” shofet, is derived from the same root as mishpat, “justice,” which equally occurs in God’s interior monologue about the ethical legacy of the seed of Abraham.
26 YHVH said:
If I find in Sedom fifty innocent within the city,
I will bear with the whole place for their sake.
27 Avraham spoke up, and said:
Now pray, I have ventured to speak to my Lord,
and I am but earth and ashes:
[EF] earth and ashes: Heb. afar va-efer, traditionally “dust and ashes.” The phrase, while common in English, is used in the Bible again only in Job 30:19, 42:6).
28 Perhaps of the fifty innocent, five will be lacking—
will you bring ruin upon the whole city because of the five?
He said:
I will not bring ruin, if I find there forty-five.
[RA] Here, pray, I have presumed to speak to my Lord when I am but dust and ashes. Like the previous verbal exchange with the three divine visitors, this whole scene is a remarkable instance of the use of contrastive dialogue in biblical narrative. In the preceding scene, Abraham is voluble in his protestations of hospitable intention, whereas the three visitors only answer impassively and tersely, “Do as you have spoken.” Here, Abraham, aware that he is walking a dangerous tightrope in reminding the Judge of all the earth of the necessity to exercise justice, deploys a whole panoply of the abundant rhetorical devices of ancient Hebrew for expressing self-abasement before a powerful figure. At each turn of the dialogue, God responds only by stating flatly that He will not destroy for the sake of the number of innocent just stipulated. The dialogue is cast very much as a bargaining exchange—it is not the last time we shall see Abraham bargaining. After Abraham’s second bid of forty-five, each time he ratchets down the number he holds back the new, smaller number, in good bargaining fashion, to the very end of this statement.
29 But he continued to speak to him and said:
Perhaps there will be found there only forty!
He said:
I will not do it, for the sake of the forty.
30 But he said: Pray let not my Lord be upset that I speak further:
Perhaps there will be found there only thirty!
He said:
I will not do it, if I find there thirty.
31 But he said:
Now pray, I have ventured to speak to my Lord:
Perhaps there will be found there only twenty!
He said:
I will not bring ruin, for the sake of the twenty.
32 But he said:
Pray let my Lord not be upset that I speak further just this one time:
Perhaps there will be found there only ten!
He said:
I will not bring ruin, for the sake of the ten.
[RA] just this time . . . ten. Abraham realizes he dare not go any lower than ten, the minimal administrative unit for communal organization in later Israelite life. In the event, Lot’s family, less than the requisite ten, will be the only innocent souls in Sodom.
33 YHVH went, as soon as he had finished speaking to Avraham, and Avraham returned to his place.
returned unto his place. From where he prayed, unto his own abode, Mamre: see v.1.
[EF] YHWH went: See note on 17:22.
[RA] and Abraham returned to his place. The report of a character’s returning to his place or home is a formal convention for marking the end of an episode in biblical narrative. But this minimal indication has a thematic implication here—the contrast between Abraham’s “place” in the nomadic, uncorrupted existence in the land of promise and Lot’s location in one of the doomed cities of the plain.