Jehovah communicated to Abraham His purpose of destroying Sodom and Gomorrah. This disclosure to Abraham of His secret counsel is a singular mark of Jehovah's regard for him, based upon the unique position which Abraham holds, partly as the depository of a blessing for all nations, partly as having been chosen by God to found a house whose members should all study to follow after righteousness, so that it might well be of importance for the difference between God's treatment of righteousness and unrighteousness to be clearly apprehended. The disclosure, moreover, affords occasion for a signal illustration both of the noble and generous impulses by which Abraham is actuated, and of the value in God's eyes of righteousness and of His readiness to pardon, if only He can do so consistently with justice.
1. Two distinct reasons are given why Jehovah communicated to Abraham His purpose concerning the Cities of the Plain.
(1) The first reason is: “Shall I hide from Abraham that thing which I do; seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him?” In other words, Abraham was to be the means of blessing all other nations, and account must therefore be given to him when any people is summarily removed beyond the possibility of receiving this blessing. If he was to be a blessing to any nation it must surely be to those who were within an afternoon's walk of his encampment and among whom his nephew had taken up his abode. Suppose he had not been told, but had risen next morning and seen the dense cloud of smoke overhanging the doomed cities, might he not with some justice have complained that although God had spoken to him the previous day, not one word of this great catastrophe had been breathed to him.
(2) The second reason is expressed in the nineteenth verse. God had chosen Abraham that he might command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord, to do justice and judgment that the Lord might fulfil His promise to Abraham. That is to say, as it was only by obedience and righteousness that Abraham and his seed were to continue in God's favour, it was fair that they should be encouraged to do so by seeing the fruits of unrighteousness; so that as the Dead Sea lay throughout their whole history on their borders, reminding them of the wages of sin, they might never fail rightly to interpret its meaning, and in every great catastrophe to read the lesson “except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.” They could never attribute to chance this predicted judgment. And in point of fact frequent and solemn reference was made to this standing monument of the fruit of sin.
2. The patriarch's keen sense of justice recoils at the thought of the innocent perishing with the guilty, and this by the decree of an all-righteous Judge. The vision of Lot, who, though thoughtless, was not steeped in guilt, rises before him; others, not less righteous, might be there likewise; he is moved to compassion, and takes upon himself to intercede. With the greatest diffidence and humility he prefers his petition: emboldened by success, he repeats it, until at length he receives the gracious assurance that the presence of ten righteous men in Sodom shall save the city. And so the truth is established that the God of justice is also a God of mercy. The passage is a striking witness to the deeply planted human instinct which requires justice in God-an instinct which frequently finds expression in the Old Testament, notably so in Job's passionate protests against His apparent injustice.
The keynote of Abraham's wonderful prayer for the five towns is not mercy, but justice. It is, in truth, hardly an intercession, so much as an expostulation. The speaker seems quite to realize that the time was over for forbearance and the pity that spares; the time for inquisition, and the judicial reckoning which follows it, had come. No doubt, in that mixture of noble motives out of which alone he could draw such courage to plead, one powerful element must have been a humane compassion for the fate of his neighbours and countrymen, as well as a kinsman's special love for the endangered family of Lot. But his words betray a deeper feeling. Beneath these considerations there lay a godly concern that the Divine name, dishonoured by the idolatrous tribes around, should display itself as undeniably just even in retribution. At any rate, the basis of his pleading was simply this, that possibly the moral foulness of these towns, though widespread enough, might not prove to be quite universal; and that, if only a small minority of the population had kept itself clean, it was inconsistent with the impartiality of God to confound good with bad in one indiscriminate act of punishment. Even this argument he ventures to urge only with such expressions of profound reverence and diffidence as become a mortal who dares to reason with his Maker.
How loth was righteous Abraham to cease,
To beat the price of lustfull Sodom's peace!
Marke how his holy boldnesse intercepts
God's Justice; Brings His Mercy downe, by steps:
He dare not bid so few as Ten, at first;
Not yet from Fifty righteous persons, durst
His Zeale on sudden make too great a fall,
Although he wisht salvation to them all.
Great God: Thy dying Son has pow'r to cleare
A world of Sinnes, that one shall not appeare
Before Thine angry eyes. What wonder then,
To see Thee fall, from Fifty downe to Ten!1 [Note: Francis Quarles, Divine Fancies, i. 69.]
3. What are the elements in this remarkable intercession?
(1) It was lonely prayer.-He waited till on all that wide plateau, and beneath those arching skies, there was no living man to overhear this marvellous outpouring of a soul overcharged, as are the pools, when, after the rains of spring, they overflow their banks. When it is said that “he stood before the Lord,” it is evidently meant that he was alone in the presence of Jehovah.
It is fatal to all the intensest, strongest devotion to pray always in the presence of another, even the dearest. Every saint must have a closet, of which he can shut the door, and in which he can pray to the Father which is in secret. The oratory may be the mountains, or the woods, or the sounding shore; but it must be somewhere. Pitiable is the man who cannot-miserable the man who dare not-meet God face to face, and talk with Him of His ways, and plead for his fellows.
For what are men better than sheep or goats
That nourish a blind life within the brain,
If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer,
Both for themselves and those who call them friend?
Dr. Kidd's grandson, Mr. Henry Oswald, afterwards one of the magistrates of Aberdeen, who, when a boy, was for some time resident in the minister's house, has left amongst his papers a most vivid account of the impression made upon his mind by Dr. Kidd's heroic devotion to duty in the early morn: “In the darkness of a cold winter morning I have once and again heard him rising while the rest of the household was hushed in slumber. I listened while he patiently lit his fire, not with the ready help of lucifer matches, but with flint and steel eliciting a spark (how little we moderns prize our luxuries!); then he began to breathe out his soul in the most earnest tones at the throne of grace; the utterances of his devout heart were not audible to me, who was in an adjoining room, but, youngster as I was, I felt awed as I heard the sound of prayer that often became wrestling, and I knew that the man I revered was doing business with God.”1 [Note: J. Stark, Dr. Kidd of Aberdeen, 128.]
(2) The prayer was persevering. Six times Abraham returned to the charge, and as each petition was granted, his faith and courage grew; and, finding he had struck a right vein, he worked it again, and yet again. It looks at first sight as if he forced God back from point to point, and wrung his petitions from an unwilling hand. But this is a mistake. In point of fact, God was drawing him on; and if he had dared to ask at first what he asked at the last, he would have got more than all that he asked or thought at the very commencement of his intercession. This was the time of his education. He did not learn the vast extent of God's righteousness and mercy all at once; he climbed the dizzy heights step by step; and as he gained each step he was inspired to dare another.
It is so that God educates us still. In ever-widening circles, He tempts his new-fledged eaglets to try the sustaining elasticity of the air. He forces us to ask one thing, and then another, and yet another. And when we have asked our utmost, there are always unexplored remainders behind; and He does exceeding abundantly above all. There were not ten righteous men in Sodom; but Lot and his wife, and his two daughters, were saved, though three of them were deeply infected with the moral contagion of the place. And God's righteousness was clearly established and vindicated in the eyes of the surrounding peoples.
My mother, when she had a large family of children gathered around her, made a covenant with three neighbours, three mothers. They would meet once a week to pray for the salvation of their children until all their children were converted-this incident was not known until after my mother's death, the covenant then being revealed by one of the survivors. We used to say: “Mother, where are you going?” and she would say, “I am just going out for a little while; going over to the neighbours.” They kept on in that covenant until all their families were brought into the Kingdom of God, myself the last, and I trace that line of results back to an evening many years before, when my grandmother commended our family to Christ, the tide of influence going on until this hour, and it will never cease.1 [Note: The Autobiography of Dr. Talmage, 5.]
(3) It was humble prayer. Throughout the interview, the humility of Abraham is quite as remarkable as his courage. He is but “dust and ashes.” Once and again, as he presses his plea a step farther after each concession gained, does he deprecate the Divine displeasure against such perseverance. With all this humility, however, there is no hesitation whatever about the terms in which the argument itself is stated. It may be presumptuous in a man to remonstrate with his Judge at all; but there can be no presumption in counting upon the rectitude of the Judge. Without misgiving, therefore, does this simple-hearted man address God in these terms: “That be far from thee to do after this manner, to slay the righteous with the wicked: and that the righteous should be as the wicked, that be far from thee: Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?”
The nearer we get to God, the more conscious are we of our own unworthiness; just as the higher a bird flies in mid-heaven, the deeper will be the reflection of its snowy pinions in the placid mere beneath. Let the glowworm vie with the meridian sun; let the dewdrop boast itself against the fulness of the ocean bed; let the babe vaunt its knowledge with the intelligence of a seraph-before the man who lives in touch with God shall think of taking any other position than that of lowliest humiliation and prostration in His presence. Before Him angels veil their faces, and the heavens are not clean in His sight. And is it not remarkable that our sense of weakness is one of our strongest claims and arguments with God? “He forgetteth not the cry of the humble.” “To that man will I look who trembleth.”
Some time ago I was watching the flicker, almost invisible, of a tiny night-light, when one of the Sisters drew near, and, lighting her candle in the dying flame, passed it round to light all those of the Community. “Who dare glory in his own good works?” I reflected. “From one faint spark such as this, it would be possible to set the whole earth on fire.” We often think we receive graces and are divinely illumined by means of brilliant candles. But from whence comes their light? From the prayers, perhaps, of some humble, hidden soul, whose inward shining is not apparent to human eyes; a soul of unrecognized virtue and, in her own sight, of little value-a dying flame.1 [Note: Sœur Thérèse of Lisieux (1913), 232.]
