[Avodah] Vayeira Destroy What Needs To Be Destroyed

[Richard Wolberg]

Adapted from an article by Rabbi Noson Weisz.

 

In the conversation between God and Abraham where God informs Abraham that
he is about to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham challenged God's justice
and demanded Divine mercy with a ferocity that leaves the reader astonished
at his sheer audacity. Abraham then proceeds to demand mercy in terms that
are almost as insistent, declaring, "Behold now, I desired to speak to my
Lord although I am but dust and ashes. What if the fifty righteous people
should lack five? Would You destroy the entire city because of the five?"
[Gen. 18: 27-28] 

How does such a ringing challenge emerge from the mouth of a person who
regards himself as no more than a pile of dust and ashes? 

To appreciate the utter impossibility of this conversation, remember that we
are not Abraham. For us, God exists only in the abstract: He is a being we
have never personally met and in whose existence we only vaguely believe.
But to Abraham, God was a Being he knew and spoke to. Imagine that the
Almighty Himself came to inform you about His decision to destroy Sodom and
Gomorra on account of the great evil that He discovered there. Would you
presume to challenge His judgment, and with such force?

The point here is that God came to inform him about His decision to destroy
Sodom. If the proposed destruction was none of his business, God didn't have
to tell him about it in advance. So the fact that God told Abraham, then
that was Abraham's cue to respond.

 

Whereas your or I might have said to God: "Great! Destroy those evil people.
Who needs them? All they are is trouble." Abraham was on a much higher
level, so he asked for God's mercy, indicating a tremendous sensitivity to
all of God's creatures. In His great wisdom, however, the Almighty did what
needed to be done.

 

rw

 

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