When we turn to the prayer of Abraham, we are taken back almost four thousand years from our own day. Abraham likely lived early in the second millennium bc,1 at the earliest stage of the history of God's people--almost one thousand years before the construction of the Jerusalem temple, before the development of any of Israel's religious institutions, and even before God's delivery of the Law at Mount Sinai. Abraham even preceded the disclosing of the divine name, which would not be revealed to Moses until more than four hundred years later.

The period of Abraham's life described in Genesis 18-19 ends with the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, an event that is important for the writer of Genesis. All of Scripture affirms the significance of this story, "for the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah becomes a byword in the prophets and the New Testament and still lingers in popular religious consciousness."

These cities were destroyed by fire and brimstone, a fact "viewed by some as characteristic of the vicious and brutal God of the [Old Testament]."4 Some critics have alleged that the story is proof of God's injustice and indifference to human suffering,5 arguing that God was willing to kill innocent people when destroying the cities. They see the story as a primitive myth about a primitive understanding of God. But when we examine the story and the prayer, we find the exact opposite. We find within Abraham's prayer and God's response a powerful revelation of the nature of God that becomes a first in the history of religious thought.

Our story begins toward the end of the occasion when "the Lord appeared to Abraham near the great trees of Mamre while he was sitting at the entrance to his tent in the heat of the day" (Gen 18:1). God had appeared to Abraham in the form of three travelers for whom he provided shade and a meal (18:1-8). During the meal, the travelers inquired after Abraham's wife, Sarah, and promised that within a year she would bear a son (v. 10). This was, of course, to be the beginning of the fulfillment of the promises God made to Abraham in Genesis 12:2-3: "I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse: and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you."

The story starts as the three travelers finish their meal and prepare to depart. Genesis 18:16-22 reads:

Then the Lord said, "The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great and their sin so grievous that I will go down and see if what they have done is as bad as the outcry that has reached me. If not, I will know."

The men turned away and went toward Sodom, but Abraham remained standing before the Lord.

As the three men got up to leave, Abraham went with them to send them off. And all of a sudden, in v. 16, the reader's attention is directed to a seemingly insignificant gesture on the part of the three men as they got up to leave: "They looked down toward Sodom." As the men's heads turned to look down over the doomed city, so also the reader's attention is directed toward that city in anticipation of its coming destruction in the next chapter.

In vv. 17-19 it appears that the Lord is speaking to Himself, considering whether to take Abraham into His confidence and relate His plans to him.6 Abraham will certainly become a great and mighty nation. But God decides to relate His intentions to Abraham primarily because God has "chosen him" or, as it simply says in the Hebrew, God has "known him" (v. 19). And so the Lord informs His servant that He intends to determine whether Sodom should be destroyed due to its surpassing wickedness. Then the travelers start down from the hills near Hebron toward the city of Sodom.

What happens next is fascinating. The traditional text states that as the travelers departed, beginning their descent toward Sodom, "Abraham remained standing before the Lord" (v. 22b). But, as Bill Arnold suggests, "there [may be] good reason to think that 18:22b contains a rare intentional change in the text."7 Arnold explains, "there is evidence that early Jewish scribes made an intentional change, and that the text originally read, 'The Lord remained standing before Abraham.' It seemed inappropriate to have the Sovereign Lord stand patiently waiting before his servant."8 It may be that while the travelers headed down the hill to asses the situation in Sodom and to determine whether or not it warranted destructive judgment, "the Lord remained standing before Abraham" to see how he would respond to this news. If this is the correct reading, then the text is clearly suggesting that the Lord was instigating the prayer.9 Arnold concludes,

Either way, the phrase paints a striking picture. Whether Yahweh waits for Abraham to speak, or whether he waits while Abraham speaks, the passage portrays God patiently, even longingly, waiting for his servant to come to the rescue of potential victims of the crisis. The account teaches as much about God's view of intercessory prayer as it does about the nature of prayer itself.

Abraham does indeed respond, and his extensive intercessory prayer and God's responses are found in Genesis 18:23-33:

The Lord said, "If I find fifty righteous people in the city of Sodom, I will spare the whole place for their sake."

Then Abraham spoke up again: "Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, though I am nothing but dust and ashes, what if the number of the righteous is less than fifty? Will you destroy the whole city because of forty-five people?"

This passage is not trying to show that God must be pushed and coerced before he will respond to his people. Rather, Abraham is trying to learn about this God whom he has only recently come to know.

As suggested above, these events had taken place long before any of the religious machinery was established for Israel. It's almost a thousand years before the temple will be built and at least four centuries before either the divine name or the Law will be revealed. Abraham knows nothing of the religion that will be revealed for Israel. In fact, Abraham himself was not even an Israelite! Before Abraham was called by God to travel from Haran to Canaan, he had lived with his family in Ur, which was located in southern Mesopotamia, in Babylon.11 Remember the tower of Babel incident? This is where that would have taken place. Abraham was seventy-five years old when God called him to leave Mesopotamia. We would assume that he had spent his whole life up to this point worshiping the gods associated with these areas (Josh 24:2).

The point is that Abraham was steeped in the religion of Mesopotamia before God called him to leave the gods of Babylon behind and travel to a land God would show him. Even when Abraham responded to the call of God, we can assume he knew virtually nothing of the nature and character of God.

This is an amazing passage of Scripture because Abraham is arguing that God must abide by a standard, that God's very nature is just, and that God is the Judge of all the earth who must therefore do what is right. Never before in the ancient Middle East had anyone argued that the behavior of the gods, or a god, had to be held in check by standards of right and wrong. In fact, the opposite was true.

In the mythology of Mesopotamia, the gods were created in the image of people. It was thought that the gods created human beings because they were lazy and wanted slaves to do their work for them. They were capricious and unpredictable, flying into rages and going to war. The gods were not bound by any moral constraints, and they chased after women and engaged in all kinds of licentious behavior. The gods depended on people to feed them. The behavior of the gods was not influenced by what men and women did, and if the gods were to respond to humankind, humans would first have to beg, prod, and cajole the gods.

But you see here that God has revealed enough about Himself to Abraham that somehow Abraham knows this God is different. For this reason, Abraham seeks to test the limits of God's mercy. Bill Arnold concludes, The point of Abraham's hesitant bargaining is not that God needs us to cajole and bicker with him. Rather, this is a bold exploration of God's mind and heart. This was new territory for Abraham. He knew of God's intentions to destroy the city [of Sodom], but he was not sure of the limits to God's mercy. For Lot's sake, he was willing to find out.

In the end, there were not even ten righteous people to be found in the city, and God did destroy it because of its wickedness. But when God did, He remembered Abraham's prayer and therefore saved Lot (19:29).

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