The visitors set out toward Sodom, and before Abraham has said a word, the LORD stops to think aloud, asking whether he should hide from Abraham what he is about to do. He speaks because of a covenant already sealed and a calling already given. Abraham is the man chosen to teach his household the way of the LORD, righteousness and justice, and God chooses to tell him what he intends. The disclosure is deliberate. God says his plan for Sodom to the one man alive who might answer back.
The plan begins as an investigation. 20"their sin is very grave," yet the verdict is still open. 21"I will go down to see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry that has come to me." This judge refuses to rule on rumor. The visitors walk on toward the city, and the chapter narrows to a single figure: 22"Abraham still stood before the LORD." Everyone else has moved on. Abraham stays.
What he says breaks every rule of politeness toward a guest who has just announced the end of a city. 23"Will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked?" Then he names a number, fifty, and reaches the sentence the scene has been building toward. 25"Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?" In Hebrew the word for "Judge" and the word for "what is just" come from the same root, so Abraham is asking the Judge to be what his own title already says he is.
God agrees at once to spare the place for fifty, and Abraham keeps going. Forty-five, forty, thirty, twenty, ten. His speech changes as the numbers fall. He begins bold and ends bracing for the LORD's patience to run out before his own does. 27"I who am but dust and ashes." 32"Oh let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak again but this once." Six times the LORD gives the same answer, and at ten the conversation simply stops. 33"the LORD went his way, when he had finished speaking to Abraham, and Abraham returned to his place." No one asks about nine.
The next chapter shows Sodom could not muster even ten, and only Lot made it out. Abraham had bargained down to a floor the city still fell short of. His intercession had power, enough to move the Judge to spare a guilty place for a few righteous people inside it, but he prayed from outside the walls. Standing in the place of the guilty would take someone else.
The Judge of all the earth did come down in time to see for himself. He walked among us as those two men walked toward Sodom, and what he found confirmed the outcry against the whole human race. This time God sent one righteous man to be swept away with the wicked, on purpose, in their place. Abraham begged that the righteous be kept apart from the fate of the wicked. At the cross the righteous one took that fate as his own. Christ supplied the righteousness none of us had.
Prayer
Father, we stand in the road where Abraham stood, wanting you to be just and needing you to be merciful, thankful that in Christ both prayers receive the same answer. Thank you for sending the righteous one our own numbers could never reach. Teach us to stand as Abraham did, near enough to speak, humble enough to say we are dust, bold enough to ask again. In Jesus' name, amen.