Fear No Fear

(All scripture from the World English Bible, ebible.org, all rights reserved)

“Abraham answered, “See now, I have taken it on myself to speak to the Lord, although I am dust and ashes. What if there will lack five of the fifty righteous? Will you destroy all the city for lack of five?” He said, “I will not destroy it if I find forty-five there.””
(Genesis 18:27-28)

Abraham starts to have second thoughts here. Clearly he is thinking about Lot and other people like Lot. Maybe there isn’t enough? Maybe there are less than fifty? The reputation of Sodom, Gomorrah, and the whole valley must have been front and centre in his mind. But his desire of mercy is so great, he pushes himself to ask again. He asks for less this time, but he still asks.

God allows this ‘bargaining’ not because He bargains, but because His desire to save people is so great. God will take any reason – as long as it is right and good – to NOT destroy people. He is just. He WILL follow righteousness. But He will also be as merciful as possible. He is God and He is love.

This type of interceding was right and good in the Old Covenant. God WANTED an intercessor so that He could spare that valley. Under the New Covenant, Jesus is our mediator and intercessor (1 Timothy 2:5). New Covenant intercession is not negotiations with God, but aligning with Jesus and what Jesus is saying about a given situation or individual.

The sage Da’at Zekenim writes: ‘ואנכי עפר ואפר, “although I am only dust and ashes;” Avraham hints that he by rights should have become earth, i.e. killed, in the war against the four kings, or he should have become ashes already when he submitted to the fires in Nimrod’s furnace. If he had been saved, it was only because G–d had displayed His mercy for him.’

The sage Radak writes: ‘ויען..הואלתי, “I wanted to speak some more to G’d, אנכי עפר ואפר, even though compared to You I am only dust and ashes. I did not mean to protest Your justice, but I merely wish to understand it.’

The sage Rav Hirsch writes; ‘In any case this insight into His rule which God granted Abraham to obtain has vividly brought to the consciousness of his children the mission, meaning, and importance of such a minority. His children, whose fate it has been to wander for thousands of years in midst of the nations as a minority, and even in their own midst the righteous have been, and are, only too often to be found in a minority. Had there been in the purlieus of Sodom and Gemorrah, ten righteous men to be found, God would not have despaired of a better future for all, and would have let them all live for this better future. But where God shows us no reason for despair, we too must courageously preserve and play our part, and unremittingly and confident of ultimate success stand up for what is right even if it means being in opposition to the whole of our erring contemporaries, and even if this ultimate victory will only dawn long after we are in our grave.’