Sodom’s Collective Punishment—Shall the Judge of All the Earth Not Do Justice?

The Problem of Collective Responsibility

For the philosopher H. D. Lewis, writing in 1948—after WWII and the defeat of the Nazis, who had regularly imposed collective punishment on civilian populations—the verdict regarding whether groups can form intentions, act, and bear guilt as groups was unambiguous: the individual alone bears moral responsibility, and collective responsibility is “barbarous.”^[1] Four decades later, Irwin Lipnowski could still assert that the principle of collective punishment meets with universal rejection and condemnation in every liberal-democratic state, adducing Nazi reprisals as his evidence.^[2]

Lipnowski’s critic Jean-Paul Brodeur observed, however, that this claim rests mostly on an extreme case, whereas milder forms of collective punishment are woven into the ordinary lives of those very societies. In team sports, for example, no one perceives injustice when a single player commits an infraction and the sanction falls on the entire team—or in international competition, at least symbolically, on an entire nation. Likewise, in the legal systems of liberal democracies, the children of parents sentenced to prison may suffer severely for an offense for which the children bear no responsibility.^[3]

The question, then, is not whether collective responsibility exists as a moral category. Groups can indeed bear responsibility for what they do and for what is done in their name. This does not necessarily license collective punishment, however, for responsibility can be discharged in more than one way.

Thus, the operative question is under what conditions collective responsibility’s severest application, collective punishment, can be just. Abraham’s dispute with God over the fate of Sodom (Genesis 18–19) confronts the problem at length. Both the biblical narrative and its reception in midrash treat collective punishment as a genuine moral question, one on which, remarkably, God himself can be questioned and even corrected.

Righteousness and Justice: Independent Standard or Divine Fiat?

The dispute is prefaced by a divine soliloquy, spoken as the visitors who have announced Isaac’s birth to Abraham set out toward Sodom. God first deliberates about whether to tell Abraham his plans for the city:

^{בראשית יח:יז} וַי־הוָה אָמָר הַמְכַסֶּה אֲנִי מֵאַבְרָהָם אֲשֶׁר אֲנִי עֹשֶׂה. ^יח:יח וְאַבְרָהָם הָיוֹ יִהְיֶה לְגוֹי גָּדוֹל וְעָצוּם וְנִבְרְכוּ בוֹ כֹּל גּוֹיֵי הָאָרֶץ.

^{Gen 18:17} Now YHWH had said: “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do, ^18:18since Abraham is to become a great and populous nation and all the nations of the earth are to bless themselves by him?^[4]

The reason God gives is pedagogical:

^{בראשית יח:יט} כִּי יְדַעְתִּיו לְמַעַן אֲשֶׁר יְצַוֶּה אֶת בָּנָיו וְאֶת בֵּיתוֹ אַחֲרָיו וְשָׁמְרוּ דֶּרֶךְ י־הוָה לַעֲשׂוֹת צְדָקָה וּמִשְׁפָּט, לְמַעַן הָבִיא י־הוָה עַל אַבְרָהָם אֵת אֲשֶׁר דִּבֶּר עָלָיו.

^{Gen 18:19}For I have singled him out, that he may instruct his children and his posterity to keep the way of YHWH by doing righteousness and justice, in order that YHWH may bring about for Abraham what He promised him.”

Are צְדָקָה וּמִשְׁפָּט (tzedakah u-mishpat), “righteousness and justice,” right because, and only because, God commanded them (a concept known as divine command morality), or did God command them because they are right?^[5] The question is an old one in the philosophy of religion. Socrates poses it in Plato’s Euthyphro: is the holy loved by the gods because it is holy, or holy because the gods love it?^[6]

Abraham’s protest against God’s plan is intelligible only if justice binds God himself; only then can a divine plan that appears unjust be challenged, and only then is the challenge not rebellion but the very assignment for which Abraham was chosen.^[7]

Israeli philosophers Avi Sagi (1953–2026; Bar-Ilan University) and Daniel Statman (University of Haifa) have shown that this presupposition is no anomaly: divine command morality is nearly absent from Jewish tradition, whose sources overwhelmingly treat morality as independently valid, conceding at most that human beings need revelation in order to know it fully.^[8] Read in this light, the Sodom narrative stands at the head of that tradition.

A Judicial Inquiry

God introduces the issue of Sodom as a magistrate who has received a complaint and intends to inspect the evidence before ruling:

^{בראשית יח:כ} וַיֹּאמֶר י־הוָה זַעֲקַת סְדֹם וַעֲמֹרָה כִּי רָבָּה וְחַטָּאתָם כִּי כָבְדָה מְאֹד. ^יח:כאאֵרְדָה נָּא וְאֶרְאֶה הַכְּצַעֲקָתָהּ הַבָּאָה אֵלַי עָשׂוּ כָּלָה וְאִם לֹא אֵדָעָה.

^{Gen 18:20}Then YHWH said: “The outcry of Sodom and Gomorrah is so great, and their sin is very grave. ^18:21I will go down to see whether they have acted according to the outcry that has reached Me. If so, destruction! And if not, let Me know.”^[9]

The subtext here is that this is a judicial proceeding, and judicial proceedings can miscarry.

The content of the outcry is never specified. The continuation in the narrative points to the moral rather than the ritual sphere: the men of the city not only refuse hospitality to the visitors but propose to rape them collectively (19:1–5). Rabbinic tradition concentrates on two offenses:^[10]

1. The systematic plunder of strangers and the destitute, which the sages found especially egregious in a region the Torah describes as exceptionally fertile (b. Sanhedrin 109a–b; cf. Ezek 16:49–50);
2. A corrupt judiciary whose judges legitimated theft and murder through legal artifice (Genesis Rabbah 49–50).

The second charge merits particular attention. Sodom’s crime, as the tradition understands it, is the perversion of justice, and Abraham is about to argue that the proposed sentence would itself constitute a perversion of justice.

Abraham’s Two Arguments: Collective Punishment vs. Mercy

Abraham makes two distinct claims, and they do not point in the same direction. He first asserts a principle of individual desert: it is wrong to treat the innocent and the guilty identically, and therefore they cannot be judged in the same manner.

^{בראשית יח:כג}וַיִּגַּשׁ אַבְרָהָם וַיֹּאמַר הַאַף תִּסְפֶּה צַדִּיק עִם רָשָׁע.

^{Gen 18:23} Abraham came forward and said: “Will you sweep away the innocent along with the guilty?

This is a rejection of collective punishment. Abraham’s second claim, however, argues for collective mercy, as he asks God not to distinguish between the innocent and the guilty, but to spare all of them:

^{בראשית יח:כד}אוּלַי יֵשׁ חֲמִשִּׁים צַדִּיקִם בְּתוֹךְ הָעִיר, הַאַף תִּסְפֶּה וְלֹא תִשָּׂא לַמָּקוֹם לְמַעַן חֲמִשִּׁים הַצַּדִּיקִם אֲשֶׁר בְּקִרְבָּהּ.

^{Gen 18:24}What if there should be fifty innocent within the city; will You then wipe out the place and not forgive it for the sake of the innocent fifty who are in it?

He here seeks to extend the merits of a minority to a population that has not earned them.

The two arguments are delivered in two distinct rhetorical registers. In his rejection of collective punishment, Abraham is blunt, speaking to God without deference:

^{בראשית יח:כה}חָלִלָה לְּךָ מֵעֲשֹׂת כַּדָּבָר הַזֶּה לְהָמִית צַדִּיק עִם רָשָׁע וְהָיָה כַצַּדִּיק כָּרָשָׁע; חָלִלָה לָּךְ הֲשֹׁפֵט כָּל הָאָרֶץ לֹא יַעֲשֶׂה מִשְׁפָּט.

^{Gen 18:25}Far be it from You to do such a thing, to bring death upon the innocent as well as the guilty, so that innocent and guilty fare alike. Far be it from You! Shall not the Judge of all the earth deal justly?”

חָלִלָה לְּךָ, conventionally rendered “far be it from You,” is not a petition but something closer to an accusation, and Abraham pronounces it twice in a single verse.^[11]

The vocabulary binds the passage to God’s earlier soliloquy on the tzedakah u-mishpat that Abraham’s descendants are charged with practicing (v. 19). The innocent (or righteous) man is a צַדִּיק (tzaddik), from the same root as tzedakah; the “Judge,” שֹׁפֵט (shofet), and the justice, מִשְׁפָּט (mishpat), that he is asked to perform both echo the earlier reference to mishpat.^[12] Abraham does not appeal to a moral code external to the narrative. He holds God to God’s own stated program, in God’s own vocabulary, six verses after God has announced it.

God’s answer accedes Abraham’s request:

^{בראשית יח:כו}וַיֹּאמֶר י־הוָה אִם אֶמְצָא בִסְדֹם חֲמִשִּׁים צַדִּיקִם בְּתוֹךְ הָעִיר וְנָשָׂאתִי לְכָל הַמָּקוֹם בַּעֲבוּרָם.

^{Gen 18:26} And YHWH answered: “If I find within the city of Sodom fifty innocent ones, I will forgive the whole place for their sake.”

Abraham then descends, forty-five, forty, thirty, twenty, and ten. His tone changes, however, as he negotiates numbers, arguing for collective mercy; here he is not forceful, but describes himself as עָפָר וָאֵפֶר, “dust and ashes,” begging his Lord not to be angry.^[13]

^{בראשית יח:כז} וַיַּעַן אַבְרָהָם וַיֹּאמַר הִנֵּה נָא הוֹאַלְתִּי לְדַבֵּר אֶל אֲדֹנָי וְאָנֹכִי עָפָר וָאֵפֶר….

^{Gen 18:27} Abraham spoke up, saying: “Here I venture to speak to my Sovereign, I who am but dust and ashes…”

^יח:לבוַיֹּאמֶר אַל נָא יִחַר לַאדֹנָי וַאֲדַבְּרָה אַךְ הַפַּעַם אוּלַי יִמָּצְאוּן שָׁם עֲשָׂרָה וַיֹּאמֶר לֹא אַשְׁחִית בַּעֲבוּר הָעֲשָׂרָה.

^18:32And he said: “Let not my Sovereign be angry if I speak but this last time: What if ten should be found there?” He said: “I will not destroy, for the sake of the ten.”

Something in advocating for collective mercy troubles Abraham in a way that rejecting collective punishment did not.

The Limit of Ten

The text never explains why Abraham stops at ten. Biblical scholar Nahum Sarna (1923–2005) suggests that ten represents the smallest unit that can constitute a community.^[14] The observation is plausible, but it does not dissolve the moral difficulty: by halting at ten, does Abraham concede that nine innocent persons may be destroyed with the guilty?

His rhetoric indicates where his uncertainty lies: he is confident about the principle and unsure about the ratio, and with reason, for the two divine attributes he invokes, justice and mercy, can conflict. Sparing a wicked city for the sake of a righteous few leaves the wicked free to continue preying upon the innocent, so that mercy purchased at this price generates victims of its own.

The rabbis were clear-sighted about this, preserving in several versions the following dictum:

^{מדרש תנחומא, מצורע א} כָּל שֶׁנַּעֲשֶׂה רַחְמָן עַל הָאַכְזָרִי, לַסּוֹף נַעֲשֶׂה אַכְזָר עַל הָרַחְמָנִים.

^{Midrash Tanchuma, Metzora 1} Anyone who becomes merciful toward the cruel will end by becoming cruel toward the merciful.^[15]

Abraham’s humility, then, is not that of a man who doubts his knowledge of justice. It is that of a man who knows the principle, does not know the permissible ratio, and suspects that determining the ratio was never entrusted to human judgment. He perceives that attainable justice is damaged both by excessive punishment and by excessive clemency, and he cannot see where the boundary lies.

The narrative consequently yields no doctrine. Both protagonists hold positions in tension with themselves: Abraham demands that the innocent be spared while accepting that some of them may be lost, and God rescues Lot on individual merit while offering to spare the guilty en masse on the collective merit of the innocent few.

The Torah is not a philosophical treatise: it communicates through narrative rather than argument; it owes the reader no systematic consistency. It may well be that the unresolved tension is itself the teaching: there exist moral situations in which the only available choice lies between the bad and the worse.

Judgment Without Appeal

Classical rabbinic exegesis sharpens these conclusions. Genesis Rabbah (5^th century C.E.) attributes two statements to Rabbi Yehudah bar Simon, a fourth-century sage of the Land of Israel. The first analogy compares divine justice unfavorably with Roman provincial administration:

^{בראשית רבה מט:ט} אָמַר רַבִּי יְהוּדָה בְּרַבִּי סִימוֹן: כָּךְ אָמַר לוֹ אַבְרָהָם: מֶלֶךְ בָּשָׂר וָדָם, תּוֹלִין לוֹ אַנְקְלִיטוֹן מִדּוּכוּס לְאֶפַּרְכוֹס, מֵאֶפַּרְכוֹס לְאִסְטְרַטְלִיטוֹס;

^{Gen. Rab. 49:9} Rabbi Yehudah bar Simon said: This is what Abraham said to Him: “With a mortal king, one can suspend his ruling by means of an appeal from commander to prefect, from prefect to governor.

וְאַתְּ, בִּשְׁבִיל שֶׁאֵין לְךָ מִי שֶׁיִּתְלֶה לְךָ אַנְקְלִיטוֹן, לֹא תַעֲשֶׂה מִשְׁפָּט!

But You, because You have no one who can be used to suspend judgment for an appeal, do not pass judgment!”^[16]

Abraham’s closing words when he first hears of God’s plan for Sodom, הֲשֹׁפֵט כָּל הָאָרֶץ לֹא יַעֲשֶׂה מִשְׁפָּט (Gen 18:25), carry an ambiguity. Since the unpointed Hebrew text contains no punctuation, the phrase can be construed as an indignant question, “Shall the Judge of all the earth not do justice?” Rabbi Yehudah, however, seems to read the words as an imperative. Since nobody can review God’s verdicts, God should not be judging at all. Omnipotence, on this reading, does not authorize judgment but disqualifies from it, for a judge without appeal has no safeguard against his own error.

Rabbi Yehudah’s second analogy advances the same argument from the opposite side. God himself instituted a world in which power is divided, entrusting Rome to two founders precisely so that each could restrain the other.

^{בראשית רבה מט:ט} אָמַר רַבִּי יְהוּדָה בְּרַבִּי סִימוֹן: כְּשֶׁבִּקַּשְׁתָּ לָדוּן אֶת עוֹלָמְךָ, מָסַרְתָּ אוֹתוֹ בְּיַד שְׁנַיִם, רוֹמוֹס וְרוֹמִילוֹס, שֶׁאִם בִּקֵּשׁ אֶחָד מֵהֶם לַעֲשׂוֹת דָּבָר, מְעַכְּבוֹ חֲבֵרוֹ; וְאַתְּ, בִּשְׁבִיל שֶׁאֵין מְעַכֶּבְךָ, לֹא תַעֲשֶׂה מִשְׁפָּט!

^{Gen. Rab. 49:9} Rabbi Yehudah bar Simon said: [Abraham said:] “When You sought to impose judgment on Your world, You delivered it into the hand of two people: Remus and Romulus, so that if one of them sought to perform an action the other could prevent him from doing so. But You, because You have no one to prevent You from doing anything, do not pass judgment!”

Having established this principle for his creatures, God is bound by it: justice is not something God stipulates and might restipulate case by case, but a standard to which God himself is subject. Taken together, Abraham and Rabbi Yehudah maintain that God was about to act unjustly toward whoever in Sodom was innocent.

The Measure of Cruelty

Midrash Tannaim,^[17] on a verse from the Song of Moses (Deut 32:8),^[18] goes further and applies the vocabulary of cruelty to God directly. The midrash divides history into two periods. Until Abraham arose, God treated humanity “by the measure of cruelty”:

^{מדרש תנאים, דברים לב:ח} "בהנחל עליון גוים" – זה אבינו אברהם. מנין אתה אומר שעד שלא עמד אבינו אברהם היה הקדוש ברוך הוא נוהג עם כל באי העולם במדת אכזריות?

^{Midrash Tannaim, Deuteronomy 32:8} “When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance” — this is Abraham our father. How do you know that until Abraham our father arose, the Holy One, blessed be He, dealt with all who came into the world by the measure of cruelty?^[19]

Three cases prove it: the Flood, the dispersion from Babel, and the burning of Sodom.

עמד דור המבול והציפן כזקים על פני המים; עמד דור הפלגה ופיזרן מסוף העולם ועד סופו; עמדו אנשי סדום ושרפן באש ובגפרית.

The generation of the Flood arose, and He set them afloat like firebrands upon the face of the waters; the generation of the dispersion arose, and He scattered them from one end of the world to the other; the men of Sodom arose, and He burned them with fire and brimstone.

From Abraham onward, suffering has a purpose; it is credited to the one who endures it, evidently because it now warns, instructs, and calls to repentance:

כיון שעמד אבינו אברהם, זכה ליסורין, שנאמר "ויהי רעב בארץ" (בראשית יב:י). מפני מה היסורין באין? הוי אומר: לטובתן של ישראל. לכך נאמר "למספר בני ישראל".

Once Abraham our father arose, he merited suffering, as it is said, “there was a famine in the land” (Genesis 12:10). Why does suffering come? Say: for the good of Israel. That is why it says, “according to the number of the children of Israel.”

The idea stands close to what rabbinic tradition would come to call yissurin shel ahavah, “afflictions of love”: sufferings sent to the righteous not as penalty for sin but as a mark of divine favor.^[20] The claim, stated plainly, is that Abraham’s arrival changed the way God governs the world.

Two details are notable. First, the anonymous rabbinic author makes no attempt at theodicy, though the strategy of cataloging the sins of the destroyed generations until the destruction appears proportionate was widely employed elsewhere. Second, Sodom is grouped with the Flood and Babel, although it occurred within Abraham’s lifetime and destroyed two cities rather than all humanity. The classification is thematic rather than chronological: these are the episodes in which too many perished at once.

This grouping raises a question that biblical scholar Holly Joan Toensing, in a modern feminist reading of the narrative, has pressed: even granting the guilt of every adult male of Sodom, the narrative reports nothing about the conduct of the women and small children, who cannot have participated in the assault on Lot’s guests.^[21]Their deaths can only be characterized as collateral damage, a characterization that does nothing to render them easier to justify. A comparable difficulty may well have troubled the author of the midrash.

God Invites Correction

In the boldest of these traditions, God challenges humans to judge His morality. In the book of Job, Elihu rebukes Job for complaining about his suffering, insisting that the sufferer’s duty is to presume the divine sentence is just, to seek the fault in himself, and to ask God to teach him what he cannot perceive on his own:^[22]

^{איוב לד:לא} כִּי אֶל אֵל הֶאָמַר נָשָׂאתִי לֹא אֶחְבֹּל. ^לד:לב בִּלְעֲדֵי אֶחֱזֶה אַתָּה הֹרֵנִי אִם עָוֶל פָּעַלְתִּי לֹא אֹסִיף.

^{Job 34:31}Has anyone said to God, “I will bear [my punishment] and offend no more. ^34:32 What I cannot see You teach me. If I have done iniquity, I shall not do so again”?

In Genesis Rabbah, God is now the speaker, and he speaks in his own defense: he is being charged, he says, with judging improperly. His response is not an assertion of prerogative but a proposal: set me aside, examine the case yourself, and if I have erred, you teach me; if I did wrong to the earlier generations, I will not repeat it with the later ones:

^{בראשית רבה מט:ט} וְהֵן חוֹבְלִים עָלַי דְּבָרִים וְאוֹמְרִים אֵינוֹ דָּן כַּשּׁוּרָה. (איוב לד, לב): בִּלְעֲדֵי אֶחֱזֶה, בַּר מִנִּי זִיל פַּשְׁפֵּשׁ דִּינָא, וְאִם טָעִיתִי (איוב לד, לב): אַתָּה הֹרֵנִי, וְאִם אָוֶן פָּעַלְתִּי עִם הָרִאשׁוֹנִים, לֹא אֹסִיף עִם הָאַחֲרוֹנִים.

^{Gen. Rab. 49:9} [God said] Yet they pile up [ḥovelim] allegations against Me, saying: He does not judge properly. “What I do not see [biladai eḥeze]” (Job 34:32) – if something is beyond Me, go and examine My judgment. If I am mistaken, “you teach me” (Job 34:32). “If I have performed injustice” (Job 34:32) with the former generations, “I will not continue” (Job 34:32) with the latter ones.

The offer is then extended to Abraham’s successors, whom the midrash names: Moses, who asks why God’s anger should burn against his own people after the golden calf, Joshua, who protests after the defeat at Ai, and David, who asks why God stands aloof in times of trouble:

(איוב מא, ד): לוֹ אַחֲרִישׁ בַּדָּיו, לְךָ אֲנִי מַחֲרִישׁ וְלַבַּדִּים הַיּוֹצְאִים מִמְךָ, לְאַבְרָהָם שֶׁהוּא אוֹמֵר: חָלִלָה לְּךָ מֵעֲשׂת כַּדָּבָר הַזֶּה, וּלְמשֶׁה שֶׁהוּא אוֹמֵר (שמות לב, יא): לָמָּה ה' יֶחֱרֶה אַפְּךָ בְּעַמֶּךָ, וְלִיהוֹשֻׁעַ שֶׁהוּא אוֹמֵר (יהושע ז, ז): לָמָּה הֶעֱבַרְתָּ הַעֲבִיר אֶת הָעָם, וּלְדָוִד שֶׁהוּא אוֹמֵר (תהלים י, א): לָמָּה ה' תַּעֲמֹד בְּרָחוֹק תַּעֲלִים לְעִתּוֹת בַּצָּרָה

“I am silent for him with his claims [badav]” (Job 41:4) – [God said to Abraham:] ‘For you and for the branches [badim] that emerge from you, I will be silent.’ For Abraham, who said: “Far be it from You to do something like this”; for Moses, who said: “Why, Lord, will Your wrath be enflamed against your people?” (Exodus 32:11); for Joshua, who said: “Why did You take this people across…?” (Joshua 7:7); and for David, who said: “Why do You stand far off, Lord? Why do You hide Yourself in times of trouble?” (Psalms 10:1).

Finally, to leave no doubt about the intended reading, the passage concludes by affirming that Abraham found favor precisely for the manner in which he framed his words when he sought mercy for the people of Sodom:

(איוב מא, ד): וּדְבַר גְּבוּרוֹת וְחִין עֶרְכּוֹ, חֵן נִתַּן בַּעֲרִיכוּת שְׂפָתָיִם, בְּשָׁעָה שֶׁבִּקֵּשׁ רַחֲמִים עַל הַסְּדוֹמִיִּים.

“And his strident speech, and the elegance [ḥin] of his presentation” (Job 41:4) – grace [ḥen] was granted [to him] for the presentation of his lips, when he asked for mercy for the Sodomites.

The reversal of Elihu is complete. Elihu’s ideal believer asks God to teach him what he cannot see; here God asks the believer to teach Him. Human experience and reasoning are treated as reliable sources of moral judgment, sufficiently reliable that God Himself recommends the empirical method: examine the evidence and judge accordingly, rather than assuming in advance that whatever God does must be just.

The Plain Sense: Why Was Lot Saved?

These interpretations may appear to impose on the verses a conclusion they cannot bear, yet the plain sense of Genesis supports a similar reading. The destruction of Sodom closes with a verse that does not entirely fit what precedes it. As Abraham sees the smoke rising from Sodom and Gomorrah, the narrator concludes:

^{בראשית יט:כט} וַיְהִי בְּשַׁחֵת אֱלֹהִים אֶת עָרֵי הַכִּכָּר וַיִּזְכֹּר אֱלֹהִים אֶת אַבְרָהָם וַיְשַׁלַּח אֶת לוֹט מִתּוֹךְ הַהֲפֵכָה בַּהֲפֹךְ אֶת הֶעָרִים אֲשֶׁר יָשַׁב בָּהֵן לוֹט.

^{Gen 19:29} Thus it was that, when God destroyed the cities of the Plain and annihilated the cities where Lot dwelt, God remembered Abraham and removed Lot from the midst of the upheaval.

Lot is an anomaly. Throughout his negotiation with God, Abraham never mentions his nephew; he speaks of fifty innocent, then forty-five, forty, thirty, twenty, ten, but never requests that Lot be spared. When the narrator explains Lot’s rescue by stating that וַיִּזְכֹּר אֱלֹהִים אֶת אַבְרָהָם, “God remembered Abraham,” the reader must therefore ask what, precisely, God remembered.

If Abraham never asked for Lot to be spared, what God remembered can only be what Abraham did say: do not slay the innocent with the guilty, treating the innocent as the guilty. Lot, alone in the city, acted righteously toward the visitors, and Lot is extracted. The rescue applies the principle, and the narrator attributes it, quietly and precisely, to the man who articulated it.^[23]

This invites a rereading of God’s initial plan. Nothing in God’s plan (18:17–21) restricts the intended destruction to the guilty; the announced sentence falls upon Sodom in its entirety, and the soliloquy contains no reservation concerning righteous inhabitants. On this reading, Lot’s survival is not a provision God intended from the outset and left unmentioned; it is a concession, granted after Abraham’s objection. The midrash thus arrives, by an extravagant exegetical route, at a conclusion the narrative itself makes available.

Three Troubling Conclusions

Three conclusions follow, and they do not sit comfortably together.

The first concerns the hierarchy of moral knowledge. In the biblical and classical rabbinic material, the conviction that God is the supreme moral authority coexists, paradoxically, with the possibility that in a given case a human being possesses the correct moral judgment and God does not. Abraham relates to God as a capable student to a teacher: he acknowledges the teacher’s superior knowledge, yet speaks when the teacher appears to err.^[24]

The second conclusion might seem darker. These texts condemn collective punishment in specific cases, including cases in which God imposes it, but they do not abolish it. They concede, as Abraham’s own bargaining concedes, that situations exist in which innocents will die and no better alternative is available. Whether the result is termed punishment or collateral damage is largely a question of what we can bear to say about ourselves; the substantive point is the one Abraham appears to reach: perfect justice is frequently unattainable, the deciding agent can err in either direction, and a decision made in good faith may nonetheless end in catastrophe.

The third concerns why the protest is nevertheless obligatory. God’s stated reason for consulting Abraham was that Abraham would teach his descendants tzedakah u-mishpat. The first exercise of that mandate is an argument directed at the one who conferred it. In the theology of these sources, instruction in righteousness and justice begins with the willingness to demand them, even of God.