פירוש על בראשית 18:32

אולי ימצאון שם עשרה PERADVENTURE THERE SHALL TEN BE FOUND THERE — For a smaller number he did not plead because he knew already of two instances where less than ten had failed to save the wicked. He said to himself: In the generation of the Flood there were eight righteous people, viz., Noah, his sons and their wives, and they could not save their generation (Genesis Rabbah 49:13), and for nine in association with God he had already pleaded but had found no acceptance.

אל נא יחר…אך הפעם. "Do not become angry if I speak only this one more time." Here Abraham again introduces his own merit as adequate to complement the quorum of twenty people (2 towns); this is why he worries about angering G'd. In this instance he was presumptuous enough to equate the protective power of his own merit with that of his Master. This is reflected in his avoidance of the words: "to my Lord;" he merely said: "I will speak," meaning a plea relying on his own merit. He added the word אך to indicate that he would not plead again if by chance the tenth one should be missing even in the remaining town.

ויאמר...אך הפעם, Avraham makes clear that if there would not be at least ten righteous people, he would no longer have any argument to present which could be used to help these towns escape their deserved punishment. Significantly, he made no mention of Lot, as he believed that Lot deserved to share the fate of the city having voluntarily associated himself with the wicked inhabitants of that town. Besides, Avraham had no way of knowing if Lot had adopted the perverted lifestyle of the inhabitants of Sodom. He believed that Lot’s only way of saving himself from the doom decreed on the city was to voluntarily depart from that city.

לא אשחית בעבור העשרה, “I will not destroy on account of those ten.” He promised Avraham that He would not destroy the towns (or town) if He were to find ten such good people there. He did not add that Avraham should know that there were no ten such people in those cities. The reason G’d did not add these words was that the decree had not yet been finalized so as to become irrevocable. This was the meaning of G’d having said: “I will descend and take a personal look at the situation.” Avraham was left in doubt about the outcome until the following morning when he saw a column of smoke rising from that region. When he saw that, he knew that no ten righteous men had been found there.

He had already asked but could not find. [Rashi means] that when Avraham mentioned fifty, he prayed also for nine including Hashem, as it says (v. 28): “But suppose they lack five of the fifty righteous?” Thus, Avraham did not need to ask again. Surely, Hashem would not destroy a city if He would find there nine righteous; however, He did not actually find. The words “but could not find” are Rashi’s comment, saying that since in fact, Hashem did not save even one city, it must be that Hashem “could not find.” Some ask: Why did Rashi say that fifty righteous people are for five cities, forty for four cities, and so forth? What brought him to this forced explanation? Perhaps Avraham was always praying for all five cities. At first he prayed by mentioning fifty, to give a complete number of ten for each city, and then he decreased the number by as much as he could, but always with the intent of saving all [the cities] everything, as Ramban writes: “I do not know what forced Rashi to say this...” It seems the answer is: Rashi deduced his explanation based on the verses’ changing expressions, as sometimes it is written לא אעשה and sometimes לא אשחית. Accordingly, when Avraham first prays for the five cities by mentioning forty-five, which includes Hashem, it is written לא אשחית. I.e., I will not destroy them altogether, but I will make them suffer because [they have ten righteous per city] only by counting Hashem. When he then prays for four cities by mentioning forty, which does not include Hashem, it is written לא אעשה. I.e., I will not do anything at all, not even make them suffer. Similarly when mentioning thirty, it is written לא אעשה, since it is without including Hashem. Then when he prays by mentioning twenty and ten, it is written לא אשחיתregarding them both. I.e., I will make them suffer [because the majority of the five cities are without ten righteous in them]. Thus we see that first he prayed for all the cities, then for four, three, two, and then for one.

Why did he stop with ten and not continue arguing for fewer? On this matter we find four explanations: A. So that there would be among them a minyan for prayer and numerous other commandments, as it is known that a congregation is ten. B. There were five separate bastions (walled cities), and he intended there would be two (righteous people) in each. C. Experience taught him that there had been eight righteous (Noah, his three sons, and their wives) in the generation of the flood, and they had not pleaded to save that generation on their behalf. D. He reasoned that there were ten (righteous) in Sodom already - Lot and his wife, his four daughters, and their husbands…

אולי ימצאון שם עשרה, “perhaps there can be found there ten?” According to Rashi, Avraham knew already when he had asked if forty five would be sufficient, that G–d would not accept a total of less than fifty in order to save all five towns. He would not accept less than a minimum of ten innocent people per town. If Rashi were correct, why did G–d answer Avraham when he asked about 45 righteous people with the words: לא אשחית, “I will not destroy?” He repeated answering him with the same answer when twenty or thirty righteous people were the subject of Avraham’s question or plea? G–d had made it plain that in order to forgive all five cities there had to be no less that 50 righteous people, i.e. at least ten in each of them. If there were twenty or thirty, the cities containing them would be saved, but none that contained fewer. The promise not to destroy included also not imposing other hardships on those cities at the present state, When Avraham asked about the forty five, he meant that if G–d Himself would not be prepared to be the tenth in each town so that all the inhabitants at this time would be spared. He did not mean that if there were only nine righteous people in each town that they would go scot free; they would not be destroyed but be subjected to a lesser punishment. G–d promised that if there were at least ten righteous people in any one of these cities, not only would He spare that city from destruction, but He would not exact judgments from its guilty people at that time. The number ten is a round number and therefore important enough not only to protect that quorum but also those living alongside them. [Avraham could not have been completely ignorant of this, else why did he not start with a higher number? Ed.] He knew that the eight people in Noach’s ark had not been enough to save the remainder of the human species from destruction at that time, including devastating the earth they had dwelled on. Avraham knew that it would be pointless to ask G–d to desist from destroying all these towns when they could not even point to a quorum of righteous people in any of their cities. At any rate, counting a righteous person in one city, i.e. a city that had eleven righteous people as if the eleven would be added to nine righteous people in another town was also not acceptable. Some commentators hold that the reason that Avraham did not pray for less than ten people was that he thought that Lot, his wife, four children and their spouses, would have made up the quorum. G–d’s response reassured him that if indeed Lot and his family were righteous, they would not be killed in what was about to happen.

בתוך העיר, “within the city.” According to Ibn Ezra the condition was that these ten people are visibly G’d-fearing, display their faith in public. We find something analogous described in Jeremiah 5,1 שוטטו בחוצות ירושלים, “roam the streets of Jerusalem!” [in that instance the search would not turn up a single G’d-fearing man. Ed.] Nachmanides sees in the expression בתוך העיר that even if the ten men in question were sojourning in Sodom only temporarily, were not citizens, their presence at this time would help save the town from destruction. The words were a veiled reference to people such as Lot.