Komentarz do Rodzaju 18:25

חלילה לך FAR BE IT FROM THEE — It is a profanation (חולין) of Yourself. People will say, “That is what He usually busies Himself with: He destroys every one, righteous and wicked alike” —and thus did You indeed do to the generation of the Flood and to that of the dispersal of nations (Midrash Tanchuma, Vayera 8).

השופט כל הארץ, a reference to the angels whom G’d had dispatched as His representatives, לא יעשה משפט, “will not mete out fair justice?”

והיה כצדיק כרשע, subject to chance, being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

חלילה לך, such a procedure must not occur as it would hurt Your image among mankind if You would be perceived as killing both the wicked and the righteous.

This is what you did to the Flood generation, and to the Dispersion generation. [You might ask:] Noach and his sons survived the Flood. Furthermore, He did not kill the Dispersion generation [at all]; rather, He only dispersed them. Why then would people say His craft is to destroy the righteous with the wicked? The answer is: People would say there were more people who were righteous at the time of the Flood, but He swept them away and saved only Noach and his sons in order to preserve mankind. Otherwise He would have swept away even them. And when He does not sweep away everything, because He is angry only with a certain region, He destroys the whole region, righteous and wicked alike. And so it surely was with the Dispersion generation. But the Re’m, [commenting not on the above, but on Rashi,] objects: If so, Hashem could have responded to Avraham: Since they claim this even though it is not true, then even if I do not kill the righteous along with the wicked [but kill only the wicked] they still will say it is My craft to destroy everything! Therefore, Re’m explains: The first חלילה לך relates to the previous verse. [I.e.,] it would be sacrilege not to save the whole place in merit of the righteous that are in it. For people will say, “It is His craft to destroy everything, the righteous with the wicked,” since they do not know that those [destroyed] were wicked. They will think that [some of] the righteous were destroyed with them. Next, Rashi sets into place, “To kill the righteous with the wicked.” This phrase is not connected to what came before, in which Avraham argued that the righteous should save the whole place. Rather, Rashi now adds: “And if You will respond...” This relates to the second חלילה לך, where Avraham argues on behalf of the righteous alone: If the righteous cannot save the wicked, and You wish to bring a general destruction upon the place, it will be sacrilege: “Shall the Judge of all the earth not do justice [and save the righteous]?” Later, after having set these phrases into place, Rashi went back to explain the meaning of חלילה. So wrote the Re’m. But what I wrote above is also a partial answer to his objections.

It would be sacrilege. Although there were no truly righteous individuals in these cities there were some that appeared so. And since Hashem had already brought destruction to the world twice before, people would attribute their deaths to vindictiveness on His part rather than to their own insincerity. To kill the righteous. Their hypocrisy is hinted at in the spelling of the word tzaddikim — “righteous ones” — which is written defective (i.e. missing a yud) throughout this passage.

!חלילה לך, “far be it from You!” Rashi’s comment on these words [their repetition, Ed.] based on Tanchuma, is: לעולם הבא, “even in future generations.”

כדבר הזה ANYTHING LIKE THIS THING — neither this nor anything like it (Genesis Rabbah 49:10).

השופט כל הארץ, seeing that You are the judge of the whole earth, if You will judge people based on the conduct of the majority You would eventually be forced to destroy mankind, seeing that most people everywhere are wicked.

כצדיק כרשע, using two letters כ in succession to describe a comparison. It is as if the Torah had written: “this is like this and this is also like this.” The syntax is intended to abbreviate the sentence. You find similar examples in Genesis 44,18 and in Isaiah 24,2.

Neither this nor anything like it. Rashi is answering the question: Simply speaking, כדבר הזה means that Avraham was praying only that Hashem should not do a similar act again — but was not praying for the people of Sedom [to be saved]. If so, why did he say: “Suppose there are 50 righteous people...” showing that he indeed prayed for the people of Sedom? Thus Rashi explains that כדבר הזה means: “Neither this nor anything like it,” i.e., הזה includes both present and future acts. Avraham prayed for Israel as well, that if they will sin, Hashem should not kill the righteous with the wicked. And when Rashi later says, “In the World-to-Come,” it means in future generations.

לך, seeing that this word was also repeated by Avraham we may assume that the first time he addressed the masculine attributes of the Lord, and the second time he addressed the feminine attributes. [Avraham does not imply that G-d could judge unfairly; he like Moses after himreminds G-d of how He will be perceived by His subjects, i.e. as subjecting them to collective punishment. The fact that the first time the letter ל is vocalised with a semi vowel under the letter, and the second time that letter is vocalised with a full vowel kametz, was the nuance leading to this interpretation.

חלילה לך IT IS UNWORTHY OF THEE —in the world to come.

השופט כל הארץ, if You will subject the entire earth to judgment, You cannot very well single out only this location for Your judgment; if however, You will wipe out the righteous together with the wicked this would not be justice. Therefore, please let me know why You plan to destroy just this region totally?

In the World-to-Come. This is as stated in Perek Chelek (Sanhedrin 107b) that the people of Sedom have no portion in the World-to-Come. But the Maharshal explains as follows: If such an act is done in this world, there is sacrilege to Hashem’s Name. And even in the World-toCome, where sacrilege to Hashem’s Name does not exist, no reason will yet be found why You destroyed the righteous with the wicked.

השופט כל הארץ SHALL NOT THE JUDGE OF ALL THE EARTH [DO JUSTICE]? — The 'ה of השופט is punctuated with Chataph Patach because the words express a question: “Should not He who is Judge practice true justice”?

Can it be that He who is Judge should fail to do true justice? Why did Rashi need to explain this ה of incredulity, saying: “Can it be that He who is Judge...”? Why was it not enough to simply say that the ה of השופט is one of incredulity? It is because Rashi wished to tell us that the ה — although it is in the word השופט — expresses incredulity regarding לא יעשה משפט.