Comentário sobre Gênesis 18:22

ויפנו משם AND [THE MEN] TURNED FROM THENCE —from the place where Abraham had accompanied them.

Avraham was still standing. Even after the angels arrived in Sedom he did not give up but remained standing in prayer and supplication.

ויפנו משם, this is how it appeared to Avraham in his prophetic vision, i.e. that he had accompanied the angels some distance and after the appropriate distance, the angels turned in a different direction and went away. The angel who had brought the message to Sarah disappeared, whereas the other two proceeded in the direction of Sodom.

It is an emendation of the Scribes. This does not mean that the Scribes changed even one letter of what was written in the Torah, far be it. Rather, “emendation of the Scribes” denotes that they scrutinized each of those verses, and found that according to its context, its primary meaning cannot be as written in the text, but the verse bears a different meaning. Thus it should not have written, “Avraham was still standing,” but, “God was still standing” — except that Scripture changed the wording [out of respect]. It is called “emendation of the Scribes” only because they scrutinized it and commented that Scripture changed the wording. (Rashba)

עודנו עומד לפני ד׳ denn mit aller Ausübung der Gastfreundschaft war Abraham nicht aus der עמידה לפני ד׳, zu der er durch die im ersten Vers mitgeteilte Erscheinung Gottes gerufen war, herausgetreten.

'ואברהם עודנו עומד לפני ה BUT ABRAHAM STOOD YET BEFORE THE LORD — But surely it was not he (Abraham) who had gone to stand before Him, but it was the Holy One, blessed be He, Who had come to him and had said to him, “Because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great” and it should therefore have written here, “And the Lord stood yet before Abraham”? But it is a variation such as writers make to avoid an apparently irreverent expression (Genesis Rabbah 49:7) (which our Rabbis, of blessed memory, altered, writing it thus).

ואברהם עודנו עומד, he felt that the vision he had been experiencing had not yet come to a conclusion.