Comentário sobre Gênesis 18:30

לא אעשה, I will not do any harm at all to the three cities which are less guilty than Sodom.

ויאמר אל נא יחר לה׳ He said "Let my Lord not become angry." The reason that Abraham was concerned about G'd becoming angry this time was because he tried to add his own merit to make up the quorum of ten in one of the towns in case this was all that was lacking, whereas G'd would make up the quorum in the other towns. Abraham used the word נא again because he introduced a new element, i.e. use of his own merit as a protective factor. [The author may have deduced the principle that Abraham injected his own merit here because of the absence of the word אליו when he speaks to G'd. I believe the novelty of the author's approach is that he believed that throughout the dialogue reported by the Torah Abraham did not abandon the attempt to save all five cities. Ed.]

ויאמר אל נא יחר, seeing that Avraham was afraid to belabour the same point of questioning G’d about how He administered justice, he now prefaced further questions with the request that G’d not become angry at him. In order not to stretch G’d’s patience, he now omitted reducing the numbers by five at a time, reducing them by ten each time, i.e. 40,30,20,10.

אל נא יחר לאדני ואדברה, “may my Lord not become angry if I continue to bargain;” in the verses 30,31,and 32, the word אדון is to be treated as one of the names of G-d, i.e. the attributes which must not be erased in a Torah scroll.