Комментарий к Берешит 18:27

הואלתי means I am willing to speak, just as (Exodus 2:21) “And Moses was pleased (ויואל) [to dwell with the man]”.

I have begun. To present my inquiry regarding Divine justice. I am but dust and ashes.

ויען..הואלתי, “I wanted to speak some more to G’d, אנכי עפר ואפר, even though compared to You I am only dust and ashes. I did not mean to protest Your justice, but I merely wish to understand it.

ואנכי עפר ואפר, ”though I am only dust and ashes.” The plain meaning of these words is: “I started out as עפר, “dust,” and I am destined to become אפר, “ash.” This is part of the standard confessional of the righteous. David also used similar phraseology in Psalms 103,14 כי הוא ידע יצרנו זכור כי עפר אנחנו, ”for He knows our various urges; He is mindful that we are dust.” Job 42,6 also made a similar comment על כן אמאס ונחמתי על עפר ואפר, “Therefore I recant and relent, being but dust and ashes.”

ואנכי עפר ואפר, “although I am only dust and ashes;” Avraham hints that he by rights should have become earth, i.e. killed, in the war against the four kings, or he should have become ashes already when he submitted to the fires in Nimrod’s furnace. If he had been saved, it was only because G–d had displayed His mercy for him.

ואנכי עפר ואפר I Am BUT DUST AND ASHES — I would long ago have been reduced to dust by the kings and to ashes by Nimrod had it not been that Thy mercies stood by me (Genesis Rabbah 49:11).

Therefore I was unable to comprehend Your answer

A Midrashic approach based on Sotah 17: The descendants of Avraham were given two commandments as a reward for Avraham having described himself as “dust and ashes.” One is the commandment of Sotah, (the dust put in the water such a woman has to drink to prove her innocence. Numbers 5,17 and 24); the second one being the commandment of the red heifer whose ash purifies people who have become ritually impure through contact with he dead (Numbers 19,9-19). In fact we find that the Israelites collectively are referred to as אפרים (Jeremiah 31,19). The word may be understood as the plural of אפר, ash, afarim. [In that verse it is clear that the term אפרים is applied to the Jewish people as an endearment. Ed.] The reason for the plural may be a reference to the ash which Yitzchak almost turned out to be, as well as the ash Avraham would have been (if G’d had not miraculously saved him) when he submitted to a test of his faith at the time Nimrod threw him into a furnace.