Values of Vayeira – How Good Do We Have To Be?

The Avraham narratives describe the moral order that the Torah, once given and no longer in Heaven, will eventually prescribe.  Sodom embodies that society that the Torah strives to avoid.

At Genesis 18:20-21 the LORD thinks out loud that the cryings-out of the Sodomite residents “are very great and their sins are very heavy.”   In the Egyptian Book of the Dead the souls of sinners have heavy hearts, which are made heavy by the weight of sin when weighed after one’s demise.  Isaiah 1:4 speaks of Israel as a “people heavy with iniquity,” which is an ancient Near Eastern idiom designating a person to be guilty or wicked. Acting as a model for human judges, the LORD “comes down from Heaven to investigate” the facts of Sodom’s case, and to determine whether Sodom is really so sinful as to deserve destruction.

Unable or unwilling to share the available Canaanite real estate with his Heavenly blessed uncle, Lot was given the choice of turf by his generous uncle, if “you go left, then I’ll go right, and if you go right. I’ll go left.” Their two estates have to part company because they are  unable to live together without contention.  Generous to an extreme,  Avraham is so concerned with domestic tranquility that he allows Lot to pick his choice of the land. Lot chooses the Twin Cities of sin, Sodom and ‘Amora, which are fruitfully lush but ethically challenged. Lot craves ease and affluence, but pays no attention to the moral risk, social cost, and numbed conscience that are the consequences of his self-absorbed choices.

God decides to consult with Avraham, who “will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the LORD, to do justice and judgment” [Gen.  18:19].   When Avraham is informed that the LORD intends to destroy Sodom, he instinctively protests and pleads for people he does not know,  whose reputation is not flattering, and whose behavior, it will be revealed to the reader,  is not even humane. Avraham then asks the LORD, “are You really going to wipe away the righteous with the wicked” [Gen. 18:23]? And then Avraham audaciously adds, “will the Judge of the entire world not act with justice” [Gen. 18:25]?

From Avraham’s example we learn what the Torah expects of humankind: to treat one other as one wishes to be treated, and to act with altruism. Since Avraham is a stickler for both kindness as well as justice, he insists that even the Sodomites deserve the protection of a judicial process because they are human, having been created in God’s image.  Avraham appeals to a Law that binds the LORD, which is a law that does not distinguish between justice and just us.  Avraham is always giving, gracious, and genuine. By intuitive reflex Avraham always “does what is right and good” [Deuteronomy 6:18]. Below we hope to identify the ethos and ethic that animates the Torah’s Law.

As a consequence of this moral disposition of doing good, Avraham pleads for Sodom that it should be spared even if only ten good people reside there, and God agrees.  Why is “ten” the minimum mentioned, and how does the LORD inform the reader that indeed this redeeming critical mass was not present?   At De’ot 6:1, Maimonides observes that people tend to adopt the opinions, practices, and perspectives of the larger culture that creates the world that they happen to inhabit.  It is very difficult to resist the majority’s gnawing and annoying pull. But Maimonides adds that one should adopt and join a society that is righteous and wise.  By picking our friendship circle, we choose to be policed and controlled by the peers whose perspective we prefer. Without that critical social mass of ten decent people, the larger culture’s ethos cannot be resisted.  Without nine decent compatriots, Lot will inevitably succumb to and assimilate into Sodom’s sinfulness.

The human animal has been described as social or political beings. The Torah views the human being to be a potentially holy being, as we are commanded to “be holy” [Lev. 19:2].  This holiness is expressed by being attentive to the subjective humanity, or what the Greeks called psyche, or “soul,” of the “other.”  The Sodomites are the unethical, polar opposites of Avraham.  Lot appears as the moral midpoint between sinful Sodom and the Avrahamic ethical ideal.  He implores the two divine messengers who were commissioned to destroy Sodom to accept his hospitality, drink, and unleavened bread [Gen. 19:1-2].  While paling before his uncle Avraham’s hospitality for his three messengers [Gen. 18:1-8], Lot carefully upholds antiquity’s hospitality code, the hesed, or human kindness that is essential for those embarking on the dangerous ordeal of ancient travel.  The Torah then describes Sodom’s behavior:

Before [Lot, his household, and guests were to] retire [for the night], the men of Sodom City surrounded on the house calling to Lot, young and old, from the whole city.  They called out and ordered him, “where are the people who came to you tonight. Expel them so that we may know them [intimately].

[Gen. 19:4-  5].

The Sodom narrative teaches the following lessons:

1. There really were no men in Sodom City without the sinful intent to subject what they mistook to be innocent human travelers to homosexual rape, other than Lot. Sodom’s women fail to protest Sodom’s men’s intentions, making themselves complicit accessories to Sodom’s men’s wrongdoing. Lot offers his two nameless, well-intentioned but shameless daughters, to the rapacious crowd encircling Lot’s house, if only they leave his two guests untouched. By defending his guests from the chaotic Sodomite mob, risking his life to do “what is right and good” [Deuteronomy 6:18],  Lot exhibited the authenticating Torah ethical disposition, to privilege compliance to the content of the Covenant over the  blind, and often self-serving communal convention.
2. Lot by his nature was greedy, but he was not evil, either. On one hand, he wanted to treat his guests with Avrahamic human kindness, but he was prepared to do so at the expense of his two daughters’ sexual innocence. The two guests/angels do reward Lot by saving him from Sodom’s devastation, and these two divine agents, who indeed are not human, are commissioned to destroy those humans who are so inhumane that they would rape human outsiders, forfeiting their humanity and right to live. Although Lot was at his core a decent if not saintly fellow, he was prepared to offer his two daughters to the mob in place of the two guests. Because he chose to live in Sodom, Sodom also lived in him. Lot’s two daughters would later commit incest with him, the father who should have but failed to be their protector. Deuteronomy 34:3-4 legislates that the mamzer, the product of an adulterous or incestuous sexual union, may not enter the LORD’s congregation, or marry into the pedigreed, sacred Israelite community, and then adds, that like the mamzer, the Ammonite and Moabite, conceived by incest by Lot’s drunken sexual encounters with his daughters, are forbidden to marry into the LORD’s congregation. The “knowing” that was to take place is contextually sexual, with the Hebrew semantic sense to be taken euphemistically. The Narrator’s perspective is modest, chaste, and delicate, contrasting sharply to the Sodomites’ lascivious intentions.
3. The report of the Sodomites surrounding Lot’s house employs the preposition “’al,” which means both “on” and “to” Lot’s house. The would-be rioting rapists rise, as entitled hierarchical superiors, on, over, and above their intended victims, looking down upon two individual “others” who appear to be strangers, vulnerable and available for exploitation because they are “outsiders.”  By viewing Lot’s “guests” as “others” and as “outsiders,” the Sodomites, with exquisite irony, do not relate to Lot’s guests as human subjects possessing God’s image [tselem E-lohim, Genesis 1:26] ] and human dignity [kevod ha-beriyyot, bBerachot 19b], but  callously consider them to be human objects to be used and abused, but not as human beings, carrying moral rights.  Sodom saw the guests as objects to be exploited for a pleasure derived from dissolute depravity, debasing the divine spark that should have but did not shine in themselves, forfeiting thereby their own humanity. By applying their brains to satisfy their lust, the Sodomites appear to be intelligent, but immoral, monsters. Ironically, the non-human angels who were the target of the Sodomite mob were the divinely appointed agents of inhumane Sodom’s destruction.
4. Avraham as well as the astute reader now both realize that Lot was the one man residing in in Sodom who was worthy of being saved. If there would have been ten people worthy of salvation, there would have been a critical mass that would have saved the city.  Lacking this essential, salvific quorum, Lot is removed from Sodom because Lot did not deserve death with the Sodomites.  God, the Torah narrative’s hero, affirms that Lot has reached the requisite threshold for salvation, if not sainthood. God does not demand perfection of people; God does demand that humans care for and not exploit each other. Like the Cyclops of Homer’s Odyssey, who feeds on his guests instead of feeding them, Sodom represents the decline to depravity against which the Torah, Avraham, and Avraham’s offspring all reject and oppose.  Upon learning that the only decent, albeit flawed, Sodomite resident was Lot, who stood up to the mob and was spared Sodom’s fate, Avraham realized that the LORD was, is, and will to Eternity be the Rock Whose deeds are always perfect [Deuteronomy 32:4]. It is this recognition that empowered Avraham to answer the call of the Aqeda, where God commands Avraham to sacrifice the son who is his legacy. [Genesis 22:2-4] The discharge of God’s order  is reported in the syntax of the order, just like Genesis 1:3, where God commands [a secondary meaning of the Hebrew root amr] “Light, be!” and we are then informed, employing the syntax of the order, “light was!” Avraham’s God commands and expects compliance, and the Sodom narrative convinced Avraham that God must always be believed to be right, no matter what.
5. The Oral Torah provides the benchmark by which humankind, which has not received the Torah, is judged by God. The LORD alone, being all-knowing, may properly judge alone [mAvot 4:8]. Lacking omniscience, one ought to judge the other generously [mAvot 1:6]. And the benchmarks by which we judge others are the very same benchmarks by which we will be judged by God [mSota 1:7]. Christian Scripture preserves this Oral Torah doctrine, advising that we not judge others so that we not be judged [Matthew 7:1].
6. Lot was selfish, self-absorbed, and was obsessed by materialism. But he also tried to save his angelic guests, choosing to “do what is right and good” [Deuteronomy 6:18], so God spared him. Psalms 1:5 teaches that “the wicked will not stand in judgment, [nor] the sinners in the congregation of the righteous.” There are three distinct categories here. The wicked do not stand in judgment; they are self-defined by the wrongs they have done. But while sinners do not sit with the righteous, they do stand, i.e. are vindicated, in judgment because they are not defined by wrongdoing. Similarly, Ph.D. dissertations are given one of three grades, honors, pass, and fail. A non-honors Ph.D. graduate is still addressed as “doctor.”  To be vindicated by the LORD, one must love the other as oneself [Leviticus 19:18].  Unlike other languages, Biblical Hebrew’s verbs for love [ahava] and hate [sin’a] appear with the untranslated particle “et,” indicating [a] a direct object and [b] a transitive verb.  “Loving” and “hating” are transitive verbs in Biblical Hebrew; these emotions can change the world.  By loving the other as oneself, one experiences the image of God that is intuited in oneself to also be present in the other.  When we care for the carriers of God’s image, we feed the hungry, provide drink for the thirsty, invite strangers into our home, supply clothing for the naked, and visit those who are immobile, either by illness or incarceration.  This loving is patient and kind, neither envying nor boasting, nor is it proud.  It is the judging the other with kindness, creating by rebound a culture of kindness, that is capable of redeeming the world, and ourselves.