The Sedom story is filled with high drama, moral lessons, twists and turns, and high stakes, ultimately coming to an unhappy end. To recapitulate it in short: Hashem notes the moral failings of Sedom and Amora and tells Avraham about His plans to destroy them. Avraham boldly challenges G-d, Who agrees to offer mercy if even just ten righteous people can be found in those cities. Unfortunately, this is not the case, and G-d destroys the cities. It is difficult to point out exactly what is the most dramatic moment in the whole event. However, I think we might locate it at the very beginning, in verses almost always overlooked as we move on to the quicker pace of later verses and events.
Our story begins with a sound and a view:
Hashem said, “The cry of Sedom and Amorah is indeed great; and their sin is indeed very heavy. Let me go down now and see. If, as the cry that comes to me, they have done – destruction. If not – I will know.” (Bereishis 18:20-21)
Hashem hears the victims of Sedom and Amorah crying out. As He is all knowing, the notion that He should go and investigate strikes us as a little odd. Indeed, Rashi responds to this problem, suggesting that G-d is like a teacher showing students how to judge properly. It is not enough to hear about some injustice or crime; you actually have to go and investigate things for yourself. If G-d bothers to investigate things when He already knows the answers, how much more so must we?
Ramban, however, gives a very different understanding of this notion. Where Rashi gives us a lesson, Ramban suggests that these verses give us a secret sense of how G-d governs the world. Perhaps something more is afoot here. The idea he presents is subtle and deep:
And I will now hint to you the opinion of the receivers of truth. Our masters explained in the verse, “For, behold, Hashem comes forth out of His place, and will come down and tread on the high places of the earth” – ‘He goes out and comes in from attribute to attribute; He goes from the attribute of mercy and comes to the attribute of judgment.’ (Yerushalmi Ta’anit 2:1 on Michah 1:3)
This is a fascinating idea, addressing the oddness of G-d’s motion from a different perspective. Of course, Hashem doesn’t move or go anywhere, so what does the verse mean when it says that He wanted to “go down?” Ramban suggests, based on the teaching of the Sages, that G-d considered “moving,” so to speak, from the realm of mercy to judgement, a non-literal move that reflected different possibilities for how to deal with a given situation. In this case, it is like a king who sits on a different throne to offer mercy or judgement; the king does not change but the context indicates how he will deal with a given situation (Or Yesharim commentary to Yer. ibid.)
Unbeknownst to Avraham, Ramban tells us, the verse makes clear that Hashem actually begins very much with mercy: “I will see with mercy if it is like the cry that came to me through the attribute of judgement, then destruction; and if not, I will know and I will be merciful.” This is the most painful part of the whole story: Hashem wishes to take mercy on Sedom and Amorah. However, their guilt may be so extreme that even mercy cannot justify this possibility. Indeed, as we soon see, not even a minyan of righteous people is to be found in all five cities! Mercy has become impossible.
Avraham, for his part, stands in for all of us. He does not know that Hashem treats Sedom with mercy and we need to read closely to see it. Of course, it would only be fair to save the righteous, as Avraham argues, but can Hashem not take mercy on the guilty? When Hashem acquiesces to this, if only a few righteous people can be found, Avraham learns that Hashem also wanted to take mercy on them but it was impossible. The text has unwrapped itself before us, revealing that mercy was seeking its way into the story the whole time. But it cannot find an opening. While we soon get a small sense of Sedom’s evil ways in the story that follows, the narrative does not go into it with any detail, leaving us to imagine how it would be possible to act in a way that denies any possibility of mercy.
How can mercy be denied? The story of Sedom gives us a sense that this is a rarity. In contrast, we learn that mercy is the true norm of providence. Hashem wishes to treat even the guilty with mercy. Flawed, guilty, broken as we are, Hashem will treat us with mercy again and again. The sun will rise each day for us, we will be given more time to discover more medicines and paths of reprieve, more time to work on ourselves and improve ourselves as individuals and as a society.
Still, even in mercy, we so often suffer. As much as we may always count on divine mercy, the divine calculus remains beyond our ken and we have been visited by destruction all too often. We find ourselves reeling, not even yet scarred over from October 7th, still affected as a society by the horrors of the holocaust. How much more can we take?
Mysterious as providence is, we cannot promise that pure righteousness will remove all suffering. Yet, do we have any choice but to pursue it, to remove sin and failures as much as we can? Between our own successes and G-d’s desire to treat us with mercy, we can improve our outlook. If Sedom’s evil ways created a situation where mercy was impossible, let us do the opposite. Let us create a situation where nothing but mercy is possible. Instead of mercy denied, let us deny anger, judgment, and further suffering. Let us, through our elevated choices, demand divine love, redemption, and salvation. Let us bring mercy to the table with us, bring it into our story and our time, and make nothing else possible.