Genesis 18:32-33 “Then he said, "Let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak but once more: Suppose ten should be found there?" And He said, "I will not destroy it for the sake of ten." (33) So the Lord went His way as soon as He had finished speaking with Abraham; and Abraham returned to his place.”
The context of the above passage of scripture is that Abraham was conversing with the Lord, and the Lord had revealed to Abraham that He was potentially about to destroy the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah because of their wickedness. Abraham was obviously concerned about his nephew Lot who was living in Sodom at the time, and so he was interceding on Lot’s behalf. Abraham was convinced that the Lord would not judge the righteous with the wicked, and so his logic was that if there were sufficient numbers of righteous living there then surely the Lord would spare the cities from destruction. And so he asked the Lord if he would spare the cities if fifty righteous were in it and eventually he took the number down to ten. In each instance the Lord assured him that He would not destroy the cities even if there were only ten righteous living there. The Lord’s statement is very profound, because heaven had classified these two cities as being extremely wicked and sinful. So much so that God had decided to put an end to their wickedness by destroying them, and yet we see that the Lord had committed to sparing both cities if He could find just ten righteous living among them. As it turns out Lot was the only righteous person living there, which God deemed to be insufficient in number to prevent the destruction of the cities. Nevertheless, God remained true to His word that He would not destroy the righteous along with the wicked, and He therefore removed Lot out of Sodom before He destroyed that city. We see in this account that God also spared Lot’s family from destruction based on his righteousness (Genesis 19:12-13), although that was not the only occasion that God spared the families of those who were righteous, for He did the same for Noah’s family (Genesis 7:1) and also Rahab’s family (Joshua 6:17). And so there are a couple of principles that we can pick up from this account in scripture. Firstly, we see that at times, based on an individual’s righteousness, God will allow the families of the righteous to be spared from His judgement. This is not always the case however, for in some instances if the society has become sufficiently wicked, God will only allow the righteous to be delivered and not their family members as well (Ezekiel 14:20). Secondly, we see from this account that the presence of the righteous in sufficient numbers has the effect of preventing the total destruction of a society, even if the unbelievers in that society have become extremely wicked.
Michael E.B. Maher
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