# Abraham Pleads for Sodom: Why Did God Tell Him First? (Genesis 18)

**Author:** Garth Watson
**Published:** 2026-09-27
**Last updated:** 2026-09-27
**Canonical URL:** https://doxa.app/blog/daily-lift-32-genesis-18-16-33

![An empty hilltop path at dusk near an old oak, looking east over a long hazy valley toward a distant plain, a few stones at the edge of the path, no people, no faces, no text](https://doxa.app/images/blog/daily-lift-32-genesis-18-16-33-hero.jpg)

The meal under the oak is over. The three men get up from Abraham's table and look out toward Sodom, and Abraham walks along with them to see them off ([Genesis 18:16](https://doxa.app/bible/GEN/18#v16)). From the hills around Mamre the ground falls away east toward the plain where his nephew Lot lives.

## Why did God tell Abraham about Sodom?

Then Genesis lets us overhear the LORD thinking out loud. "Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do?" ([Genesis 18:17](https://doxa.app/bible/GEN/18#v17)).

He answers His own question with a reason. Our English Bible has "For I have chosen him" ([Genesis 18:19](https://doxa.app/bible/GEN/18#v19)), and the Hebrew verb underneath is *yada*, the everyday word for knowing someone. The LORD is saying, in effect, *I have known him*. Because He knows Abraham, He will tell him what He is about to do.

So He tells him. The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and "I will go down to see" ([Genesis 18:21](https://doxa.app/bible/GEN/18#v21)). Two of the men walk on down the road. "But Abraham remained standing before the LORD" ([Genesis 18:22](https://doxa.app/bible/GEN/18#v22)).

Abraham does something bold with what he has just heard. He steps forward and asks, "Will You really sweep away the righteous with the wicked?" ([Genesis 18:23](https://doxa.app/bible/GEN/18#v23)). What if there are fifty good people in the city? Then he asks the question the whole conversation rests on: "Will not the Judge of all the earth do what is right?" ([Genesis 18:25](https://doxa.app/bible/GEN/18#v25)).

Look at where Abraham got that question. A few lines earlier the LORD said He had chosen Abraham to teach his household to do "what is right and just" ([Genesis 18:19](https://doxa.app/bible/GEN/18#v19)). Abraham takes God's own words and holds them up to the One who said them, weighing what God is about to do against what he already knows God to be.

And the LORD agrees. Fifty. Then forty-five, forty, thirty, twenty. Abraham apologises as he goes, "though I am but dust and ashes" ([Genesis 18:27](https://doxa.app/bible/GEN/18#v27)), and keeps asking anyway. Six times he asks, and six times the LORD says yes. At ten Abraham stops, and the LORD leaves.

This is what it is to be known by God. He told Abraham His plan before He acted, and He stayed for every question. Abraham came to know God better on that road by pleading with Him in His own words. The next chapter shows what came of it. When the cities fell, "He remembered Abraham, and He brought Lot out of the catastrophe" ([Genesis 19:29](https://doxa.app/bible/GEN/19#v29)).

"Early the next morning, Abraham got up and returned to the place where he had stood before the LORD" ([Genesis 19:27](https://doxa.app/bible/GEN/19#v27)). He went back to the spot where God had spoken with him, to see what God had done.

## How does Abraham's prayer for Sodom point to Jesus?

Sodom did not have ten. Centuries later God sent Jeremiah into the streets of Jerusalem with a smaller number still: "If you can find a single person, anyone who acts justly, anyone who seeks the truth, then I will forgive the city" ([Jeremiah 5:1](https://doxa.app/bible/JER/5#v1)). Abraham stopped at ten, and God went all the way down to one. Then He sent the one. "Through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous" ([Romans 5:19](https://doxa.app/bible/ROM/5#v19)). That same man now stands where Abraham stood, before the Father, for us: "He always lives to intercede for them" ([Hebrews 7:25](https://doxa.app/bible/HEB/7#v25)).

So when God shows you something He is about to do, answer Him. Write down what He said, and write down what you asked Him about it. Then go back to that page when you see what He did.

What has God told you lately that you have not yet answered?

Deeper study today in the Doxa Deeper Dive: the Hebrew word for the outcry God came down to hear, and the people who had once raised it themselves. [Read it here.](https://doxa.app/blog/daily-deeper-dive-32-genesis-18-16-33)