Vayera 5780
Question: How do we understand Avraham’s requests regarding the destruction of Sdom . If 10 צדיקים would be sufficient to save the city, why start with 50 and work down?
Approach: Many of the commentaries link the numbers to the fact that there were 5 cities to be destroyed (based on 10:19 and other verses), and an assumption that only ten were needed to save each city.
This approach doesn’t seem to fit into the simple reading of the text, which consistently refers to “the city” and S’dom (with one mention of Amora). However, we could perhaps explain this based on a phenomenon found elsewhere on Na”ch. Oftentimes, we see that there is reference to a city and “it’s daughters”, i.e. satellite cities or suburbs. So we could maybe understand that S’dom was the major city in the area, and there were another four smaller places in the surrounding area. Avraham treats these as separate entities at first, but is willing to consider them a single entity later on. A possible support for this might be when Avraham asks if there are 50 צדיקים in the CITY, who could save the PLACE, indicating a wider sphere of influence .
Approach: Many of the commentaries link the numbers to the fact that there were 5 cities to be destroyed (based on 10:19 and other verses), and an assumption that only ten were needed to save each city.
This approach doesn’t seem to fit into the simple reading of the text, which consistently refers to “the city” and S’dom (with one mention of Amora). However, we could perhaps explain this based on a phenomenon found elsewhere on Na”ch. Oftentimes, we see that there is reference to a city and “it’s daughters”, i.e. satellite cities or suburbs. So we could maybe understand that S’dom was the major city in the area, and there were another four smaller places in the surrounding area. Avraham treats these as separate entities at first, but is willing to consider them a single entity later on. A possible support for this might be when Avraham asks if there are 50 צדיקים in the CITY, who could save the PLACE, indicating a wider sphere of influence .
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