Why didn’t Avraham try to save Lot from Sodom?

 

It must have occurred to some of you over the years: Avraham saved Lot from captivity, he prayed for the entire city of Sodom — so why didn’t he at least try to warn or rescue his own nephew from the destruction? The angels appear to save Lot. Why couldn’t Avraham, the father of gemilut chasadim, do the same?

A few striking parallels in the story of Lot may point toward an answer.

We all know the midrash that Avraham survived the kivshan ha’eish (the fiery furnace) because of his belief in God. Yet in this week’s parsha the Torah describes Lot surviving his own kivshan ha’eish. First the fire itself:

וַה' הִמְטִיר עַל־סְדֹם וְעַל־עֲמֹרָה גׇּפְרִית וָאֵשׁ מֵאֵת ה' מִן־הַשָּׁמָיִם

“The Lord rained upon Sodom and Gomorrah sulfurous fire from the Lord out of heaven.”

(Genesis 19:24)

Then Avraham looks out over the ruins:

וַיַּשְׁקֵף עַל־פְּנֵי סְדֹם וַעֲמֹרָה וְעַל־כׇּל־פְּנֵי אֶרֶץ הַכִּכָּר וַיַּרְא וְהִנֵּה עָלָה קִיטֹר הָאָרֶץ כְּקִיטֹר הַכִּבְשָׁן

“And he looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah and all the land of the Plain, and he saw the smoke of the land rising like the smoke of a kiln.”

(Genesis 19:28)

Other parallels with the Akeidah are hard to miss. Just as Avraham was willing to sacrifice his son, Lot was willing to sacrifice his daughters to protect strangers he had never met. In both stories the angels intervene at the last moment:

וַיֹּאמְרוּ גֶּשׁ־הָלְאָה … וַיִּפְצְרוּ בָאִישׁ בְּלוֹט מְאֹד וַיִּגְּשׁוּ לִשְׁבֹּר הַדָּלֶת

“But they said, ‘Stand back!’ … And they pressed hard against the man—against Lot—and moved forward to break the door.”

(Genesis 19:9)

A midrash says that Yitzchak was later struck with blindness by the tears of the angels that fell into his eyes during the Akeidah. Here the pasuk itself says the angels struck the people of Sodom with blindness:

וְאֶת־הָאֲנָשִׁים אֲשֶׁר־פֶּתַח הַבַּיִת הִכּוּ בַּסַּנְוֵרִים מִקָּטֹן וְעַד־גָּדוֹל

“And the men who were at the entrance of the house, low and high alike, they struck with blinding light…”

(Genesis 19:11)

The midrash (Bereshit Rabbah 65:10, cited by Rashi on Genesis 27:1) reads:

בשעה שעקד אברהם אבינו את בנו על גבי המזבח בכו מלאכי השרת… ונשרו דמעות מעיניהם לתוך עיניו והיו רשומות בתוך עיניו, וכיון שהזקין כהו עיניו

“When Abraham our father bound his son on the altar, the ministering angels wept… and tears dropped from their eyes into his eyes and were imprinted in them, and when he grew old his eyes dimmed.”

In many ways Lot appears even greater in chesed than Avraham by his willingness to sacrifice his own family to save strangers. Perhaps this middah was passed on through his daughters’ children — Moav and Ammon — and ultimately through Ruth, whose chesed to her mother-in-law brought the lineage of King David (and through Ammon, King Solomon).

This may also explain why Moabite males were permanently forbidden from marrying into the Jewish people, while Moabite females were permitted. The males of Moav went against the chesed of their ancestor Lot by refusing to give food and water to the Jewish nation in the wilderness. The daughters, by contrast, acted from a form of chesed — they believed the world had been destroyed and sought to repopulate it. That chesed was preserved in Ruth and entered the Jewish people.

Coming back to the original question: why didn’t Avraham try to save Lot?

Perhaps because, like the Akeidah according to the Rambam, the entire angelic episode in Sodom was a vision and never physically took place in the ordinary sense. The Rambam states the principle clearly in the Guide for the Perplexed 2:42:

כבר ביארנו כי כל מקום שנזכרה בו ראית מלאך או דבורו שזה אמנם הוא במראה הנבואה או בחלום… ואין הפרש בין שיכתוב תחילה שהוא ראה המלאך או יהיה הנראה מן המאמר תחילה שהוא חשבו איש מבני אדם ואחר כן בסוף הענין התבאר לו שהוא מלאך… תדע ותאמת שמתחלת הענין היה מראה הנבואה או חלום של נבואה.

“We have already explained that whenever the appearance or speech of an angel is mentioned in Scripture, this occurred only in a vision of prophecy or in a dream… There is no difference whether the text first states that he saw the angel, or whether it appears at first that he thought him a human being and only at the end it becomes clear that it was an angel… Know and be certain that from the beginning of the matter it was a vision of prophecy or a prophetic dream.”

He applies this specifically to the three visitors of Genesis 18, and in 3:24 he notes that the command at the Akeidah itself came “in a dream or a vision.” Once that framework is accepted, the angels who then “go down” to Sodom can be read as the continuation of the same prophetic vision granted to Avraham.

Lot was indeed saved — but not necessarily by angels physically extracting him. The angels’ visit, the dragging, and the blinding of the townspeople were part of the vision Avraham received. The vision explained why the city had to be destroyed, the depth of its evil, and the relative righteousness of his nephew.

How Lot was actually saved is the theme we have been seeing in the past few parshiyot: hashgacha (divine providence) attaches to a person who is connected to God by walking in His ways — chesed. The Rambam explains this idea with the classic example of a ship that sinks by chance:

אמנם אם טבעה הספינה ומה שבתוכה כמו שזכר, ונפל הגג על מי שבבית, אם היה זה במקרה לפי דעתנו, אבל ברצון אלוהי לפי הדין במשפטיו אשר לא יגיעו דעותינו לידיעת סדרם

“If a ship sinks with all who are in it, as we have mentioned, or a roof falls on those who are in the house — if this occurs by chance according to our view, [the fact that those particular people were on the ship or in the house is] according to the will of God and in accordance with the justice of His judgments, the method of which our minds cannot attain.”

(Guide for the Perplexed 3:17)

The ship (or the city) may be destroyed by the ordinary course of nature or judgment. Who is on it — and who is spared — is not left to pure chance when a person is attached to God through chesed. On this reading, Avraham did not need to run to Sodom. The vision itself already contained the outcome: Lot would be preserved because of his connection to God through chesed, and Abraham’s role was to witness and understand the moral lesson. The smoke he sees the next morning is the fulfillment of what he has already been shown.

The story of Lot, then, is not merely a side narrative. It is the continuation of Abraham’s vision — teaching the limits and the power of chesed, the nature of divine justice, and the long-term fruit of even imperfect kindness that would one day bring Ruth and David into the world.

The Sun Doesn’t Change When You Close the Blinds: A Tanya Insight That Fits Perfectly with the Rambam

 

I’m in the middle of working through the Tanya (Likkutei Amarim by Rav Shneur Zalman of Liadi) and came across this past shabbat, a passage that lines up really nicely with something the Rambam says.

In the Guide (MN 3:18), the Rambam explains that hashgacha pratis depends on how close a person is to God in thought and action. As I’ve mentioned in earlier posts, the point isn’t that God changes based on us—it’s that we change. God stays exactly the same.

Right after discussing how the mitzvot affect the revelation of the Shechinah (in the Tanya’s usual mystical language), Rav Shneur Zalman adds these clear, rational words:

וְהִנֵּה, כָּל בְּחִינַת הַמְשָׁכַת אוֹר הַשְּׁכִינָה, שֶׁהִיא בְּחִינַת גִּילּוּי אוֹר־אֵין־סוֹף בָּרוּךְ־הוּא, אֵינוֹ נִקְרָא שִׁינּוּי חַס וְשָׁלוֹם בּוֹ יִתְבָּרֵךְ, וְלֹא רִיבּוּי, כִּדְאִיתָא בְּסַנְהֶדְרִין, דְּ״אָמַר לֵיהּ הַהוּא מִינָא לְרַבָּן גַּמְלִיאֵל, אַמְרִיתוּ כָּל בֵּי עֲשָׂרָה שְׁכִינְתָּא שַׁרְיָא, כַּמָּה שְׁכִינְתָּא אִית לְכוּ״? וְהֵשִׁיב לוֹ מָשָׁל מֵאוֹר הַשֶּׁמֶשׁ הַנִּכְנָס בְּחַלּוֹנוֹת רַבִּים כוּ׳, וְהַמַּשְׂכִּיל יָבִין:

“Clearly, any such diffusion of the light of the Shechinah, that is, the revelation of the light of the En Sof, blessed is He, cannot be termed mutability in Him, G-d forbid, nor multiplicity. Witness the passage in Sanhedrin, where a heretic said to Rabban Gamliel: ‘You say that on every gathering of ten [Jews] the Shechinah rests. How many Divine Presences have you, then?’ And he replied to him with an example of the light of the sun which enters through many windows…. The intelligent man will understand.”

The Gemara he’s pointing to is Sanhedrin 39a. A heretic asks Rabban Gamliel how the Shechinah can rest on every gathering of ten Jews without there being multiple versions of God showing up wherever ten people get together. Rabban Gamliel then hits the heretic’s servant on the neck and asks him why he allowed the sun’s rays to enter the heretic’s house. The heretic answers for his servant that the sun shines on the whole world—no one can prevent it from shining. Rabban Gamliel replies that if even the sun (just one of God’s countless servants) lights up the entire world, then certainly God’s presence does too.

Here’s the deeper rational point that I believe Rav Shneur Zalman is trying to communicate through this Gemara:

The sun’s rays keep shining all day. They don’t change at all whether we notice them, open the blinds, or pull the shades and sit in the dark. The only thing that changes is us—how we see and move through the world around us.

It’s the same when a person walks with God in thought and in mitzvot. God isn’t altered or affected by what we do. What shifts is our own perception and the way we approach life and the choices we make-Hashgacha Pratis

Stop Treating Your Comfort as God’s Will-the lesson of the "test" in this weeks parsha

 

God doesn’t change. So He isn’t sitting up in heaven running tests to figure people out. That’s not what a “test” is for.

The real test is simpler and harder: stop expecting the command to make your life easier right now. When things blow up, don’t call it a failure of the promise. Call it the next obstacle you’re supposed to walk through while you keep doing what God asked.

That’s exactly what happens with Abraham. God tells him:

וַיֹּאמֶר ה׳ אֶל־אַבְרָם לֶךְ־לְךָ מֵאַרְצְךָ וּמִמּוֹלַדְתְּךָ וּמִבֵּית אָבִיךָ אֶל־הָאָרֶץ אֲשֶׁר אַרְאֶךָּ׃ וְאֶעֶשְׂךָ לְגוֹי גָּדוֹל וַאֲבָרֶכְךָ וַאֲגַדְּלָה שְׁמֶךָ וֶהְיֵה בְּרָכָה׃  

(בראשית יב:א–ב)

“Go from your land, your birthplace, your father’s house to the land I will show you. I will make you a great nation, bless you, make your name great, and you will be a blessing.”

Then a famine hits. Then his wife gets taken by Pharaoh. Abraham doesn’t freeze and say “this wasn’t part of the deal.” He keeps moving. He uses his head. With Pharaoh he follows his judgment, and it works out — not by magic, but because his mind was already walking in God’s ways.

That’s the whole point of serving God. You’re not doing it so life goes smooth. You’re doing it because it’s right and because it serves something bigger than you. When you’re actually trying to walk like God (imitatio Dei), your personal discomfort doesn’t disappear — you still feel it — but it stops being the main thing. The job comes first.

God never told Abraham he had to stay in Canaan while everyone starved. He told him to go Canaan but nothing about staying there. When the famine got severe he followed his instincts and left(as opposed to the Ramban, the Rambam doesn't mention that he did anything wrong)

וַיְהִי רָעָב בָּאָרֶץ וַיֵּרֶד אַבְרָם מִצְרַיְמָה לָגוּר שָׁם כִּי־כָבֵד הָרָעָב בָּאָרֶץ׃  

(בראשית יב:י)

“There was a famine in the land, and Abram went down to Egypt to live there, because the famine was severe.”

Going down to Egypt and later going to war to rescue Lot are the same kind of move. Both involved his family, and neither was a prophecy telling him what to do. He didn’t need a nevuah. He was already locked into ratzon Elokim — the will of God — so he knew what justice required and he acted.

Then this happens:

וַיְהִי כְּבוֹא אַבְרָם מִצְרָיְמָה וַיִּרְאוּ הַמִּצְרִים אֶת־הָאִשָּׁה כִּי־יָפָה הִוא מְאֹד׃ וַיִּרְאוּ אֹתָהּ שָׂרֵי פַרְעֹה וַיְהַלְלוּ אֹתָהּ אֶל־פַּרְעֹה וַתֻּקַּח הָאִשָּׁה בֵּית פַּרְעֹה׃  

(בראשית יב:יד–טו)

“When Abram entered Egypt, the Egyptians saw that the woman was very beautiful. Pharaoh’s officials saw her, praised her to Pharaoh, and she was taken into Pharaoh’s house.”

One week he’s willing to risk his wife. Later he’ll be willing to risk the child of that same wife. Both times God steps in via Abraham walking in the ways of God, and both are saved. The pattern is clear: the person who is actually serving God keeps walking toward justice without waiting for a new command every time. He’s already in the stream.

In the future his descendants would take the same path down to Egypt. What started as an apparent exile and the eventual slavery of his great-grandchildren, ensured their flourishing and the birth of a nation with the giving of the Torah. That’s what God promised Abraham in this week’s parsha. His children may not have it easy in the moment, and what seems like injustice turns out to be the greatest gift to Abraham, his descendants, and the world as a whole.

In our own time, many people — in modern Judaism and in the Chareidi world — do the opposite. They take their personal beliefs, their comfort, or their fears, and then declare that this is the will of God. They become the false prophets of our generation: whether it’s progressive views dressed up as Torah, or the claim that avoiding the army (and the loss of income that comes with it) is somehow a higher divine calling. Abraham didn’t need a new prophecy to know what justice required. He was already walking in the ways of God. The question is whether we are.

Maimonides and Shadal both say the same thing about “tests.” They’re not for God to learn something. They’re public lessons so other people (including us) can see what real devotion looks like. Shadal makes the point especially about the Akeidah: the world needs to see that true servants of God will go to the extreme if commanded — even when it goes against what they personally believe is right — and also see that the true God does not actually want child sacrifice.

Maimonides is blunt about the other idea people love: that God makes you suffer now so He can give you a bigger payout later. He thinks that view is wrong and ugly. It makes God look like He needs to manufacture pain in order to hand out rewards. That’s not a just God. Real service is doing what’s right because it’s right and because it serves the larger purpose — not because you’re trying to cash in on suffering.

That’s also why God keeps pointing Abraham to the future of his children: they will become a great nation that actually does God’s will. When someone’s whole life is aimed at that, the real reward is the ongoing life of his children and his deeds.

Maimonides says it cleanly in Hilchot Avel 4:4:

וְהַצַּדִּיקִים, אֵין בּוֹנִים לָהֶם נֶפֶשׁ עַל קִבְרוֹתֵיהֶן — דִּבְרֵיהֶם הֵם זִכְרוֹנָם.

“For the righteous we do not build a monument on their graves — their words are their memorial.”

A tombstone isn’t what keeps a righteous person alive in the world. Their words and deeds do that.

The Flood, the Rainbow, and Why Walking with God Doesn’t Promise You a Comfortable Life

 

As I discussed in last week’s post, God doesn’t change, its man that changes. According to the Rambam, a catastrophic flood isn't a result of God  suddenly deciding  to do something new. The world getting wiped out can just be a natural event, the same way the dinosaurs got wiped out by a meteor. Nature does what nature does. God set the order of the world and it keeps running.

What the Torah is teaching is that a person who walks in the ways of God can see something coming and do something about it — whether through actual knowledge, ruach hakodesh, or nevuah. The people who died weren’t specially targeted. They lived like animals. They did whatever felt good instead of following justice and the way God set up the world. That’s what the Torah means by “והלכתם עמי בקרי” — if you live by happenstance, then happenstance hits you. “ויספתי עליכם מכה שבע כחטאתיכם.” You become a victim of whatever nature throws at you.

A person who is actually trying to live according to the middot built into creation is different. He’s constantly thinking about how the world works and what justice looks like, so he ends up either saving himself or the people around him from pure chance. That’s the point of the ship example the Rambam gives in the Moreh (3:17). The ship going down is chance — a natural event. But the fact that certain people got on that ship isn’t just chance. It’s tied to the choices they made. (Rambam’s own brother drowned at sea, so this isn’t an abstract example for him.)

Rambam puts it like this: in the world, individual providence only really applies to humans. Everything else happens by chance, the way Aristotle described. Providence is connected to the intellectual influence that reaches a person. The more of that someone has, the more protected they are. The less they have, the more they’re left to chance — “like the beasts.” This is the meaning according to the Rambam of "הכל בידי שמים חוץ מיראת שמים".

So Noah is the story of someone who wasn’t living by keri. Through prophecy, he saw what was coming and built the ark. Even the Ramban says the rainbow itself always existed as a natural thing — sunlight on moist air does that. It wasn’t a brand-new creation. Noah, through prophecy, turned an existing natural phenomenon into the symbol that this particular kind of destruction wouldn’t happen again. Or maybe the deeper point of the rainbow is that from now on people would start moving toward knowing God (Abraham and onward) by looking at nature and finding God in how the world actually works, and that would be what prevents another total wipeout.

There’s a caveat here, though, for anyone who thinks that walking in God’s ways means wealth, success, and personal physical happiness as the end result. That’s not necessarily true. Noah walked with God and still lost his entire society. He was traumatized enough that he got drunk and lost control. The Rambam’s whole framework makes this make sense. Providence isn’t a promise of comfort or material reward. It’s tied to the intellectual attachment and the drive to know God’s ways in the world. When someone follows that, personal needs start to matter less — or, on a higher level, there’s a kind of abandonment to God’s will as it plays out in creation. The real need becomes the survival and betterment of society and the world.

Just look at Noah: he preserved the physical continuation of mankind. Or Moshe, the greatest prophet who ever lived — he changed how the world thinks and practices for eternity, toward the eventual realization of the unity of God by all of mankind. That’s the higher end of walking in the ways of God. Not a comfortable life for yourself, but something that lasts beyond you.

God doesn’t change. Nature keeps going. What changes is whether a person is close enough to God that he’s not just another body in the path of whatever happens next — and whether he’s willing to put the world ahead of his own ease. That’s the whole story, and that’s what the rainbow is pointing to.

If every leaf falls by the decree of God, the commandments make no sense...

If God controls everything — even which leaf falls and exactly where it lands — and if the wind does not blow by chance but only because God moves it, then it is not the wind that makes the leaf fall. Each leaf falls by God’s decree. On that view there is no freedom of choice, and everything is predestined. Every movement of an animal is preordained and no one has the power to do or to refrain from doing anything. 

But then there is no point to revelation, or to the Torah’s commandments, which assume we can choose. That is why this picture is not the rational Jewish view. Free choice is foundational; without it, command, reward, and punishment lose their sense.

Something to keep in mind as we read this week about God creating the world. For more on the Torah’s view of hashgacha see the Rambam in MN 3:17.

The Torah demands we know one God. So why is His name in creation plural?

 

It always bothered me reading Elohim in the Torah. The word is plural. Why would a Torah that demands we know and believe in one unique God use a plural name for the Creator of the world — בראשית ברא אלהים?

Shadal has a good answer. The pagans believed in many powers, each ruling its own realm. Greek gods of thunder, of water, and so on. Christianity still has the devil ruling hell. Judaism, he says, used the plural on purpose: our God is not one power among others. He rules all of creation. There is no division.

His words:

אלהים: אל ואיל לשון כח וחוזק, ואלהים לשון רבים, והיה נוהג אצל האומות העובדות אלילים (כוזרי מאמר ד' סימן א'), והיו קוראים כן כל כחות הטבע, אשר הם סיבות המאורעות בארץ, והיו עובדים את כולם, וכל א' מהם יהיה להם לאלוה, ואמנם העברים בעלי היחוד קיימו שם זה בלשון רבים להורות, כי האל אשר הם עובדים איננו כח פרטי אחד, כמו שהיו הגוים אומרים אלהי הרים ה' ולא אלהי עמקים הוא (מ"א כ' כ"ח), אבל הוא קיבוץ כל הכחות ובעל הכחות כולם (וכיוצא בזה מילות ימים עיין למטה פסוק י'), כן קראו אותו בשם צבאות לומר שהוא עצמו כולל כחות כל צבאות השמים שהיו הגוים עובדים, עיין פירושי

Translation-

"El and Eil mean power and strength. Elohim is the plural. The idolaters used it for the forces of nature, and worshipped each one. The Hebrews, who hold God’s unity, kept the plural to say the opposite: the God they serve is not a local power, the way the nations said “the Lord is a god of the mountains but not a god of the valleys” (I Kings 20:28). He is the sum of every power, and master of them all. Same reason they called Him Tzevaot. He includes the hosts of heaven the nations worshipped."

The Rambam comes at the word differently. In the Guide (1:2) Elohim means God, angels, and judges. An angel is a messenger — a force of nature, a prophet, or a person carrying out God’s will (Guide 2:6). Miracles, for him, were planted in things at creation (Commentary on Avot 5:6; Guide 2:29). God does not later change His mind or suspend the decree. Providence works the same way. God does not come down, shift mood, and cancel the פורענויות. It follows a person’s connection to Him (Guide 3:17–18). We are the ones who change. By imitatio Dei, and by living the Torah, a person can behave, judge and rule in a godly manner. That is why Elohim is the name used for creation. Only by studying creation, and the will of God in it, does someone become a proper ruler(either over himself or others) and judge. That is tzelem Elokim.

We say every morning, ויעמידם לעד לעולם חק נתן ולא יעבור (Psalms 148:6). אמת ויציב says the same thing, and says who it is for: על אבותינו ועלינו, על בנינו ועל דורותינו, ועל כל דורות זרע ישראל… אמת ואמונה חק ולא יעבור. The rules of nature do not change, and they are not violated. The promise to the Avot is the same kind of decree. They imitated the will of God in creation. The generations that keep doing so do not drop out of history. The promise does not get revised. We go on, a people and a nation in sync with the will of God in creation. Both God and Tzelem Elohim will go on together hand in hand  throughout eternity