There are stories in the Torah that make us think that God alone cannot perfect the world. The concept of a Garden of Eden, the incident between Cain and Abel, the Flood, or the story of the Tower of Babel, are all examples of something being missing. And that which was missing was the Covenant that God made with Abraham. God asks Abraham to be a source of blessing for all peoples. God told him: “May all the nations of the world be blessed through you” (Breishit 12:3).

The covenant with Abraham symbolizes how God needs man as much as man needs God. When God is about to destroy Sodom, He says: “Can I hide from Abraham what I am about to do now?” (Breishit 18:17). Why does He ask? Does God have to consult man? God does not ask, God gives orders. God ordered Noah to build the Ark and did not ask him if he agreed with His decision to destroy the world. But now it seems that God is saying, “I cannot act unilaterally, I must at least tell Abraham.” Rashi explains this by saying that before Abraham, God was the God of heaven, but after Abraham, God is the God of the Earth.

The passage in Breishit 18, where Abraham discusses with God the fate of Sodom, is one of the most beautiful and educational passages in the Torah: “What if there are 50 righteous people in Sodom?” Abraham asks. “Is the Supreme Judge of the Earth going to act unjustly?” And Abraham was not citing an outside source to support his argument. Abraham’s words came from his own moral intuition that told him it would be unjust to destroy a city if righteous people lived in it. He even asked God to spare the entire city if some righteous people lived among them.

God could have answered, “Your ways are not My Ways and your thoughts are not My Thoughts,” told Abraham that man’s ethics cannot be used to judge God, and ended the discussion there. But He did not. God fully accepts man in his moral context. Being a partner in the Covenant meant bringing our full humanity to that relationship with the Creator.

But the haggling continued: forty, thirty, twenty, until reaching ten righteous ones. Why did God let Abraham continue the discussion? It seems that God was not only not bothered by Abraham’s arguments, but quite the opposite. God seems to be telling us that He loves having a partner in the Covenant who feels worthy enough to dare to criticize His own actions. God was no longer seeking to simply impose His will. That is why He discussed it with Abraham.

By Marcos Gojman

Bibliography: A Covenant for Love by Rabbi David Hartman, part of the book Jews and Judaism in the 21st. Century, edited by Rabbi Edward Feinstein.