18:24-32 record the details of Avraham’s request from G-d. 18:24,25 begin that Avraham requested for G-d to spare the city (Sodom) if there were fifty righteous people living in the city. God agreed to this request, 18:26. However, Avraham continuing pleading, and he asked G-d to spare Sodom, if there were fewer righteous people, 45 people, 18:27,28. G-d again agreed to Avraham’s second request, 18:28. However, Avraham continuing pleading with G-d, lowering the needed righteous people to 40, 30, 20 and finally 10. G-d agreed to all of Avraham's requests, but then Avraham stopped whittling down the numbers, 18:27:32.
Why did Avraham start his request with fifty righteous/ innocent people and why did he stop at ten people? Why did he not ask for G-d to spare Sodom if there was one righteous/ innocent person in the area?
Rashi (on 18:24,28,29,32) suggests that the basic principle was that ten righteous people could save an area, and the number fifty was based on ten righteous people saving five different places. The number forty-five was based on the idea of nine people in each place and adding G-d to the number in each place. The number forty was for ten righteous people in four cities to save four cities, and then the declining numbers would correspond to saving fewer and fewer areas. Finally, Rashi suggests that Avraham did not request less than ten righteous/ innocent people since he had learned from his request of 45, i.e., nine for each city, that nine righteous/ innocent people were insufficient to save a city.
Ramban (on 18:24) questions Rashi's logic. If ten righteous people were sufficient to save a place, then the Ramban wonders, why on each occasion that Avraham reduced the number of righteous people, Avraham began his request by asking for G-d's mercy. If the reduction in the number of righteous people matched the reduction in the number of places, then the request did not involve any more mercy on G-d's part since it was the same ratio as the first request of fifty righteous people. Also, the Ramban does not understand, why Avraham should not have requested for nine people for one place since this was not the same as requesting for G-d to spare five places for 45 people since maybe in one place there were nine righteous people but not nine righteous people in five different places? The Ramban concludes that he cannot understand how Rashi came to his explanation and he thinks that Avraham was always praying for five cities. Yet, the Ramban leaves the numbers of people unexplained.
Firstly, it seems that Avraham was only praying for the people of Sodom either because he knew them from chapter 14 (he saved them) or because of Lot, as in the conversation between G-d and Avraham, the Torah only refers to one city and the entire focus of the story is on Sodom. However, why the different numbers?
My guess is that basis for the numbers of people that Avraham suggested was because Sodom was a small city, more like a village than a city. Accordingly, the first number of fifty might have been because fifty people were a small majority of the number of families. For example, there might have been 90 families living in Sodom, and then fifty righteous people would be a majority per family. The next number 45, the only non-zero ending number, might have been since that was very close to being half the population. Afterwards, Avraham reduced the number since he was basing himself on having a meaningful minority which could save the city.
It could also be that initially Avraham might have thought that G-d would respond to his first request by agreeing to a higher number, say 150 people, and then they would have compromised at 100. However, G-d surprised Avraham by agreeing to 50 righteous/ innocent people as being enough to save Sodom, which indicated to Avraham that there did not have to be a large majority of righteous people to save the city. This might have prompted Avraham to continue even with having a meaningful minority of people.
Why did Avraham stop at ten? Wenham (1994) notes that, "the tone of G-d's replies conveys the feeling that He cannot be pushed much further." Or, maybe Avraham was very confident that there were ten righteous/ innocent people in Sodom. Or, maybe Avraham thought that less than ten righteous people were too small a minority to save Sodom.
A possible proof that Sodom was not very large is from the battle between Avraham and the four kings in chapter 14. 14:14 records that Avraham attacked the four kings with 318 men, which implies that the force of the four kings was around the same size or smaller since he would not have attacked a much large force. Furthermore, if the army of the four kings was around 300-500 soldiers, then this indicates that Sodom and his allies were not able to gather a much larger force since the four kings would surely have taken enough soldiers from Mesopotamia for them to be confident of winning in all of their battles against the five “cities,” 14:8,9. Finally, in olden time, when there was a war, every adult able-bodied man went out to fight, which implies that Sodom (and each of its allies) would have an army and a male adult population of around 80-100 men or less.
Note, after Lot leaves Sodom, he pleads to go to Tzo’ar, and he bases his request on the fact that it was a tiny place, 19:20. This means that Tzo’ar was even smaller than Sodom.
After discussing this idea in my synagogue, a friend, Oded Walk, suggested another proof that Sodom was a small place. 19:4 records that the whole population, old and young, surrounded Lot's house, but how can there have been enough room if the population was very large? Due to this problem, Rashi (on 19:4, see Siftei Chachamim on Rashi's comments) suggested that 19:4 does not mean literally that the entire population of the city surrounded the house, but that no one in Sodom protested the people’s treatment of Lot. It is much simpler to understand 19:4 that the population of Sodom was small, and then everybody or a majority of people (50 people?) could have surrounded Lot’s house.
The idea that Sodom was a dinky place might answer the archeological question that no cities have been unearthed that accord with the period of Avraham's approximate lifetime, 1800 BCE. A friend, Aaron Israel, suggested to me that due to the great upheaval that occurred after the conversation between G-d and Avraham, one would not expect to find any archeological remains, but people have searched. The sites that have been suggested, Bab edh-Dhra and Numeria (on the southeastern present-day Jordanian side of the Dead Sea), seemed to have been destroyed around 2300 BCE, see Rast 1987. Closer to Avraham’s likely time is that Harris and Beardow (1995) suggest that the cities were situated on the peninsula (El Lisan) which divides the two basins of the Dead Sea and the destruction occurred around 1900 BCE. On the other hand, if Sodom was just a dinky village, then one would not expect to find any remnants of large buildings that would have indicated a city in ancient times. Who knows?
Rast, Walter, E., 1987, Bronze Age cities along the Dead Sea, Archaeology, 40:1, pp. 42-49.
Harris, G. M. and A. P. Beardow, 1995, The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah: a geotechnical perspective, Quarterly Journal of Engineering Geology and Hydrogeology, 28:4, pp. 349–362.
Wenham, Gordan J., 1994, Genesis, Waco: Word Books.