CRITICAL NOTES.—
Genesis 18:21. Whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it.] Heb. Whether they have made completeness, or filled up the measure of their sins. And if not, I will know.] Onk. “But if they repent I will not take vengeance.”
Genesis 18:22. Stood yet.] Heb. And LXX. have, Was standing yet. Onk. “Stood in prayer before the Lord.”
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Genesis 18:20-22
GOD’S JUDGMENTS ON NATIONS
Though every man must give an account for himself to God at the last day, yet Providence does visit judgment upon nations, as such, in this world. Nations have no existence in the future life, and therefore must be punished in this life. Hence religious minds read some awful lessons in human history. They see the punishments of Divine justice visited upon communities of sinners. We have here God’s threatening of judgment upon a wicked nation; a threatening which was as sure as doom; for they had exhausted the Divine forbearance, and there was no more space for repentance. God’s judgments upon nations have the same general characteristics as this one upon Sodom and Gomorrah.
I. They are preceded by a long history of wickedness. God’s retribution does not fall until the harvest of sin is ripe. The wickedness of this people had grown so great as to become proverbial. (Isaiah 1:9.) A community must have existed for some time before it can give rise to proverbs. This way of referring to a nation’s moral character shows that it has been long established in evil ways. These cities were notorious for sins of the worst type. These are mentioned in the Bible as sins which bring down the judgments of God upon nations.
1. The shedding of innocent blood. (Genesis 4:10; Job 16:18.) This is the highest crime against man. The blood of the innocent appeals to heaven for vengeance. God hears their cry, and by terrible judgments requires their blood of guilty nations.
2. The peculiar sin of Sodom. The vilest form of sensuality derives its name from this wicked city. There are sins of the flesh so heinous that they degrade men below the level of the brute.
3. The oppression of the people of God. (Exodus 3:7.) God regards this sin as specially directed against Himself. To fail in duty, or to go wrong, are sins against God; but to afflict His people is directly to affront the Majesty of God. The same principle is to be observed in the case of those who, by the calamities of human life, are in an especial manner thrown upon the care and kindness of God. The oppression of widows and orphans is regarded in Scripture as a crime which calls for immediate judgment, the very tenderness of God urging Him to inflict it.
4. Withholding the hire of the labourer. (James 5:4.) Sins committed against society differ much in their consequences to individual men. The labourer who works for day wages suffers a grievous wrong when these are withheld. To rob him of the means by which he lives lies very near to crimes directed against his life. The judgments of God, sooner or later, overtake nations who have a bad eminence in such sins as these.
II. They are manifestly righteous. The judgments of God upon sinful communities of men are so conducted that the justice of them may appear.
1. They proceed slowly. The feet of vengeance travel with slow and measured steps. Though the punishment may be just in itself, and the sinful deserve no more time, yet it is delayed in order that God’s ways with men might appear to be right. When we intend acts of love and kindness, there is a propriety in our haste to do them. But in acts of punishment—of righteous judgment—all haste is unseemly. Mercy will rejoice over judgment as long as it possibly can. God is slow to punish. Judgment is His strange work. He endures even the vessels of wrath with much long-suffering. Men have time to see that the signal examples of Divine retribution which history furnishes are just and right.
2. They are only inflicted when the reasons of them have been made evident. God is represented as making careful inquiry. (Genesis 18:21.) Such language is evidently accommodated to our human weakness, but the intent of it is to impress the thought upon our minds, that God will not visit iniquity until it is fully proven.
3. They are self-vindicating. Sodom and Gomorrah are represented as crying to God for vengeance. (Genesis 18:20.) There are some sins which more than others loudly call to Heaven for punishment. Their just recompense thus approves itself to the conscience of humanity.
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
Genesis 18:20. God regards the sins of nations as such, and bears with them until they cry out for vengeance. They put a strain upon the Divine endurance until they become “very grievous,” and sparing mercy can hold out no longer.
The sins which destroy nations are those which strike at the very foundations of social order, purity, and safety—lawlessness, corruption in family life, general insecurity amidst the wreck of just institutions. Such sins are among those which “are open beforehand, going before to judgment.”
History reads us this awful lesson, that the fall of great nations has been brought about by their own corruptions.
Every sin makes a moral demand for punishment, and has a voice of crimination against the sinner. Sins, however, are more especially said to cry when they are peculiarly heinous, flagrant, aggravated, and calculated to provoke the wrath of God; and such were now the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah, which two cities are doubtless mentioned for their pre-eminence in crime, though it is clear from Deuteronomy 29:22-24 that several other cities in the immediate vicinity were involved in the same destruction.—(Bush.)
Because their sin is very grievous. Or, very heavy; such as the very ground groans under; the axle-tree of the earth is ready to break under it. Sin is a burden to God. (Amos 2:13.) It was so to Christ; He fell to the ground when He was in His agony. It was so to the angels who sank into hell under it. It was so to Korah and his company—the earth could not bear them. It was so to the Sodomites—they were so clogged with this superfluity of naughtiness, as St. James calleth it (Genesis 1:21), that God came from heaven to give their land a vomit.—(Trapp.)
“Because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grievous.” The ways of God are not governed by caprice—the result of mere will. They approve themselves to the reason of mankind.
Genesis 18:21. Every great judgment upon wicked nations is a special visitation of God.
There is a certain measure of sins—a capacity of iniquity—which wicked nations must fill before God’s great judgments come upon them.
God is represented as a just judge who has no prepossessions in regard to the case, but is determined to make an exact and careful scrutiny.
The sins of nations require time to develop into a full-grown body, but it is a body prepared for death (James 1:15).
These verses (20, 21), probably, are to be taken as retrospective; as being a parenthetical explanation of the whole scene, which might have been given at the outset, but is now incidentally thrown in: “The Lord had said, I will go down now and see”—speaking after the manner of men, to mark the perfect equity of His procedure, as not condemning hastily, or without inquiry. This had been His purpose in coming down to earth at all on this occasion. In the execution of this purpose, He had visited Abraham. And now, sending on to Sodom the angels who accompanied Him, and who were appointed to save Lot, He Himself remains behind.—(Candlish.)
God keeps open the door of repentance to the very last, so that the worst of characters may have no cause to complain of injustice.
Descent here is, of course, but figuratively ascribed to God. There could be no change of place with Him who is everywhere present; nor can examination be necessary to the eye of Omniscience. The language merely represents God as employing those means of investigation which are necessary to man to declare that all the acts of His vengeance are in perfect conformity to justice, and that He never punishes without the clearest reason. And surely, if anything can show unwillingness to punish, or a desire to see everything in the most favourable light, or an anxiety like that of a tender parent to cleave to the last hope that his child is not irrecoverably lost, we have it in these words. It is speaking of God, indeed, according to the manner of men, but it implies that He would look into the whole case; that He would be slow before He came to the resolution to inflict vengeance to the uttermost; that He would institute a careful inquiry, to see whether what He knew to be bad was incurably bad. In a word, it implies that if there was any possibility, consistently with justice, of sparing that devoted city, He stood ready, in heart and mind, to do it. If we rightly apprehend the drift of the whole narrative, Genesis 18:20-21 are inserted by way of parenthesis, in order to acquaint the reader with the main design for which the Lord, with His two accompanying angels, had descended and made this visit to Abraham. On any other interpretation it is not easy to understand the propriety of the expression, Genesis 18:21, “I will go down,” when He had actually “come down” already.—(Bush.)
God’s actions, both of mercy and judgment, are proofs of His complete knowledge of men. It is not a blind or irresponsible, but an all-seeing and rational Power that governs the world of nature and of man.
Genesis 18:22. Angels are God’s ministers for mercy and for judgment. They are sent forth to deliver the righteous, and to visit judgment upon the wicked.
Abraham stood yet before the Lord. And without such to stand and pray, the world could not stand: they bear up the pillars of it. Oh, the price with God, and profit to men, of praying persons! God will yield something to such when most of all enraged or resolved (Matthew 24:20). Lot was saved for Abraham’s sake when all the rest perished.—(Trapp.)