JANUARY 19 • 2023 | 43

them and bowing low, he said,
“I pray you now, Adonai, turn
aside to your servant’s house
and tarry all night and bathe
your feet and you shall rise up
early and go on your way.” Gen.
19:1–2
As there is no contextual ele-
ment to suggest that Lot might
be speaking to God, it seems
clear, in this case, that adonai
refers to the visitors.
The simplest reading then of
both texts — the one concern-
ing Abraham, the other, Lot
— would be to read the word
consistently as “sirs.” Several
English translations, indeed,
take this approach. Here, for
example, is the New English
Bible’s: “The Lord appeared to
Abraham… He looked up and
saw three men standing in front
of him. When he saw them, he
ran from the opening of his tent to
meet them and bowed low to the
ground. “Sirs,
” he said, “if I have
deserved your favor, do not pass
by my humble self without a visit.
”
Jewish tradition, however,
does not.
Normally, differences of
interpretation of biblical nar-
rative have no halachic impli-
cations. They are matters of
legitimate disagreement. This
case of Abraham’s addressee is
unusual, however, because if
we translate Adonai as “God,”
it is a holy name, and both the
writing of the word by a scribe,
and the way we treat a parch-
ment or document containing
it, have special stringencies in
Jewish law. If, by contrast, we
translate it as “my lords” or
“sirs,” it has no special sanc-
tity. Jewish law rules that in
the scene with Lot, adonai is
read as “sirs,” but in the case of
Abraham it is read as “God.”
This is an extraordinary
fact, because it suggests that
Abraham actually interrupted God
as He was about to speak, asking

Him to wait while he attended to
the visitors. According to tra-
dition, the passage should be
read thus: “The Lord appeared
to Abraham…He looked up
and saw three men standing
over against him. On seeing
them, he hurried from his tent
door to meet them, and bowed
down. [Turning to God] he
said: “My God, if I have found
favor in Your eyes, do not leave
Your servant [i.e. Please wait
until I have given hospitality to
these men].” [He then turned
to the men and said:] “Let me
send for some water so that
you may bathe your feet and
rest under this tree…”
This daring interpretation
became the basis for a prin-
ciple in Judaism: “Greater is
hospitality than receiving the
Divine Presence.” Faced with
a choice between listening to
God and offering hospitality
to what seemed to be human
beings, Abraham chose the lat-
ter. God acceded to his request
and waited while Abraham
brought the visitors food and
drink, before engaging him
in dialogue about the fate of
Sodom. How can this be so?
It seems disrespectful at best,

heretical at worst, to put the
needs of human beings before
attending on the presence of
God.
What the passage is telling
us, though, is something of
immense profundity. The
idolaters of Abraham’s time
worshipped the sun, the stars
and the forces of nature as
gods. They worshipped power
and the powerful. Abraham
knew, however, that God is not
in nature but beyond nature.
There is only one thing in the
universe on which He has set
His image: the human person,
every person, powerful and
powerless alike.
The forces of nature are
impersonal, which is why
those who worship them even-
tually lose their humanity. As
the book of Psalms puts it:
Their idols are silver and gold,
the work of men’s hands.
They have mouths, but cannot
speak,
Eyes, but cannot see;
They have ears, but cannot hear,
nostrils but cannot smell…
They that make them become like
them,
And so do all who put their trust
in them.

Psalms 115:4–8
One cannot worship imper-
sonal forces and remain a per-
son; compassionate, humane,
generous, forgiving. Precisely
because we believe that God is
personal, someone to whom
we can say “You,” we honor
human dignity as sacrosanct.
Abraham, father of mono-
theism, knew the paradoxical
truth that to live the life of
faith is to see the trace of God
in the face of the stranger. It
is easy to receive the Divine
Presence when God appears
as God. What is difficult is
to sense the Divine Presence
when it comes disguised as
three anonymous passersby.
That was Abraham’s greatness.
He knew that serving God and
offering hospitality to strangers
were not two things but one.
In one of the most beautiful
comments on this episode,
Rabbi Shalom of Belz notes
that in verse 2, the visitors are
spoken of as standing above
Abraham (nitzavim alav),
while in verse 8, Abraham is
described as standing above
them (omed aleihem). At first,
the visitors were higher than
Abraham because they were
angels and he a mere human
being. But when he gave them
food and drink and shelter,
he stood even higher than the
angels.
By choosing the most radical
of the three possible interpre-
tations of Genesis 18, the Sages
allowed us to hear one of the
most fundamental principles
of the life of faith: We honor
God by honoring His image,
humankind.

The late Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks

served as the chief rabbi of the

United Hebrew Congregations of the

Commonwealth, 1991-2013. His teach-

ings have been made available to

all at rabbisacks.org. This essay was

written in 2019.


• Do you think the main focus of Judaism is our
relationship with God or with our fellow man?
• We honor God by honoring His image,
humankind. How can we do this? How can you
do this in your life?
• To live the life of faith is to see the trace of God
in the face of the stranger. How different from
you does the stranger need to be? Do you think
there is a difference between doing chessed for a
fellow Jew or a non-Jew?