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?