"My Lord, if I have found favor in Your sight, don't pass by but stay a while and let us tend to your comforts. Rest under the shade of this tree while I fetch water to wash your dusty feet and prepare food for you to eat."

Abraham and Sarah fixed a special meal which Abraham placed before the men. He then stood back to watch respectfully while they ate.

"Where is Sarah?" they asked Abraham.

"She's in the tent," Abraham replied.

"I will return in nine months time and Sarah, your wife, will have a son."

Sarah, who was hiding behind door of the tent listening to the men's conversation, laughed quietly. There was no way, she thought, that she and her husband could become parents at their advanced age.

"Why did Sarah laugh, saying, 'How can I, who am old, have a child?' Is anything too hard for God? I will come back later and Sarah will have had a son."

Sarah, who was surprised and frightened that they had heard her laughing comment to those inside the tent, came out and bowed low before the men.

"I didn't laugh!" she protested, not realizing how useless it was to try and deceive God.

"No, you did laugh," she was corrected for her lie.

When the men got up to continue their journey Abraham rose too, intending to walk with them for a short distance.

Then the Lord, who was one of the spirit beings who had appeared in human form, raised a question. "Shall I hide from Abraham what I am going to do?" He asked. "Since Abraham's children will become a great and mighty nation, and from his seed the Son of man will be born?

"I've made myself known to him so that he might instruct his family in the ways of righteousness and I might perform those things that I have promised him."

Then the Lord said to Abraham, "Because of the reports my angels give me on the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah I have decided to see for myself whether or not what I have heard is true. If not, I will know." Then the angels who were with them turned aside and headed toward the land of Sodom and Gomorrah, but the Lord stayed and talked with Abraham.

Abraham, remembering Lot and his family as well as any other good folk who might dwell in the land of Sodom, asked, "Would you destroy the righteous with the wicked? Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city? Would you not spare it for the fifty righteous that live there?

"It's not at all like you to kill the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous suffer the same fate as the sinner! The Judge of the earth does only those things that are fair and just!"

The Lord said, "If I find in Sodom fifty righteous then I will spare all the city for their sake."

"Now that I, who am merely a man made of dust, have dared to question God, I wonder if you will destroy the city if there are five less than the fifty?" Abraham asked, "Would you destroy all the city for lack of five?"

"If I find forty-five righteous I will not destroy it," God assured him.

Then Abraham asked if God would spare the city for forty righteous people. God patiently assured him that He would spare the city for forty. Abraham asked the same question again with the sum of thirty and God told him that He would spare the city for thirty. Once more Abraham asked the question, lowering the number to twenty righteous. Yes, God said, he would spare the city if there were found twenty righteous people in it. Finally, Abraham asked if God would spare the city if ten righteous people could be found.

"I will not destroy the city for the sake of ten," God assured and when they had done speaking, Abraham returned to his place, hoping that the number was low enough that Lot and his family would be spared.

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