The Court of Heaven and the Finger That Flipped Sodom

Before the cities burned, the plain had kings, and the kings had names, and the names were a confession nobody bothered to hide. Five thrones sat in the green valley below Abraham's hills, and on each throne a man who had been named for what he loved.

Bera ruled Sodom, and all his days he was in evil, for that is what his name carried in its bones, be-ra, in evil. Beside him Birsha of Gomorrah, all his days in wickedness, be-resha. Shinab held Admah, and his name was a small dagger aimed upward, for he hated our Father who is in heaven, sone av. Shemeber of Zeboiim wanted a wing. "Who will grant me a wing," he said, "that I may climb into the firmament and dwell there and make myself a name." And the last king sat in the city that was fit to be swallowed whole, tibbala, the city of Bela, which men later called Zoar when they wanted to forget.

Five Thrones in a Green Valley

They were rich. The plain was watered like a garden, and the gold came up out of the dirt as if the ground were ashamed to keep it. A man named for evil and a man named for hatred do not grow gentle when the harvests never fail. They grew laws instead. A city that punished a hand for offering bread. A court that fined the wounded for bleeding on the knife.

The cry of the valley went up. It did not stop going up.

The Judge Who Showed a Favorable Face

So a case opened, and the court that heard it was not in the valley.

God sat as Judge. This is the way of a judge. While the defense keeps pleading merit the judge waits, and his face stays turned toward the one who argues, open and unhurried, because a turned face is a door that has not yet shut. While that face stayed open, the advocate spoke.

The advocate was Abraham. He had fed three travelers at his table, learned where they were going, and understood that the going meant fire. So he stepped into the court and did the only thing a man can do against a verdict already leaning toward death. He bargained.

"Will You sweep away the righteous with the wicked," he said. "Perhaps there are fifty righteous in the city." And the Judge waited. The face stayed open. Abraham pressed lower, forty-five, then forty, then thirty, then twenty, the way a man feels along a wall in the dark for a door he is not sure exists. "Let not the Lord be angry," he said, "and I will speak just this once more. Perhaps ten shall be found there." And the Judge said the city would not be destroyed for the sake of ten.

Ten. He had talked the sentence down to ten souls. And then Abraham stopped, because there was nowhere lower to go, because beneath ten the valley had nothing.

The Advocate Falls Silent

Here is the law of this court, the one nobody teaches the accused.

The advocate pleads only as long as the Judge keeps his face turned toward him. The prosecutor waits only as long as the advocate pleads. These three move like a single mechanism. While Abraham spoke, the face stayed open and the prosecutor stood still at the edge of the chamber, holding his commission, saying nothing. The moment the merit ran out, the moment Abraham had no smaller number left in his mouth, the silence fell.

And the Lord went His way as soon as He had finished speaking with Abraham.

That is the sentence in plain words. The Judge rose. When the Judge rises the advocate has no standing to speak, so Abraham returned to his place, and his place was a hilltop, and from a hilltop a man can only watch. The prosecutor, who had waited through every number from fifty to ten, finally moved. He went out to carry out his mission.

Two figures came down the road toward the gate of Sodom at evening. The court had adjourned. The verdict was already walking.

One Finger on the One Rock

Men imagine the end of Sodom as an army of fire, legions of flame poured out of a furious sky, a whole heaven emptied onto the plain. The truth is smaller and far more frightening. The verdict needed no legion. It needed one angel, and the angel needed one finger.

The five cities did not stand on five separate footings. They sat together on a single great rock, one slab of stone holding the whole guilty plain the way a tray holds cups. The angel came to that rock. He did not strike it. He did not call down anything. He set one finger against it, the way a man sets a finger to the rim of a bowl, and turned it over.

The earth where the cry had risen now faced the dark beneath the world. The gardens went under. The gold went under. The court that fined the wounded and the beds built to torture strangers and the king who had wanted a wing into the firmament, all of it rolled into the place the rock had hidden, and the rock came up clean and bare into the evening air. He put forth his hand upon the flinty rock. He overturned the mountains by the roots. One finger of one hand against the one stone the whole valley trusted, and the trusting was over.

Bela alone was spared the swallowing, the city fit to be swallowed, left standing as Zoar so that a few could run to it and not look back.

From his hilltop Abraham looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah and toward all the land of the plain, and the smoke of the country went up like the smoke of a furnace. He had argued the price down to ten. There had not been ten. The advocate had done everything an advocate can do, and the rock had still turned, because a court can be merciful all the way down to its last honest number and the valley can still come up empty.