The angels turn. They set their faces toward Sedom. And the Targum on Genesis 18:22 pauses to tell us what Abraham does in that moment: he "supplicated mercy for Lot, and ministered in prayer before the Lord."
The Hebrew text is famously ambiguous here. Our standard texts say "Abraham was still standing before the Lord," but the Masoretic tradition preserves this as one of the tiqqunei soferim — scribal corrections where the original read "the Lord still stood before Abraham," an idiom too bold for later copyists. The Targum resolves the awkwardness by telling us exactly what Abraham is doing in that charged stillness: praying. Specifically, praying for his nephew Lot.
This is an important shift. In the Hebrew, the argument that follows looks like a general philosophical debate about whether God should destroy the righteous with the wicked. In the Targum, it is framed from the start as a family intercession. Abraham is bargaining on behalf of someone specific.
That framing matters theologically. Prayer that moves the heavens, the rabbis often taught, is prayer rooted in real relationship. Abstract petitions rarely shake the gates. The cry of an uncle for a wayward nephew does.
The takeaway: the most powerful prayers are the specific ones, spoken on behalf of the people whose names you actually know.