Genesis 19:29 gives the whole Sodom episode its underlying machinery in a single sentence. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan translates it plainly.
"And it was when the Lord destroyed the cities of the plain, that He remembered the righteousness of Abraham, and sent forth Lot from the midst of the overthrow, when He overthrew the cities wherein Lot had dwelt."
Notice what the verse does not say. It does not say God remembered Lot's righteousness. Lot has been rescued, but the verse credits Abraham, not him. The rabbis of Bereshit Rabbah made this explicit: Lot owed his life entirely to his uncle's merit. The bargaining in Genesis 18, the ten-righteous ceiling, the hand-pulling angels — all of it traces back to Abraham's intercession, not to anything Lot himself did.
This is the Torah's first clear example of zekhut avot — the merit of the ancestors — as a functioning principle of divine judgment. A later descendant can be saved on the strength of an earlier ancestor's righteousness. The rabbis of the Talmud (Shabbat 55a, Berakhot 7b) would develop this into a cornerstone of daily Jewish prayer: "Remember the covenant of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob."
The Aramaic phrase the Targum uses — udkar et zakhutha d'Avraham, "He remembered the merit of Abraham" — will echo through synagogue liturgy for two millennia.
And yet, within the same verse, there is a quiet rebuke. God pulled Lot out of "the cities wherein Lot had dwelt." Wherein he dwelt. He chose those cities. He moved his family there. His rescue is real, but the verse will not let us forget that he authored his own crisis.
The takeaway: the prayers of people who loved you can still save you from a fire you lit yourself.