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In which Abraham orders his wife to make bread out of two gallons of flour, and in which God decides it's okay to kill up to fifty good people if you think they're surrounded by evil.
The first two verses of this chapter are disconnected.
18:1 — It's mid-day in the middle east. It's hot. While Abraham sits beneath a shady tree, God appears to him.
18:2 — Abraham looks up and sees three men who are not God.
The second verse is the important one. The first one only establishes the presence of God (because he's apparently not as omnipresent as Christians would have me believe). But then in 18:3, Abraham speaks to the three men (whose feet he is bowing at) as if they were God, and offers them water and food. Through 18:5 he refers to himself as their servant, and he is acting very much like a sycophant to these men.
The men demand that he do what he offered.
Being a man, Abraham's not one to take on a woman's duties, so he commands Sarah to "get three seahs of fine flour and knead it and bake some bread." (18:6) In case you were wondering, a seah is "a unit of dry measure ... which equals one-third of a bath", which is about twenty-two liters, making one seah about 7 1/3 liters or nearly 2 gallons. Of flour alone. That's way too much bread for three men.
Being a slave-owner, Abraham's also not about to take on a slave's duties, so he has a slave kill and cook a calf as well as bring along some milk and curds (18:7-9).
Abraham watches them eat while they question him about the location of Sarah. He answers, and suddenly God is back saying that he'll be back in about a year "and Sarah your wife will have a son." (18:10)
Apparently, Abraham never bothered to tell his wife that God had spoken to him and told him that they'd have some babies eventually (she probably would have thought Abraham delusional) because she overhears the conversation and laughs. I wonder what she thought Abraham was doing that one time when he went around and chopped everyone's dick off. It's not like that's a rational thing to do. She must have asked what the deal was. She must have wondered why Isaac was hobbling around bowlegged looking despondant and in massive amounts of pain. Something's amiss here, and it smacks of an abusive relationship.
Back to the point. In 18:12 Sarah laughs and makes the rational thought, "After I am worn out and my master is old, will I now have this pleasure?"
But she's caught red handed! God says to Abraham, "Why did Sarah laugh ... Is anything too hard for the LORD?" Then he confirms, "I will return to you at the appointed time next year and Sarah will have a son." (18:12-14)
And then this exchange happens, which is too funny not to print in full:
Sarah was afraid, so she lied and said, "I did not laugh."
But he said, "Yes, you did laugh."
At first she was all :P but then she serious'd. (18:15)
Later on, the three visitors get up to leave. They start heading in Sodom's direction, and Abraham follows them briefly to see them off into the desert heat. God randomly thinks to himself throughout 18:17-21:
Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do? Abraham will surely become a great and powerful nation, and all nations on earth will be blessed through him. For I have chosen him, so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the LORD by doing what is right and just, so that the LORD will bring about for Abraham what he has promised him.
The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great and their sin so grievous that I will go down and see if what they have done is as bad as the outcry that has reached me. If not, I will know.
Cliff notes: God's heard rumors about the kinds of terrible things they do down in Sodom (even though the Bible's audience doesn't know what those are yet), but he wants to verify that the rumors are true (because he's not as omnicient as everyone would have me believe), so he's going to physically travel to Sodom (because God has a physical form that he designed man after, being that it's such an intelligently designed one that men are born with the foreskins he despises so much) and take a peek around, and he's going to do all of this because... Well, because Abraham's awesome.
The visitors leave. Abraham grows a pair of balls and talks Serious Business™ to God. I feel the words in 18:23-25 are of particular importance, so I'll let them speak for themselves:
Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked? What if there are fifty righteous people in the city? Will you really sweep it away and not spare the place for the sake of the fifty righteous people in it? Far be it from you to do such a thing — to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike. Far be it from you! Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?
Abraham is basically asking God if God's history of amounting innocent deaths to collateral damage is the right kind of impression that the being we're all supposed to follow, worship, obey, and (most of all) mimic should be making. It's an important question that can be applied to any time of war the human population has ever been involved in. With one difference. God is the judge of all humanity. He decides what's wrong and right. God's answer to Abraham's question will be an insurmountable, immutable law seared into the very flesh of time, history, society, and government forever. God must choose his answer wisely. And what he comes up with in 18:26 is:
Well, if the collateral damage is less than fifty, it's acceptable.
Did you hear that, warlords and world leaders? Did you hear that, Dead Hitler? If you reckon something to be wicked, just kill it. As long as there aren't a whole fifty good people in range, just drop that bomb. Words of wisdom from the Amazing God Almighty. Praise Jesus! Hallelujah! Amen!
Abraham is no more a fan of this (non-)logic than I am, and he further questions God (after a little brown-nosing) throughout 18:27-32, saying, "Well, what if there are less than fifty good people in Sodom? Will you still kill them?"
And God changes his mind. "Okay," says God, "If there are forty-five good people, I will spare the city."
Abraham says, "What if there are forty good people there?"
"For the sake of forty, I will not kill everybody."
"How about thirty?"
"Fine," says the Lord, "I won't kill everyone if I find thirty nice guys."
Abraham pushes his luck: "Twenty?"
"Okay, okay," says God, "I will suffer them if there are twenty good people."
Abraham: "Ten?"
"For the sake of ten, I will not destroy it."
Abraham's a hell of a negotiator. Having talked the odds of God comitting genocide again down to something favoring the continued existence of the Sodomites (Abraham may have been motivated to do this by caring for his Sodomite nephew Lot), God leaves Abraham to his thoughts. After a while, Abraham goes home.
