"Three men." A new reading-portion opens here (Vayera, "and he appeared") — Jehovah's third appearance (12:7; 17:1), at the oaks of Mamre, Abraham's home ground since chapter 13. But what Abraham sees is "three men," and the chapter slides between "Jehovah," "he," and "the men" without ever explaining itself; the arithmetic resolves only at 19:1, where "the two angels came to Sodom" — so the oldest readings take one of the three as Jehovah himself (the one who speaks from verse 10 on) and two as his messengers. The traditions diverge from there, each with a pedigree: the Talmud makes all three angels, one per errand (to announce Isaac, to heal, to destroy); most Christian readers follow the Jehovah-plus-two reading (see the angel note at 16:7); and the icon tradition — Rublev's famous Trinity — reads the three visitors as a picture of the triune God, a devotional reading the text itself never makes. This translation reports the seam and does not vote. One small crux inside it: "My Lord" (v3) is pointed by the Masoretes as the holy Adonai — addressed to God — though with other vowels the same letters read "my lords," plain courtesy to three strangers. The pointing is a reading decision a thousand years younger than the consonants; both are reported here — and the shelf itself splits over it: KJV prints "My Lord" (the divine title), ASV prints "my lord" — lowercase, plain courtesy — Douay, translating the Vulgate's Domine, sides with the title, and the NWT prints the name itself, "Jehovah," counting this verse among the 134 places where, by the scribal tradition's own lists, an original YHWH was exchanged for Adonai. One vowel-point, four Bibles, three readings.

The hospitality. Count the verbs: Abraham runs (v2), hurries (v6), says "Quick!" (v6), runs again (v7), and the boy hurries (v7) — a 99-year-old, in the heat of the day (and, the rabbis add, still recovering from chapter 17's surgery — tradition, not text). He promises "a little water… a piece of bread" and delivers a feast: three seahs of fine flour (several gallons of it), a tender calf, curds and milk — the understatement-then-abundance of real hospitality. (KJV domesticates the seahs to "three measures of fine meal"; NIV, like this translation, keeps the Hebrew measure.) "If I have found favor in your eyes" is Noah's idiom (6:8). And "they ate" — angels, eating — made later tradition squirm (Josephus and the Targums say they only seemed to eat; the angel of Tobit 12:19 confesses as much); the text itself is unbothered. From this scene the whole tradition of sacred hospitality descends — "some have entertained angels unawares" (Hebrews 13:2) is about this very afternoon.

Sarah's laugh. "Where is Sarah your wife?" — the visitors know her name, and her new one. The promise gets its clock again: "at this time next year," and in verse 14 "at the appointed time" — mo'ed, the very word of 17:21. Sarah, listening at the tent door, "laughed within herself" — as Abraham laughed on his face a chapter ago (17:17); the boy will be named for both laughs. Her monologue is worn and wry: "After I am worn out" (beloti — the word for worn-out clothes) "shall I have delight" — ednah, almost certainly the root of Eden: shall the garden's word come back, at ninety? — "and my lord so old?" KJV keeps the old music — "After I am waxed old shall I have pleasure, my lord being old also?" — where TLB trades the idiom for the scoff: "A woman my age?"

The merciful misquote, and the denial. When Jehovah repeats her words to Abraham, he edits them: she said "my lord is old"; he reports "shall I bear a child, old as I am?" The rabbis noticed (Bava Metzia 87a) and drew the lesson: even God bent a quotation for peace between husband and wife. Then the question that hangs over the whole chapter — "Is anything too wondrous for Jehovah?" Pala is the wonder-word (KJV and NIV alike read "too hard," which flattens it); Jeremiah will ask it back to God almost word for word (Jeremiah 32:17, 27). And the scene ends on the most human exchange in Genesis: "I did not laugh" — for she was afraid — "No — you did laugh." The fear is recorded without comment, and the laugh is not scolded away: it is kept, and in three chapters Sarah will name it out loud with joy ("God has made laughter for me," 21:6).

"Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do?" The men rise and look down over the face of Sodom — and the narration opens the divine deliberation to the reader. Abraham is brought into the counsel because of what he is for: "I have known him" — yada, the intimacy word (4:1); chosen, befriended — "so that he will command his children… to keep (shamar) the way of Jehovah, to do righteousness and justice" (tzedaqah u-mishpat). The righteousness reckoned to him (15:6) has become the family's job description, and the old promise "all the nations of the earth will be blessed through him" (12:3) is restated as the very reason he must be shown how judgment works. (The shelf divides over that verb like a seminar: ASV translates the word — "for I have known him" — NIV the meaning: "for I have chosen him." This translation keeps the word and lets the meaning ride inside it.)

The outcry, and the going-down. "The outcry of Sodom and Gomorrah" — za'aqah, the legal scream of the wronged: the word-family of Abel's blood "crying out from the ground" (4:10), and one day of Israel's own cry in Egypt (Exodus 3:7, 9). Note what is not said: Sodom's sin is not named here — what reaches heaven is its victims' voices (when Ezekiel finally names the charge, it is "pride, plenty of bread… and she did not strengthen the hand of the poor and needy," Ezekiel 16:49). Then: "Let me go down and see" — the exact procedure of Babel (11:5, 7). Heaven does not sentence on hearsay; judgment comes only after inspection — "and if not, I will know." (The clause "whether they have done entirely as the outcry" is compressed, rough Hebrew — asu khalah — and every version paraphrases it; this one keeps it close and lets it be rough.)

A corrected verse — says the margin itself. "Abraham remained standing before Jehovah." The Masoretes preserve a remarkable tradition about this half-verse: it is counted among the tiqqune soferim, the "corrections of the scribes" — by that tradition the sentence originally ran the other way, "Jehovah remained standing before Abraham" (waiting, while the two went on toward Sodom), and early scribes reversed it as too bold: one does not keep God standing before a man. This translation prints the received text and reports the margin — behind our verse may stand an even more daring one.

The audacity. "And Abraham drew near" — courtroom language — and files the Bible's first argument with God: "Will you really sweep away the righteous with the wicked?… Far be it from you!" — twice — "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do justice?" Mishpat: the word Sarai hurled in anger ("may Jehovah judge between me and you," 16:5), the name of the desert spring (En-mishpat, 14:7), now aimed at heaven itself, by a man arguing from God's own character against God's announced plan. English owes its famous cadence here to the KJV — "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?" (Geneva, a generation earlier: "the Judge of all the world") — but the Hebrew's closing word is the noun mishpat itself, so this translation reads "do justice" and keeps the echoes audible. And heaven takes the point without offense: "If I find in Sodom fifty righteous, I will spare the whole place for their sake" — "spare" is nasa, to lift, to carry (the load-bearing verb of 13:6): forgiveness pictured as the innocent few carrying the town.

"Dust and ashes." The negotiation runs 50 → 45 → 40 → 30 → 20 → 10, each round more deferential ("let not my Lord be angry… just this once more"), each granted without a moment's hesitation. Abraham's self-description is a sound-pun the English can nearly keep: afar va'efer, "dust and ashes" — the dust he was formed from (2:7) and sentenced to (3:19), owned at last in the first person. And listen to his verb: "will you ruin the whole city?" — shachat, the flood's own word (6:11-13). Abraham is asking, in the flood's vocabulary, whether God is about to do that again — and the answer, this time, is measured: inspection first, and mercy at every step of the count.

Why stop at ten? The text doesn't say. The traditions guess: ten as the smallest viable community (the synagogue's quorum of ten, the minyan, is traced to this verse); or below ten, the righteous can be carried out rather than the city spared — which is exactly what the next chapter does with one family. What the exchange establishes, it establishes for good: the Judge of all the earth accepts audit; mercy outbids arithmetic six rounds running; and the man promised the whole land spends his standing on a city that isn't his — one he has already rescued once (ch. 14), and where his nephew lives. "And Jehovah went his way… and Abraham returned to his place" — the court adjourns; the verdict waits on the inspection, next chapter.