What Does Genesis 18:33 Mean?

When the Lord had finished speaking with Abraham, he left, and Abraham returned home. The conclusion of the chapter is quiet and domestic. The Lord finished speaking and left; Abraham returned home. The chapter that opened with the Lord arriving at the tent of Mamre closes with the Lord departing and Abraham returning. The hospitality is over; the divine announcement has been given; the intercession has been conducted and concluded. Two major covenant events, the announcement of Isaac's birth within the year and the intercession for Sodom, have been accomplished in a single afternoon's encounter with three visitors at the tent entrance.

The separation of the Lord from Abraham at the chapter's close, with two going toward Sodom and Abraham going home, sets up the tension of chapter 19: Lot will face the judgment alone, with only the two who have entered the city to find what is actually there. Abraham's intercession has established the threshold for sparing; the chapter 19 investigation will determine whether the threshold is met. The patriarch who interceded for the city and then returned home waits for the outcome without being present for the investigation. Abraham's role was the prayer; the execution of the divine justice belongs to the divine agents who entered the city.

The return home after the intercession is the ordinary consequence of extraordinary prayer: life continues; the intercessor goes back to the tent; the outcome belongs to the one who has accepted the prayer and who acts according to His own just character. Jesus who "always lives to make intercession" (Hebrews 7:25) similarly acts in the space between the prayer and the outcome, in the ongoing work of the High Priest who continues His intercession while history unfolds. The patriarchal pattern of praying and then returning to ordinary life while trusting the Judge of all the earth to do right is not the abandonment of the concern but the mature expression of faith in the one who has heard and accepted the intercession.