Scripture Verse

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? The Lord said, If I find fifty righteous people in the city of Sodom, I will spare the whole place for their sake. Genesis 18:23–26

Introduction

portrait
Philip Doddridge (1702–1751)

Words: Phi­lip Dodd­ridge (1702–1751). Pub­lished post­hu­mous­ly in Hymns Found­ed on Va­ri­ous Texts in the Ho­ly Scrip­tures, by Job Or­ton (Shrop­shire, Eng­land: Jo­shua Ed­dowes & John Cot­ton, 1755), num­ber 3, alt. Ab­ra­ham’s In­ter­ces­sion for So­dom. Abra­ham knew that God is just, and that right­eous be­liev­ers in the city act­ed as (us­ing mo­dern ter­mi­no­lo­gy) hu­man shields against di­vine wrath. How­ev­er, once the last of the faith­ful de­part­ed, pro­tect­ion end­ed, and judg­ment en­sued.

Music: Pen­te­cost (Boyd) Will­iam Boyd, 1864. First pub­lished in Thir­ty-Two Hymn Tunes Com­posed by Mem­bers of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ox­ford, 1868 (🔊 pdf nwc).

Lyrics

Great God! did pi­ous Ab­ram pray
For So­dom’s vile aban­doned race?
And shall not now Thy Church arouse
Our na­tion to im­plore Thy grace?

Base as we are, does not Thine eye
Its chos­en thou­sands here sur­vey?
Whose souls, deep hum­bled, mourn the crowds,
Who walk in sin’s de­struct­ive way?

O Judge su­preme, let not Thy sword
The right­eous with the wick­ed smite;
Nor bu­ry in pro­mis­cu­ous heaps
Rebels and saints, Thy chief de­light.

For these Thy child­ren, spare the land;
Avert the thun­ders big with death;
Nor let the seeds of la­tent fire
Be kin­dled by Thy flam­ing breath.

O! be not an­gry, migh­ty God,
While dust and ash­es seek Thy face;
But gent­ly bend­ing from Thy throne,
Renew, and still in­crease Thy grace.

Jesus the In­ter­ces­sor hear,
And for His sake Thy grace im­part
Which, while it stops the fie­ry stream,
Dissolves the most ob­du­rate heart.

Sodom shall change to Zi­on then,
And hea­ven­ly dews be scat­tered round,
That plants of pa­ra­dise may spring,
Where bale­ful poi­sons cursed the ground.

illustration
Abraham Sees Sodom in Flames
James Tissot (1836–1902)