January 8, 2026

Business by the Book

Genesis 18:32 And he said, Oh let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak yet but this once: Peradventure ten shall be found there. And he said, I will not destroy it for ten’s sake.

When Abraham began this negotiation with the Lord his starting place was fifty righteous souls. If the Lord found fifty righteous, destruction would be waived. Abraham got the Lord all the way down to ten righteous souls. If the Lord could find ten souls that were righteous He would forgo the impending destruction.

There is a question that this raises. Why was the Lord so willing to lower the limit from fifty to ten? I believe the answer is that the Lord knew that there were not fifty, or forty, or thirty, or twenty, or even ten righteous souls abiding there. The Lord knew something that Abraham did not know, He knew how many righteous were there, and He knew there were not ten. Therefore, it cost the Lord nothing to make the concessions in the negotiation for He knew something Abraham did not know.

Was the Lord unfair? No! Was He playing with Abraham? No! But He did have facts that Abraham did not have. Those facts allowed the Lord to be conciliatory in this negotiation without costing Him anything. NOTE:  Before forming an opinion about this matter make sure to visit this devotion in the coming days for we will deal with this issue more. Time and space forbids me from dealing with the details in this devotion.

Think about it like this. You are a marketing representative and you sell widgets (a fictitious product used in marketing classes) and for every widget you sell you make a $5.00 commission, regardless of the selling price. The pricing guidelines state a selling price between $10.00 and $30.00, with the average selling price usually being around $20.00: the most you ever sell one for is $30.00 and the lowest price you ever sell one for is $10.00. But whether you sell it for the highest price or the lowest price you still only make a $5.00 commission. If you present this widget to a potential customer, offering it at $30.00 and they buy it, great, you made $5.0o. However, if they want to negotiate and offer you $25.00 you would probably agree without much hesitation, you still sold it within your pricing structure and still made $5.00. (This is an oversimplification of a complex marketing strategy in which a manufacturer sometimes offers a transfer price that guarantees profits regardless of the actual sales price, they do this in order to artificially increase market share.)

In this make-believe scenario you know something the customer does not know. You know that it costs you nothing if you drop your price. Likewise, the customer may know that they only have $15.00 to spend on a widget and cannot possibly spend more. Therefore a negotiated final price may be $15.00. You win in that you make a $5.00 commission, the company wins in that they move merchandise, increase market share, and keep their employees working, and the customer wins in that they obtain a widget for the amount of money which they have to spend. It is a win, win, win; everybody wins. The unknown in every negotiation is what ultimately determines the outcome. Find the unknown and the strategies for negotiation can be properly determined.

I personally believe that more negotiation could have taken place between the Lord and Abraham, but Abraham stopped asking the Lord for concessions at ten souls. Tomorrow’s devotion will deal with strategies Abraham could have employed to possibly obtain a different outcome.

Dr. William Howe