Human shields and collective punishment This week's parsha - Va-yairuh

HH

Human shields and collective punishment

This week's parsha - Va-yairuh

HY decides to destroy Sedoam and its 4 sister cities, because of their wickedness and evil, even torturing to death a young girl for giving food to a pauper. HY says I must tell Avrohom, after all, I gave him this land and these are his constituents. Avrohom immediately begins to try to save them. He argues, if there are fifty righteous, even if they don't have the merit to save everyone, at the very least You can't kill them.

Here there is a plausible indication that Avrohom understood that on less than 50 there could be collective punishment, this can be refuted.

HY says, if there are 50 righteous I will spare everyone. 50 human shields save 5 whole cities.

But there weren't 50, and eventually Avrohom tried to save one city if there were 10, but there weren't.

So the angels set out to destroy all 5 cities. But Loat was slow and he pleaded to have refuge in the smallest and youngest of the cities, and thus one of the 5 wicked evil cities, which didn't even have 9 righteous people, was spared on account of Loat. So Loat and his daughter shielded a city of wicked evil people.

Really throughout the Torah we find that one tzadik can save his entire city, or even the entire world. Mesushelach held up the great flood until his passing. When Moshe Rabbainu sent the spies to Israel he told them to ascertain whether or not there was a "tree" - a tzadik whose merit would stand for them. There are many more examples.

So why did Sedoam need 10/9 per city, whose presence would be shields for the evil wicked inhabitants? 

Either because of their sheer utter evil and wickedness. Or, Avrohom wasn't asking for the merit of 10 tzadikim, just 10 people who were righteous - meaning not culpable and deserving punishment, and thus they should be shields on everyone else who were very culpable. Either way it appears that this shield and saving apparatus would have only taken effect on account of Avrohom's prayer and request from HY.

Na NaCh NaChMa NaChMaN MAyUMaN