there' and He said, 'I will not destroy it for forty's sake.' And he said unto Him, 'O, let the Lord not be angry, and I will speak, 'Peradventure there shall thirty be found there.' And He said, 'I will not do it, if I find thirty there.' And he said, 'Behold now, I have taken upon me to speak unto the Lord: peradventure, there shall be twenty found there.' And He said, 'I will not destroy it for twenty's sake.' And he said, 'O 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.'"[1]
Nevertheless, Sodom was destroyed,—showing that there were not ten, and presumably not one individual in that city, who was not given up to sin and wickedness. That this was the case with all, old and young, is expressly stated, in the following chapter, where the people of Sodom are described as gathering round Lot's house, with purposes of violence: "The men of the city, the men of Sodom, compassed the house round, both old and young, all the people from every quarter."[2] The young children, indeed, could not yet have entered into their plans of iniquity, though they might have been among the crowd. But what could be expected of children growing up under such circumstances, and with such examples of wickedness daily before and on all sides of them, but that they should infallibly become heirs of iniquity; and inheriting the propensities, would come at length also into all the wicked practices, of their fathers? In such case, would it not be a mercy to remove them from the world, and thus take them from certain contamination?
