And it came to pass—not a pluperfect (Rosenmüller), as if a direct continuation of the preceding narrative, but a preterit, being the commencement of a new subdivision of the history in which the writer treats of Lot's residence in Zoar—when God—Elohim.
Hence, as a fragment of the original Elohist's composition, the present verse is by the pseudo-criticism connected with Genesis 17:27 (Ilgen, Tuch, Block); but "a greater abruptness of style and a more fragmentary mode of composition" than this would indicate "could not easily be imagined" (Kalisch).
The change in the Divine name is sufficiently explained by the supposition that the destruction of the cities of the plain was not at the moment viewed by the writer in its connection with the Abrahamic covenant and intercession, but as a sublime vindication of Divine justice—destroyed (literally, in he destroying, by Elohim, or in Elohim's destroying) the cities of the plain, that God remembered Abraham.
If the narrative containing the intercession of Abraham and the overthrow of Sodom was due to the Jehovist, how came the earlier author to know anything about those events? The obvious allusions to them in the present verse could only have been made by one acquainted with them.
Either, therefore, the present verse proceeded from the hand of the so-called Jehovist, or it requires explanation how in the original document this should be the first and only occasion on which they are referred to.
And—in answer to Abatham's prayer (Genesis 18:23)—sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow (there is no reason to suppose that Abraham was aware of his nephew's escape), when he overthrew—literally, in the overthrowing of the cities, the inf.
being construed with the case of its verb—the cities in the which—one of which (cf. 15:7)—Lot dwelt.