How did Avrohom know that that taking care of guests took precedence over receiving the Divine Presence?
(18,1) “And Hashem appeared to him…and he lifted up his eyes and saw, and behold, three men were standing besides him, and he saw and he ran towards them.”
Rashi asked why the phrase “he saw” is written twice? See there for his explanation.
But it seems to me that we can explain that it is to allude to the understanding of what Chazal learned from here, that taking care of guests takes precedence over receiving the Divine Presence. Because there is to wonder at this teaching of Chazal, because all the mitzvos and knowledge of how we should conduct ourselves we know only from the Torah. If so, granted that we can learn this conduct from Avrohom, but from where did Avrohom understand that this is correct? It is true that he kept the whole Torah, even the halachah of Eruv Tavshilin, but that is because he was able to ascertain the Torah by himself. But this is not something which is explicit in the Torah, but rather it is something which we learn from the deeds of Avrohom Avinu.
But really this question is completely erroneous, because all the stories that are related in the Torah, are themselves Torah, as the Zohar explains. But at their source, they exist as different combinations of letters, and Holy Names of Hashem, and these then evolve and develop down to this world through the deeds of our forefathers, since all their deeds and words were done and said with great holiness, and through them they drew down those holy combinations of letters and clothed them with the combinations of letters which were the stories of their deeds. This differs from the commandments of the Torah, for example, “I am Hashem. your G-d”, which can already be ascertained above without any human deed, similar to that which Chazal taught “their eyes saw the parsha dealing with the laws of inheritance written in the heavens”.
This is what the posuk is explaining here about the great wisdom of Avrohom Avinu, that “he saw, and behold, there were three men standing besides him”, and he had a question as to whether taking care of guests takes precedence over receiving the Divine Presence or not, since this is not something which was explicit amongst the commands of the Torah. Because although all the mitzvos of the Torah he saw and ascertained from above, this was different, because it existed above as a completely different combination of letters. Therefore, before Avrohom had done this deed, there did not yet exist this combination of letters which spells out "and he ran towards them".
But even so, with his great wisdom and the Divine Spirit that was within him, he saw “and he ran towards them”. That is, he pondered those holy combinations which were written above, and ascertained that there should be drawn from them the combination which spells out "and he ran towards them", and therefore, so he did. This is a wondrous level of wisdom, that he was able to ascertain a combination of letters before it actually evolved and developed into this world.
And perhaps this is alluded to also from the phrase “from the entrance of the tent”, because this world is called a tent, as the posuk in Yeshayohu 40:22 says “He spread them out like a tent to dwell”, and the end of the upper worlds and the start of this world is called the entrance of the tent. Therefore, the posuk says that when Avrohom pondered the combination of letters as they evolved and developed from one world to the next, until they reached the “entrance of the tent”, he was able to ascertain the combination of letters that was there, which, as they further developed into this world, would produce the combination of letters “and he ran towards them”.