Lot Fails to Prevent God's Judgment on Sodom, Genesis 19

Introduction

Chapter 19 mirrors chapter 18 by comparing and contrasting Abraham’s and Lot’s reception of visitors sent by God.

The two angels came to Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting in the gateway of Sodom. When Lot saw them, he rose to meet them, and bowed down with his face to the ground.  2 He said, “Please, my lords, turn aside to your servant’s house and spend the night, and wash your feet; then you can rise early and go on your way.” They said, “No; we will spend the night in the square.”  3 But he urged them strongly; so they turned aside to him and entered his house; and he made them a feast, and baked unleavened bread, and they ate.  4 But before they lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, both young and old, all the people to the last man, surrounded the house;  5 and they called to Lot, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us, so that we may know them.”  6 Lot went out of the door to the men, shut the door after him,  7 and said, “I beg you, my brothers, do not act so wickedly.  8 Look, I have two daughters who have not known a man; let me bring them out to you, and do to them as you please; only do nothing to these men, for they have come under the shelter of my roof.”  9 But they replied, “Stand back!” And they said, “This fellow came here as an alien, and he would play the judge! Now we will deal worse with you than with them.” Then they pressed hard against the man Lot, and came near the door to break it down.  10 But the men inside reached out their hands and brought Lot into the house with them, and shut the door.  11 And they struck with blindness the men who were at the door of the house, both small and great, so that they were unable to find the door.

As the scenes open, both men sit at an entrance: Abraham at the entrance to his huge Bedouin tent at noon on a hot day, Lot at the huge city gate, the entrance to his city Sodom in the evening. Because it is siesta time in chapter 18, Abraham can offer rest, food and refreshment before the visitors resume their travels. Because it is evening in Sodom, Lot offers the visitors lodging in his house through the night. Typically, the noon meal at siesta is the largest of the day, while the evening one is somewhat lighter, but is still called a “feast” (מִשְׁתֶּה mišteh) in v. 3. This is reflected in the detailed description of the large amount of food Abraham offers his visitors compared with the more modest repast Lot offered. Contrary to what some commenters claim, the text at this point does not portray Lot as stingier than Abraham or a less gracious host. His weaknesses will emerge as the story proceeds.

Both Abraham and Lot address their visitors with the word ʾadōnay, which can mean either “my lords” with a lower case "L" or “My Lord” with a capital letter referring to God. In Abraham’s case, we eventually discover that God himself is in fact one of the visitors; in Lot’s there is no such discovery. For, since there were three visiting Abraham, but only two to Lot, we may surmise that the missing third party is God. Since angels wield the very power of God, a single angelic visitor could have destroyed Sodom. God had told Abraham, "I will go down and see." But instead he sent two angels. Why were there two? Ancient Near Eastern legal procedure—reflected also in the laws of Moses—required two witnesses in order to condemn an accused person (Deut 17:6; 19:15; Matt 18:16; 26:60; 2 Cor 13:1; 1 Tim 5:19; Heb 10:28; Rev 11:3). The two angels investigated the situation and concluded that a verdict of death was required for Sodom.

Because in chapter 18 God himself was one of the visitors, Abraham could enter into a direct conversation with the Judge of All the Earth and probe his mind on what would be just in dealing with the moral outcry coming from Sodom. How should God punish the wicked without harming the righteous? Abraham does not himself presume to judge, but he is concerned that the God whom he worships act in accordance with his character as “the Judge of all the earth” who “does right.” Lot, on the other hand, appears sitting in the city gate, which is the place for trials to be held, and later in the story the men of Sodom criticize him for being a newcomer to the city and yet so soon presuming to be their judge (v. 9). Of course, they are responding to his attempt to deter them from harming his guests, but it may also imply that they are tired of his earlier interventions in the public trials in the city gate. Was this because they felt he was a hypocrite, or just because they hated his insistence on justice? We can only surmise, and we could be wrong.

That the two angels at first declined Lot’s offer and wished to spend the night in the public square (v. 2) was not because they considered him unworthy of themselves. Quite the contrary: by his offer of hospitality, Lot had showed himself one of the possible ten righteous whose presence in Sodom would induce God to withhold the judgment. By staying in the square, the angels want to see if others in the city will offer them shelter. But because Lot persists in urging them, they surmise that he knows there will be no other offers; so they accept his offer and go to his home, where their feet are washed, and they are given food and drink (v. 3).

In Lot’s house, as in Abraham’s tent, there was a separate quarter for the women. So the angels may not have seen his wife and daughters, who like Sarah at the tent door may have eavesdropped on the men’s conversation. Lot’s two daughters were engaged to be married to two men called Lot’s “sons-in-law” in v. 14. Unlike Abraham, Lot was blessed with more than one child, but since they were both girls, he too lacked a male heir.

After supper there came a knock at the door and Lot was presented with a problem. As the host, he was responsible for the safety and well-being of his guests. At the door of his house a huge mob of men—the text says “the men of the city, the men of Sodom, both young and old, all the people to the last man”—demanded that he bring the two guests outside, so that they could attack them and have sex with them (vv. 4-5) against their will. Again there is a subtle hint of wordplay, highlighting how this event contrasts with Abraham’s entertainment of God and the two angels in chapter 18. The verb translated “have sex with them” here in v. 5 is the same verb used in chapter 18 by God when he says to himself that he “knows” Abraham and will therefore not withhold his plan from him. “To know” in Hebrew (yādaʿ v. 5) means more than just to possess information: it means to enter into a personal and intimate relationship with someone. It is the term for marital sex as the most intimate and loving relationship imaginable. But in the mouths of these men it is a hateful term for the worst kind of violation of a helpless stranger. Two frequently used descriptions of the men’s crime are both insufficient. The oldest is that this was “gay” sex, which was in fact contrary to God’s laws (Lev 18:22-23; 1 Cor 6:9-10; 1 Tim 1:10-11) and to the laws of many pagan cultures surrounding Israel. But this was not just consensual homosexual sex: it was gang-rape. More recently, commentators wishing not to condemn homosexual practices have claimed that the crime was a violation of hospitality. That too is partially true, for we have seen how this incident is intentionally contrasted with Abraham’s hospitable behavior in chapter 18. But it is far more than that. What these men proposed to do was to gang-rape these guests in a manner most humiliating and degrading to their own moral standards. It was to trample in the mud their dignity and morals. It was to spit in the eye of God in the process.

To his credit, Lot was desperate to prevent this. But his solution was not to warn them that God, the Judge of All the Earth, would judge them and their city for this—this would have been Abraham’s choice, but to offer them a substitute: to allow them to rape and abuse his own two unmarried daughters, quite possibly killing them in the process (vv. 7-8). Thus we begin to see how Lot contrasts with Abraham. Lot thinks like the men of Sodom and seeks to deter them from one crime by offering them another, which he may have thought was a lesser one, since it avoided both homosexual practice and the violation of hospitality. But Lot knew that rape too was an offense against both man’s and God’s laws, and he fails in his attempt to be a “judge.”

But the mob refuses and presses in to force the door open, whereupon the angels unleashed the power of God to temporarily blind and disperse the mob with a blazing light (vv. 9-11). This only delayed their real punishment, for God was giving Lot and his family time to escape the city before its destruction by fire.

19:12-14

Then the men said to Lot, “Have you anyone else here? Sons-in-law, sons, daughters, or anyone you have in the city,  bring them out of the place.  13 For we are about to destroy this place,  because the outcry against its people has become great before the LORD, and the LORD has sent us to destroy it.”  14 So Lot went out and said to his sons-in-law, who were to marry his daughters,  “Up! Get out of this place, for the LORD is about to destroy the city.” But he seemed to his sons-in-law to be jesting. 

Having by now both saved Lot’s daughters from gang rape and determined that Sodom was indeed ripe for God’s judgment, in vv. 12-14 the angels set about the task of saving the fewer than ten innocent residents of the city from being killed with along with the rest of the city who were guilty, as God had assured Abraham. At this point we should clarify what the word “righteous” (Hebrew צַדִּיק ṣaddîq) means in the context of chapter 18-19. It does not mean sinless, for we have seen Lot’s personal failings and we will eventually see the failings of his wife and his two daughters as well. They would be held accountable for those failing ins different ways. But in the context of Abraham’s question (18:23)—should the innocent die together with the guilty—it is clear that what is meant here by “righteous” is a person not complicit in the sins that brought God’s judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah. Lot and his family were not complicit: they were innocent.

The only ones not in his own house who belonged to Lot’s extended family—at least potentially—were the two men engaged to his daughters. But when he came to them and urged them to leave the city with him, because God was going to destroy it (v. 14), they thought he was joking. This tells us that Lot was in the habit of joking about such serious matters, and that his plea now was “out of character” for him in the experience of the two young men.

19:15-22

As morning dawned, the angels urged Lot, saying, “Up! Take your wife and your two daughters who are here, lest you be swept away in the punishment of the city.”  16 But he lingered. So the men seized him and his wife and his two daughters by the hand,  the LORD being merciful to him, and they brought him out and set him outside the city.  17 And as they brought them out, one said, “Escape for your life.  Do not look back or stop anywhere in the  valley. Escape to the hills, lest you be swept away.”  18 And Lot said to them, “Oh, no, my lords.  19 Behold, your servant has found favor in your sight, and you have shown me great kindness in saving my life. But I cannot escape to the hills, lest the disaster overtake me and I die.  20 Behold, this city is near enough to flee to, and it is a little one. Let me escape there—is it not a little one?—and my life will be saved!”  21 He said to him, “Behold, I grant you this favor also, that I will not overthrow the city of which you have spoken.  22 Escape there quickly, for I can do nothing till you arrive there.” Therefore the name of the city was called  Zoar. 

In vv. 15-22 Lot has to be literally dragged out of the city by the angels, for he is reluctant even now to leave it. And once outside the city, he refuses to flee far away into the highlands surrounding the deep valley of the Dead Sea, but pleads to be able to settle closer, in Zoar. The angels reluctantly allow him that concession. But v. 30 tells us that he stayed in Zoar only briefly, because he was afraid—either of the similar mindset of its citizens or of a widening of God’s original judgment to include Zoar—and he went with his daughters up into the highlands, where the angels had originally ordered him to go.

19:23-26

The sun had risen on the earth when Lot came to Zoar.  24 Then  the LORD rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the LORD out of heaven.  25 And he overthrew those cities, and all the valley, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew on the ground.  26 But Lot’s wife, behind him, looked back, and she became  a pillar of salt. 

In vv. 23-26 the destruction of the cities of the Plain is described concisely, for the narrator is not interested in the details of how it occurred. Most scholars who believe the Bible think it was an earthquake, for that region lies on a known geological fault line, and earthquakes are often accompanied by lightning, which could have ignited the bitumen deposits in that area, causing the fire and smoke.

Lot’s wife ignored the warning in v. 19 “Run for your life. Don’t look back or stop anywhere in the valley. Escape to the hills, lest you be swept away.” She looked back and was killed, being turned into a pillar of salt (v. 26). Her looking back is thought to indicate her reluctance to leave behind what God had so decisively judged. This was her failing and her unique punishment.

19:27-29

And Abraham went early in the morning to the place where he had  stood before the LORD.  28 And he looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah and toward all the land of the valley, and he looked and, behold, the smoke of the land went up like the smoke of a furnace.  29 So it was that, when God destroyed the cities of the valley, God  remembered Abraham and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow when he overthrew the cities in which Lot had lived. 

Verses 27-29 put what has been described in the earlier part of this chapter inside the interpretive frame of Abraham’s meeting with God in chapter 18. Abraham sees the smoke of God’s promised judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah, but God remembered Abraham (v. 29) by saving Lot from the judgment because he was innocent of the sin of those cities.

The placement of the back reference to ch. 18 here in vv. 27-29, keeps what follows in the rest of ch. 19 separate. It is not part of the subject that dominates chs. 18 and 19:1-16—namely, God’s determination to judge the guilty and protect the innocent.

19:30-38

Now Lot went up out of Zoar and  lived in the hills with his two daughters, for he was afraid to live in Zoar. So he lived in a cave with his two daughters.  31 And the firstborn said to the younger, “Our father is old, and there is not a man on earth to come in to us after the manner of all the earth.  32 Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, that we may preserve offspring from our father.”  33 So they made their father drink wine that night. And the firstborn went in and lay with her father. He did not know when she lay down or when she arose.  34 The next day, the firstborn said to the younger, “Behold, I lay last night with my father. Let us make him drink wine tonight also. Then you go in and lie with him, that we may preserve offspring from our father.”  35 So they made their father drink wine that night also. And the younger arose and lay with him, and he did not know when she lay down or when she arose.  36 Thus both the daughters of Lot became pregnant by their father.  37 The firstborn bore a son and called his name Moab.   He is the father of the Moabites to this day.  38 The younger also bore a son and called his name Ben-ammi.   He is the father of the Ammonites to this day.

The rest of ch. 19 is of course germane to what precedes it, but it is more like a codicil or excursus. We have seen how God gradually separates the branches of the line of Terah from the main line leading to Israel, and eventually to Jesus. As each branches off and leaves the picture, we are told something about the future descendants. Abraham’s son by Hagar, the boy Ishmael, will not inherit the promise to Abraham, which will pass to Sarah’s son Isaac. But Hagar receives good promises about the success of his descendants in other areas. Eventually Esau will be allowed to branch off, when the promised line continues through his twin brother Jacob, and again we will be told of Esau’s descendants, who become the Edomites. In this passage we are told tacitly that Lot will not partake of the promises to Abraham, but through his two daughters he will become the ancestor of two nations who will play significant roles in Israel’s later history, Moab and Ammon. Although their ancestors were born out of incest, the nations themselves are not portrayed here in a negative way. Indeed, although no Ammonite or Moabite who did not become circumcised and convert to the faith of Israel could ever partake of the blessing promised to Abraham, we should not forget the heroic and godly roles played in subsequent history by a Moabite woman, Ruth, or that through her was the line that led to King David, who shared a distant Moabite ancestry.