Part 1: Introduction | Part 2: Journey to Canaan | Part 3: Settlement | Part 4: Establishment | Part 5: Covenant | Part 6: Ishmael. Not. | Part 7: Implemented | Part 8: Isaac Promised
Here the story turns to what we might call certification: through two events God grows Abraham–sanctifies him, as we would say in a New Testament context–into the kind of person who can be an effective patriarch. The first of these is the destruction of Sodom and its aftermath, the outcome of Lot’s world-focused life.
The two angelic messengers, we learn, have come to rescue Lot from the coming fiery judgment on Sodom. As they head toward the doomed city (Ge 18.16, 22), God records his thoughts about Abraham. He has potential, God says, though he has a ways to go yet (Ge 18.17-19). God graciously recognizes and sets out to remediate his faults.
He tells Abraham that he is “investigating” whether to destroy Sodom for its sin (Ge 18.20-21).
Does he need to do that? Of course not; he’s omniscient. But he is displaying longsuffering, and justice (cf Ge 18.25!), and fairness. To call him “the angry Old Testament God” is a simplification worthy of ridicule.
What follows is the notable scene in which Abraham bargains with God for the deliverance of Sodom–and the pace of the narrative slows even more. Abraham finally gets God to agree that if there are just ten righteous people in the city, it will be spared (Ge 18.32). Abraham probably thinks that will be enough; we eventually learn that Lot’s family includes his wife (Ge 19.15), two unmarried daughters (Ge 19.8), at least two sons (Ge 19.12), and at least two married daughters and their husbands (Ge 19.14). That’s ten, at a minimum; that’s enough.
But the sons-in-law and married daughters, we eventually learn, are not believers; they are not “righteous” (Ge 19.14). They thought Lot was joking; so apparently Lot hadn’t laid a proper foundation with them.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
For now, the negotiation ends at ten righteous–which will not in fact be enough.
The scene shifts to Sodom. The two angelic messengers arrive and find Lot sitting “in the gate” (Ge 19.1), possibly indicating a leadership position in the city (city council?). Lot greets them with hospitality (Ge 19.2-3), but at bedtime the men of the city demonstrate their depravity. Some have suggested that their great sin, and the cause of Sodom’s destruction, was their inhospitality and not their sexual proclivities. That seems to me, frankly, to be grasping at straws; Ezekiel later condemns them for their pride, arrogance, and neglect of the poor (Ezk 16.49), but also for “abomination” (Ezk 16.50), a word used routinely for homosexuality (Lv 18.22ff; 20.13; Dt 23.18; 1K 14.24), among other sins–but the other sins are not mentioned in this context.
Lot offers the mob his two unmarried daughters.
Yikes.
Some have tried to soften this by suggesting that Lot is attempting of shock the mob into coming to their senses. Others have suggested that since at least two of his daughters were already married to men of Sodom, Lot believes that the mob will not accept his offer.
But the text doesn’t say any of this.
The angels blind the lustful mob (Ge 19.11) and instruct Lot to get his family out of the city (Ge 19.12-13). As we’ve noted, his married daughters and sons-in-law refuse to leave (Ge 19.14); eventually the angels forcefully push the uncooperative Lot, his wife, and his two unmarried daughters out of the city (Ge 19.16) and toward nearby Zoar (Ge 19.22-23) just before the destruction comes (Ge 19.24).
Famously, Lot’s wife looks back, probably with regret (Lk 17.31-32), and is turned into a pillar of salt, in either a natural consequence of the fiery precipitation or a direct act of God (Ge 19.26).
In the aftermath we learn that Lot’s unmarried daughters aren’t “righteous” either, pursuing their father’s unwilling (drunken) assistance in giving them offspring–Moab and Ammon, whose descendants will be longstanding enemies of Israel.
Ten righteous? More like none righteous.
But this, too, is an oversimplification. Peter tells us that Lot was “righteous” (2P 2.7-8)–but clearly too much of this world.
I’ve noted earlier that Lot is a foil for faithful, if imperfect, Abraham. Here at the end he is bereft of any apparent righteousness, despite his kind hospitality to the traveling angel-strangers. Expositor Warren Wiersbe contrasts the two men:
“Christ Himself visited Abraham, but only the angels went to Sodom to visit Lot. Christ had a message of joy for Abraham and Sarah, but the angels gave a message of judgment to Lot. Abraham was visited in the daytime but Lot in the evening. Abraham was at a tent door; Lot at the city gate. Abraham had power with God but Lot had no influence even with his own family. Abraham saw Sodom destroyed and lost nothing, but Lot lost everything. Only his life was spared. Abraham brought the world blessing, but Lot brought trouble into the world (the Ammonites and Moabites).”
There remains one more event in God’s sanctification of the patriarch–and a puzzling one indeed.
Photo by Mick Haupt on Unsplash
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