And as for Lot offering his VIRGIN DAUGHTERS who were engaged, this is a sick, sick, sick society indeed! No wonder the fiances did not want to leave with Lot and his daughters. And later the daughters decide to procreate with their father Lot! All this in the TORAH of YHWH!!!???
Is this kind of talk disturbing to your sensibility? If the Hebrew Scriptures devotes a chapter on the reason for the destruction of a city with fire and brimstone (more locally controllable than a flood), then there must be a point to its inclusion. Could the lesson be: does the Creator of male and female not only frown upon but hate and will judge any departure from His natural intention? As we said in the Noah series, if only one gender boarded the ark, even if there were two of the same gender, that would still have been the end of all the species that require male and female to recreate their kind. Goodbye world, indeed!
So, what is the message? Religionists try to get around the burning issue of same gender sex/marriage and its acceptabillity in society by teaching ‘hate the sin but love the sinner.” Well, gay libbers do not consider their gender preference ‘sin’, excusez moi! They claim they were born that way. We do not understand how the Creator could make human male and female at the beginning of our species, and later we humans recreate ourselves into —- well, still male and female, except that individual preferences have changed in terms of sexual partner and marriage partner. Gay or lesbian, the individual may still dress as male or female, act macho or feminine, could still indulge in any sexual behavior in privacy —- the burning issue is same sex marriage. Is that a problem with the Creator of two sexes Who gave commandments about procreating our species, multiplying and populating the whole earth? If the whole world suddenly turned gay and lesbian and the new normal is same-sex marriage and the whole world population go that route, let’s just say that would definitely take care of population explosion. So what’s the point? Well, read this chapter and see how the Creator feels about the issue.
Another point: Verse 24. 24 But YHVH rained down brimstone and fire upon Sedom and Amora, coming from YHVH, from the heavens,. Our former messianic teacher uses this verse as prooftext for the Trinity, claiming that the Father in heaven and the Son on earth (or was it vice versa?) worked together in the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. We consider the way it is phrased as simply a characteristic of the Hebrew language. Here’s the NIV translation: Then the LORD rained down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah–from the LORD out of the heavens.
If you did an illustration of the verse, there’s the Lord raining down the sulfur—and the Lord doing it out of the heavens. How does that add up to two Lords and a Father and a Son? Actually it boils down to this: IF you believe there is only ONE GOD, this is simply a Hebraism; but if you believe in a trinitarian godhead, yes, you could pounce on this one verse as one prooftext and stretch its meaning. That doesn’t help, does it? You have to decide for yourself what it is you believe. Is YHWH a threesome or a Unity as in One and Only God?
Notice that when the Creator decides to bring on destruction anywhere on earth, He simply uses what’s already available in His created world. Deluge in Noah’s time from the release of water from the atmosphere and from below the earth, and now, fire and brimstone from heaven . . . from man’s point of observation, it might look like it’s from heaven and the figurative language says so, but as scientists have scrutinized these ‘biblical miraculous events’, scientists themselves explain how natural forces are responsible for such happenings described in scripture.
Volcanic eruption spew out fire and brimstone; Lot’s wife turning into a pillar of salt is a natural phenomenon reasonably explained in the Rabbinic commentary here. The only factor scientists can’t figure out is—as we keep bringing up—the ‘timing’ of the natural calamity according to God’s forecasted clockwork. Surely, that must be divinely arranged, eh? If not, what’s your take?
Unbracketted commentary is from Pentateuch and Haftorah’s, ed. Dr. J.H. Hertz; translation is Everett Fox with commentary “EF” and additional commentary by “RA” for Robert alter. -–Admin1.]
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Genesis/Bereshith 19 THE ANGELS, SODOM AND LOT 1 The two messengers came to Sedom at sunset, as Lot was sitting at the gate of Sedom. When Lot saw them, he arose to meet them and bowed low, brow to the groundangels. This is the first time the visitors are referred to by this term.
in the gate of Sodom. i.e. the passage beneath the city-wall, where people congregate in the East to converse, transact business, or have their disputes adjudicated.
[EF] YHWH went: See note on 17:22.
[RA] came into Sodom at evening, when Lot was sitting in the gate. The whole episode is framed in an elegant series of parallels and antitheses to Abraham’s hospitality scene at the beginning of chapter 18. Both men are sitting at an entrance—the identical participial clause with the same verb—when the visitors appear. Lot’s entrance is the city gate: he can sit “in” it because Canaanite cities had what amounted to a large chamber at the gateway; here people gathered to gossip, to do business, and above all, to conduct justice; the gate would have given on the town square, the area referred to by the messengers in verse 2. There is an antipodal thematic distance from tent flap to city gate, as the narrative quickly makes clear. Abraham’s visitors, moreover, arrive at midday, whereas Lot’s visitors come as darkness falls—a time when it is as dangerous to be out in the streets of Sodom as in those of any modern inner city.
2 and said: Now pray, my lords, pray turn aside to your servant’s house, spend the night, wash your feet; (starting-early) you may go on your way. They said: No, rather we will spend the night in the square.your servant’s house. Being a resident of a city, Lot dwelt in a ‘house’, whereas Abraham’s abode was a ‘tent’.
broad place. The ‘square’ of the city; and the climate being warm, it would be a natural place where a homeless visitor would spend the night.
[RA] turn aside. Lot resembles his uncle in the gesture of hospitality. He uses the verb “turn aside” (sur) instead of Abraham’s “go on past” (‘avar) because, unlike the solitary tent in the desert, there are many habitations here, in addition to the public space of the square.
set off early. This may merely be to emphasize that he will not delay them unduly, but it could hint that they can depart at daybreak before running into trouble with any of the townsfolk.
3 But he pressed them exceedingly hard, so they turned in to him and came into his house. He made them a meal-with-drink and baked flat-cakes, and they ateunleavened bread. Which could be baked rapidly.
[EF] we want to knkow them: The meaning is unmistakably sexual.
[RA] a feast . . . flatbread. Perhaps an ellipsis is to be inferred, but this is a scanty-looking “feast.” In contrast to Abraham’s sumptuous menu, the only item mentioned is the lowly unleavened bread (matsot) of everyday fare, not even the loaves from fine flour that Sarah prepares.
4 They had not yet lain down, when the men of the city, the men of Sedom, encircled the house, from young lad to old man, all the people (even) from the outskirts.all the people. Emphasis is here laid on the fact that the inhabitants were all addicted to unnatural depravity. The rejection of Abraham’s plea was, therefore, justified.
[RA] 4-5. the men of the city, the men of Sodom . . . Where are the men. Throughout this sequence there is an ironic interplay between the “men” of Sodom, whose manliness is expressed in the universal impulse to homosexual gang rape, and the divine visitors who only seem to be “men.”
5 They called out to Lot and said to him: Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us, we want to know them! 6 Lot went out to them, to the entrance, shutting the door behind him7 and said:
Pray, brothers, do not be so wicked![RA] brothers. Or “kinsmen,” an appellation the Sodomites will vehemently reject in verse 9.
8 Now pray, I have two daughters who have never known a man, pray let me bring them out to you, and you may deal with them however seems good in your eyes; only to these men do nothing, for they have, after all, come under the shadow of my roof-beam!my roof. The duty of protecting a guest is sacred in the East. As soon as a stranger had touched the tent-rope, he could claim guest-right. But the price which Lot was prepared to pay is unthinkable in our eyes, though a different view would present itself to the Oriental in those times.
[EF] pray let me bring them out to you . . .: For a similar story, see Judg. 19. There the offer of rape is accepted by the townspeople.
[RA] I have two daughters who have known no man. Lot’s shocking offer, about which the narrator, characteristically, makes no explicit judgment, is too patly explained as the reflex of ancient Near Eastern code in which the sacredness of the host-guest bond took precedence over all other obligations. Lot surely is inciting the lust of the would-be rapists in using the same verb of sexual “knowledge” they had applied to the visitors in order to proffer the virginity of his daughters for their pleasure. The concluding episode of this chapter, in which the drunken Lot unwittingly takes the virginity of both the daughters, suggests measure-for-measure justice meted out for his rash offer.
for have they not come under the shadow of my roof-beam? This looks like a proverbial expression for entering into someone’s home and so into the bonds of the host-guest relationship. But “roof-beam” implies a fixed structure and so accords with the urban setting of Lot’s effort at hospitality; Abraham, living in a tent, in the parallel expression in his hospitality scene, merely says, “for have you not come by your servant?”
9 But they said: Step aside! and said: This one came to sojourn and (wants to ) judge, play-the-judge? Now we will do worse to you than (to) them! And they pressed exceedingly hard against the man, against Lot, and stepped closer to break down the door.this one fellow. An expression of contempt.
to sojourn. i.e. this newcomer presumes to judge our actions, and interfere with our customs!
[EF] judge, play-the-judge: Heb. va-yishpot shafot.
[RA] came as a sojourner . . . sets himself up to judge! The verb “to sojourn” is the one technically used for resident aliens. “Judge,” emphatically repeated in an infinitive absolute (wayishpot shafot), picks up the thematic words of judge and just from God’s monologue and His dialogue with Abraham in chapter 18.
10 But the men put out their hand and brought Lot in to them, into the house, and shut the door.[EF] the men: The messengers.
11 And the men who were at the entrance to the house, they struck with dazzling-light—(all men) great and small, so that they were unable to find the entrance.blindness. The Heb. word occurs again only in II Kings VI,18, and denotes a temporary loss of vision.
[EF] (all men) great and small: Lit. “from small to great.”
12 The men said to Lot: Whom else have you here—a son-in-law, sons, daughters? Bring anyone whom you have in the city out of the place!any besides. Lot’s household is to be saved with him.
[RA] Your sons and your daughters. The Masoretic Text prefaces these words with “son-in-law” (in the singular); but as numerous critics have observed, this makes no grammatical sense, and this particular term would not belong at the head of the list, before sons and daughters. It seems quite likely that the word was erroneously transcribed from verse 14 and was not part of the original text.
13 For we are about to bring ruin on this place, for how great is their outcry before YHWH! And YHWH has sent us to bring it to ruin.[RA] the outcry. This term is a pointed repetition of the word God uses twice in His initial speech about Sodom.
14 Lot went out to speak to his sons-in-law, those who had taken his daughters (in marriage), and said: Up, out of this place, for YHWH is about to bring ruin on the city! But in the eyes of his sons-in-law, he was like one who jests.[RA] his sons-in-law who had married his daughters. Especially because of the reference to the two virgin daughters in the next verse as ones “who remain with you” (literally, “are found with you”), it appears that Lot had other daughters already married, and not that the two in the house were betrothed but still unmarried.
he seemed to his sons-in-law to be joking. The verb, though in a different conjugation, is the same as the one used for Sarah’s and Abraham’s “laughter.” It is, of course, a wry echo—the laughter of disbelief of those about to be divinely blessed, the false perception of mocking laughter by those about to be destroyed. The common denominator in the antithetical usages is skepticism about divine intentions, for good and for evil.
15 Now when the dawn came up, the messengers pushed Lot on, saying: Up, take your wife and your two daughters who are here, lest you be swept away in the iniquity of the city!iniquity. As in IV,13, the Heb. word for ‘iniquity’ means also its consequence, ‘punishment.’
16 When he lingered, the men seized his hand, his wife’s hand, and the hand of his twodaughters -because YHVH’S pity was upon him- and, bringing him out, they left him outside the city.
but he lingered. Either to collect his valuables, or he was reluctant to leave. All that Scripture tells of Lot is characteristic of a weak, irresolute character.
17 It was, when they had brought him outside, that (one of them) said: Escape for your life, do not gaze behind you, do not stand still anywhere in the plain: to the hill-country escape, lest you be swept away!that he said. The angel whose mission it was to rescue Lot.
the Plain. See on XIII,10.
the mountain. See on XIV,10.
[EF] Escape: Heb. himmalet, use five times here. Perhaps it is a pun on Lot’s name; he is “the escaper” in a number of situations.
[RA] he said. The reader is meant to infer: one of the two of them.
18 Lot said to them: No, pray, my lord! 19 Now pray, your servant has found favor in your eyes, you have shown great faithfulness in how you have dealt with me, keeping me alive– but I, I am not able to escape to the hill-country, lest the wickedness cling to me, and I die!the evil. The disaster.
[EF] lest the wickedness cling to me: The expression of an idea common to many cultures that evil is like a disease, a physical rather than purely moral entity.
[RA] I cannot flee to the high country. Lot seems a weak character—he was to be led out by the hand from the city—and his zigzagging determinations of flight make psychological sense. Accustomed to an urban setting, he is terrified at the idea of trying to survive in the forbidding landscape of cliffs and caves to the south and east of the Dead Sea. But once having settled in the little town of Zoar (verse 30), he has understandable premonitions of another cataclysm and so decides that, after all, the rocky wilderness is the lesser of two evils.
20 Now pray, that town is near enough to flee to, and it is so tiny; pray let me escape there-is it not tiny?-and stay alive!a little one. It is so insignificant in size: and, therefore, it is a small favour he is asking for, when pleading that it be spared.
and my soul shall live. i.e.my life be spared.
[EF] tiny: Or “a trifle.”
[RA] a small palce. The Hebrew miz’ar plays on the name Zoar and for once this could be a correct etymology. Lot’s point is that it is, after all, only a piddling town and so it would not be asking a great deal to spare it form destruction.
- Image from graceelgin.org
[EF] lift up your face: A similar Assyrian phrase means “save” or “cheer.” overturning: Overthrowing. The word is used later in the Bible to describe the fate of the two cities again (e.g. Lamentations 4:6).
[RA] overthrow. This is the physical image presented by the Hebrew verb, though the obvious sense of the word throughout the story (and in later biblical references to Sodom) is something like “destroy by sudden cataclysm.”
22 Make haste, escape there, for I am not able to do anything until you come there. Therefore the name of the town was called: Tzo’ar/Tiny.[EF] I am not able . . . until you come there: In deference to Avraham (see v. 29).
23 (Now) the sun was going out over the earth as Lot came to Tzo’ar. 24 But YHVH rained down brimstone and fire upon Sedom and Amora, coming from YHVH,from the heavens,
[RA] rained . . . brimstone and fire from the LORD from the heavens. The slightly awkward repetition of “from the LORD” with the added phrase “from the heavens” taken together with the verb “to rain” (himtir), underscores the connection with the Deluge story. Moshe Weinfeld has aptly observed a whole series of parallels between the two stories. In each case, God wipes out a whole population because of epidemic moral perversion, marking one family for survival. In each case, the idiom “to keep alive seed” is used for survival. In each case, the male survivor becomes drunk and is somehow sexually violated by his offspring, though only Lot is unambiguously represented as the object of an incestuous advance. One might add that the phrase used by the elder sister, “there is no man on earth [or, “in the land,” ba’arets] to come to bed with us” (verse 31), equally reinforces the connectiion with the global cataclysm of the Flood story: she looks out upon the desolate landscape after the destruction of the cities of the plain and imagines that she, her sister, and their father are the sole survivors of humankind.
25 he overturned those cities and all of the plain, all those settled in the cities and the vegetationof the soil.
26 Now his wife gazed behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.
- Image from www.newtonbrook.ca
a pillar of salt. She looked back and lingered behind, to be overtaken by the brimstone and fire from which the others escaped. A similar fate befell lingering refugees at Pompeii. ‘Her body became encrusted and saturated with a nitrous and saline substance, that very likely preserved it for some time from decay’ (De Sola). Ancient writers refer to this pillar as being still in existence. Josephus claims to have seen it.
[EF] she became a pillar of salt: An old folklore motif of what happens when humans see God (or his actions), made popular by the many mineral pillars in the region around the Dead Sea.
[RA] And his wife looked back and she became a pillar of salt. As has often been observed, this tale looks doubly archaic, incorporating both an etiological story about a gynemorphic rock formation in the Dead Sea region and an old mythic motif (as in the story of Orpheus an Euridyce) of a taboo against looking back in fleeing from a place of doom. But the blighted looking of Lot’s wife is antithetically integrated with the “looking out” (a different verb) of Abraham in the next two verses over the scene of destruction from his safe vantage on the heights of Hebron.
27 Avraham started-early in the morning to the place where he had stood in YHWH’s presence,Abraham. After a restless night, his heart heavy with the knowledge of what was about to befall the five cities, he rises early in the morning to gaze with compassionate eyes upon the fulfillment of the Divine decree.
[RA] early in the morning. There is a nice temporal dovetailing of the two scenes. Down in the plain, just as the sun rises, the LORD rains brimstone and fire. A few minutes later, still early in the morning, Abraham hurries to take in the awful panorama.
28 he looked down upon the face of Sedom and Amora and upon the whole face of the plain country and saw: here, the dense-smoke of the land went up like the dense-smoke of a furnace!Archeological exploration has established the existence of an early Canaanite civilization in the Plain. Many scholars today locate Sodom four miles northeast of the Dead Sea: formerly they located it to the south of the Dead Sea (Albright).
[RA] he saw and, look, smoke was rising. The visual setup also represents the tight closing of an envelope structure. The Sodom episode began with Abraham’s dialogue with God on the heights of Hebron. Now at the end, in a definition of visual perspective unusual for biblical narrative, Abraham, standing in the same place, makes out from a distance of forty or more miles the cloud of smoke rising from the incinerated cities.
29 Thus it was, when God brought ruin on the cities of the plain, that God kept Avraham in mind and sent out Lot from the overturning, when he overturned the cities where Lot had settled.remembered Abraham. Gives the reason why Lot had been spared.
[RA] 30-38. The narrator witholds all comment on the incestuous enterprise of the two virgin sisters. Perhaps the story may draw on old pre-Israelite?–traditions in which the supposed origins of these two peoples in incest were understood as evidence of their purity, or their vitality. (One recalls that Tamar, the progenitrix of the future kings of Judea, became pregnant by her father-in-law through pretending to be a whore.) But from the Israelite perspective, this story might well have cast a shadow of ambiguity over these two enemy peoples. Both names are etymologized to refer to incest; Moab (which probably means “desired place”) is construed as me-‘ab, “from the father,” and Ben-Ammi (yielding the gentilic benei-‘ammon)is construed as “my own kinsman’s son.”
30 Lot went up from Tzo’ar and settled in the hill-country, his two daughters with him, for he was afraid to settle in Tzo’ar. So he settled in a cave, he and his two daughters.he feared. That God might yet include Zoar in the general destruction originally intended for all the five cities: and it seems that after his departure it was likewise destroyed by fire.
31 Now the firstborn said to the younger: Our father is old, and there is no man in the land to come in to us as befits the way of all the earth!there is not a man. Some commentators state that Lot’s daughters believed that the destruction had been universal, and that but for them the world would be completely depopulated. This explanation is untenable, seeing that they had just left Zoar. Their conduct does not admit of any extenuation; they were true children of Sodom.
32 Come, let us have our father drink wine and lie with him so that we may keep seed alive byour father.
wine. The mountainous country of Moab is full of caves; and the Midrash states that the inhabitants used to store their wines in such caves.
[RA] let us lie with him. Although “lie with” is a somewhat euphemistic reference to coitus in English, its uses in Scripture suggest it is a rather coarse (though not obscene) verb for sexual intercourse in biblical Hebrew. Two linked sexual assailants, the Egyptian woman in Genesis 39 and Amnon in 2 Samuel 13, use it in urging the objects of their lust to submit to them. When the verb is followed by a direct object in sexual contexts, the meaning seems close to “rape.” Ironically, the more decorous verb “to know” is used twice here asexually (verse 33 and 35) to indicate the drunken Lot’s unconscious state as he deflowers each of his daughters.
33 So they had their father drink wine that night, then the firstborn went in and lay with her father— but he knew nothing of her lying down or her rising up.34 It was on the morrow that the firstborn said to the younger:
Here, yesternight I lay with father. Let us have him drink wine tonight as well, then you go in and lie with him, so that we maykeep seed alive by our father.
35 They had their father drink wine that night as well,
then the younger arose and lay with him,but he knew nothing of her lying down or her rising up.
[EF] but he knew nothing . . .: The repetition of the phrase from v33 is meant either to absolve lot or to ridicule him.
36 And Lot’s two daughters became pregnant by their father.37 The firstborn bore a son and called his name: Mo’av/By Father,
he is the tribal-father of Mo’av of today.Moab. The name is explained as though it were the equivalent of me-ab, ‘from a father.’
[EF] Mo’av: Trad. English “Moab.”
[RA] of our days The literal sense of the Hebrew is “to this day.”
38 The younger also bore a son, and called his name: Ben-ammi/Son of My Kinspeople, he is the tribal-father of the children of Ammon of todayBen-ammi. ‘The son of my people,’ or, ‘the son of my father’s kin.’