Fiery Judgment

When we last saw Abraham, he was returning home after discussing with God the pending doom of judgment on Sodom. In Genesis 19 we see a glimpse of why God was intent on destroying the city.

As the angels arrived at the city gateway, they met Lot sitting in the entrance. His sitting in the gate denotes that he must have achieved a level of prominence in the social structure of the city. Much as Abraham had offered hospitality to the three divine visitors, so Lot offered hospitality to the two angels. He does not seem to be offering a leisurely meal, however; one observes a sense of urgency as he suggests they will “go on [their] way early in the morning”. When they demurred against accepting his invitation, he strongly insisted that they enter his house where he prepared a meal and offered them overnight lodging.

Lot well knew his fellow citizens, it appears, because his angelic visitors were in grave danger of being raped by a crowd of men from the town. While homosexuality was apparently common in the city, mob violence was also present. Lot tried to dissuade the mob, even offering his daughters as substitutes. This illustration of the low esteem with which women were regarded in the culture of the time is startling and offensive. How could a father offer his daughters for rape? The only way for my mind to get around the concept is to realize that this was a very different culture. Thank God that Christ introduced a radically different approach to women!

The mob had no interest in his daughters and began trying to break down the door. At this point the angels acted and struck the men with blindness, thwarting their attempts to break into the house. Now their identity as divine, rather than mere mortals, became apparent as they began to warn Lot that he and his family must flee from the city. Lot tried to persuade his sons-in-law to flee with the family, but they thought Lot was merely joking with them.

As I read the account, I sense the utter urgency of the angels as they tried to speed up the tempo of the family’s departure. “Hurry! Hurry!” But even at this point they had to forcibly and physically pull Lot and his family from the city, telling them to “Flee for your lives! Don’t look back and don’t stop….”

You would think that Lot would have been sensitive enough to realize that he was in a life and death situation. But still he wanted to bargain for his life. He didn’t want to leave city living for the hills (where Abraham lived). He requested to be able to flee to a small nearby town, and the angel, amazingly, agreed. Lot and his daughters managed to reach the city, and God held back the judgment until they were safely away. Lot’s wife still longed for her old home, and her hesitation and her desire to return were her cause of annihilation.

There is so much action in this story, such a feeling of desperate haste, that the account of Abraham’s early rising is a dramatic contrast. He rose in the morning, looked over the plain and saw the devastated landscape and the smoke rising from the land. It doesn’t seem to me that Lot deserved any kind of mercy or grace from God, but the Bible explains that “when God destroyed the cities of the plain, he remembered Abraham, and he brought Lot out of the catastrophe….” What a reminder of the importance of intercessory prayer!

Lot’s life was one debacle after another. He didn’t want to head to the hills and back to Abraham, as the angel had instructed. He wanted to control things and move to another town. Life in that town must have been somewhat threatening, though, because fear impelled him and his daughters to settle in a cave in the mountains. The sophisticated city dweller was now living in primitive circumstances in a cave. His daughters, unhappy with their situation, slept with him and bore children who would eventually influence the nation of Israel away from the God of the patriarchs and to obscene pagan practices. But even in those sad births, the hand of God will be seen as an ancestress of Jesus Christ himself will come from the Moabite people.

I read this story and feel very condemning of Lot. It is therefore very hard for me to read the description of Lot in 2 Peter 2:7 and 8: “Lot, a righteous man, who was distressed by the filthy lives of lawless men (for that righteous man, living among them day after day, was tormented in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard)….” I can deal with the offer of Lot’s daughters to the mob on the basis of different culture standards (although not standards which I understand or approve), but I wonder how Lot could stand to stay in a city where the practices were so repulsive to him? Why did he not have more of an influence as “salt and light”? Even his sons-in-law didn’t seem to regard him with any respect.

Before I feel too smug I need to remember that perhaps I too easily accommodate cultural practices and attitudes that aren’t in tune with the holiness to which God has called me. In what ways does my life reveal an easy acceptance of the status quo? Does my behaviour toward others reveal anything of my devotion to a God of holiness, mercy and love? Before I condemn, I must do my own self-examination.