January 13, 2018: Day 19 – Genesis 19

We have a couple of problems here in this Scripture.  The first is depicted in the rendition below.

The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah was already preordained and it really had nothing to do with the individual sin of the men of the city wanting to have forced homosexual relationships with the men who had been sent by God.  Notice how Lot greets the men when they are at the city gate.  It is very similar to the way in which Abraham greets the three angels when they come to him.  He waits on them, he serves them, and gathers them as if they were one of his own.  Lot does the same, he insists that they come into his house and have a meal and even spend the night.  That is when the problems begin.

It is fairly obvious that there were not 10 righteous people in the city.  In fact, we only hear of four who escaped and one of them, the wife of Lot who would have been outside of Abraham’s family so most probably a worshiper of idols and other gods.  This might be why she didn’t make it out either.  You have the future brothers in law who were given the chance, but they didn’t take Lot seriously, and then the wife, and then we have our second problem which comes up.  But keep in mind that the only people who make it out of Sodom are those who are have allegiance to the God of Abraham.  The brothers in law would not have had that allegiance and it seems that maybe the wife didn’t either.  

You have Lot’s daughters who are stowed away with their father who seems to be incredibly paranoid.  The men before they are about to destroy the city give Lot the chance to flee to the hills.  But he insists and asks if he could just go to that small city Zoar, it is a tiny city, can’t I just go there?  They agree and decide not to destroy that city.  So he goes, his wife is turned to salt, and they reside there just for a moment before Lot realizes he doesn’t really trust the people of Zoar either.  Let’s move on daughters and let’s go to those hills after all.

Then the second problem arises.

It seems like Abraham’s family always wants to take matters into their own hands when it comes to the issue of progeny.  The daughters worry that they are not going to be able to find anyone to start a family since they live in a cave with their dad.  That’s understandable, but why not go to a city in order to start a family.  I’m not sure why the first idea is to start a family with their dad.  It really escapes our 21st century minds as to how this could ever happen.  But it does.  As a result we find two nations that come out of Lot, and they are sworn enemies to the Israelites throughout Scripture: the Moabites and the Ammonites.  Once again, we find the enemies of Israel given a disgraceful origin  within the Hebrew Scripture.  It makes sense.  You are going to want to make your enemies look bad from their origin on.