(Genesis 19:1 - 19:38)
In the evening the two extraterrestrials arrived at Sodom and found Lot sitting just inside the city gate. Seeing them, Lot rose to meet them and then prostrated himself before them. He addressed them "I invite you, my masters, to please stop at the home of your servant. Stay the night and wash up so you may rise early and be on your way."
"No, thank you. We will be spending the night in the city square." they replied.
Lot insisted that they be his guests. They relented and came into his house. He prepared a feast for them, and they ate the matzah (unleavened bread) he had baked for them. However, before they could go to bed, the house was surrounded by a mob, which consisted of citizens of all ages and from all quarters of the city. They accosted Lot and demanded "Where are the men visiting you tonight? Bring them out here so we can find out what they're up to!"
Lot appeared outside and closed the door behind him. "Please, my brothers, do not commit this offense. ... Listen, I have two daughters that are virgins. I will deliver them to you and you can have your way with them, but, please, do not molest these men, for they are enjoying the hospitality of my house."
"Get out of our way!" the mob insisted. "You live here as a foreigner. Now you want to dictate to us? If you do, we will come down harder on you than we do on those men." They jostled Lot violently and almost broke down the door.
The extraterrestrials reached outside, pulled Lot inside the house, and closed the door behind him. Those outside, both the ring leaders and the rabble, were suddenly struck blind so they were groping even to find the door.
The extraterrestrials asked Lot "Do you have family here -- sons or daughters or in-laws? Whomever you may have, take them out of the city at once, for we are going to destroy this place. Because its wickedness has become so extreme, Jehovah has sent us to destroy it."
Lot went out and paid a visit to the men who were engaged to his daughters. "Get up! You must get out of the city, for Jehovah is about to destroy it." But they thought Lot was only playing some joke on them.
When dawn broke the extraterrestrials urged Lot to hurry and bid him "Get up! Take away your wife and the two daughters that live with you, or else you will be killed in the destruction of the city." When he tarried, the extraterrestrials took Lot, his wife, and his daughters all by the hand, for Jehovah had resolved to spare them. They escorted Lot and his family out of the city and told them "Save yourselves. Don't look back or linger in the neighboring country, but flee to the mountains or else you will be consumed."
Lot replied "Please, my masters. I, your servant, have found favor with you and you have shown great mercy in sparing my life, but I can't escape into the mountains. I won't be able to reach them in time before the destruction overwhelms me and I am killed. But there is a city I know of, a small one and not far away. I could flee there and be safe. ... It is a small city, isn't it? My life would be safe there, wouldn't it?"
One of the extraterrestrials responded "Very well, I give you my word not to destroy the city you have spoken of. But hurry, for I can do nothing till you get there. (The name of the city was Zoar, because Lot had called it a "small one".)
It was morning by the time Lot reached Zoar. It was then that Jehovah bombed Sodom and Gomorrah from the sky with sulfurous incendiaries and thus incinerated the cities, the surrounding plain, all the inhabitants of the cities there, as well as the vegetation. (Lot's wife lagged behind and her body was transformed into salt.)
Abraham was up early in the morning and went to the place where he had lately taken leave of Jehovah. He gazed out toward Sodom and Gomorrah and the land of the plain and saw ashes rising up from the earth and a plume of smoke billowing as if from a furnace. (When Jehovah razed the cities of the plain, he remembered Abraham and, therefore, rescued his nephew Lot from being killed when he destroyed the city where he had been living.)
Because he was uncomfortable staying in Zoar, Lot and his two daughters left there and found refuge in the mountains, where they made their home in a cave.
The oldest daughter told the younger "Our father is old and there are no men around who will come to mate with us. Let's ply our father with wine, get him drunk, and then have sex with him, so that our father's family can be perpetuated."
And so that night the oldest daughter got her father to overindulge wine and went into his bed to have sex with him. He never noticed when she came into his bed or when she left it.
The next day the older sister told the younger. "I lay with our father last night. Let's get him drunk again tonight so that you can have sex with him, so that our father's family can be perpetuated."
And so that night the youngest daughter got her father to overindulge wine and went into his bed to have sex with him. He never noticed when she came into his bed or when she left it.
Both daughters were thus made pregnant by their father. The oldest gave birth to a son Moab who is the father of the Moabites that exist today. The younger bore a son as well that she called Ammon (meaning the son of my people) and he is the father of the present-day Ammonites.
Notes
1. Jehovah sends his two emissaries/associates/companions to check out the conditions in Sodom, to see if the city's inhabitants are as wicked as he has come to believe. They apparently intended to wander around the streets to size up conditions, although one wonders how they could so easily determine the city's rating on Jehovah's evil-o-meter. In any case, the two extraterrestrials are persuaded to enjoy the hospitality of Lot's house -- and a good feast, even if the unleavened bread they are offered sounds less than appetizing. (Were they really conscientious in doing the job that Jehovah sent them to Sodom to do, or were they slacking?) Extraterrestrials always seem to be attracted to good chow. One may surmise that if they are in fact interstellar travelers they would be accustomed only to synthetic food or nutrient pills and, therefore, would appreciate an occasional home-cooked, human-cooked meal.
2. Although the extraterrestrials hardly got farther than the city gates before they were taken to Lot's house, news of their arrival in Sodom apparently spread quickly around the city. These beings were apparently recognizable from other men. The text does not indicate why. Lot knew them right away when they entered the city. Would it be the clothes they wore? Or something distinctive in their appearance?
3. A mob forms around Lot's house. The citizens know the extraterrestrials are inside and demand to see them so that they can question them and, one would assume, find out what they were doing in Sodom. It can be inferred that Jehovah and his people were regarded as enemies by the Sodomites, who were rightfully suspicious of their motives in coming to the city. There is a back story here that is not revealed in the text. One might surmise that there existed some kind of feud between Jehovah and the people of Sodom. Perhaps they opposed his will in something, or refused to worship him as a god. Jehovah's portrayal of the Sodomites as evil could be a prejudiced assessment. It does not seem credible that Jehovah would destroy the people of Sodom merely because of their wickedness: the wickedness is more likely used as an excuse to punish a people with whom he had a personal grievance. --- Or else why not find some worthily sinful cities in China or India or Central America and obliterate those as well.
4. The King James Version has the mob wanting to "know" the men inside Lot's house. Since the word "know" and the original Hebrew word "yada" are both used on occasion as euphemisms for "have sex with" many have inferred that the mob were vicious gays on the prowl for victims to bugger. This interpretation, however, is unlikely, if not preposterous, although most Biblical translators seem to subscribe to it. Consider the situation: Two men, recognized as agents of Sodom's enemy Jehovah come into town. The Sodomites perhaps already know that Jehovah has it in for them. They naturally wonder what these men want, what nefarious purpose (from their standpoint) they have. They learn that the men are staying at the house of Lot, a foreigner and a Jehovah partisan. A mob forms. One gets the impression it is a large mob, and the text specifically says it is a diverse one. They demand that Lot, in violation of the revered laws of hospitality, deliver his guests to the mob. Why does the mob want the men? To have gay sex with them? Really? Would that be on their mind at this point? Isn't it more likely they wanted to interrogate them, find out why they were in Sodom and what Jehovah's plans were?
5. Lot is so insistent on observing the laws of hospitality and protecting his extraterrestrial visitors that he is willing to throw his two virgin daughters to the mob with an invitation to rape or murder them, if they wanted to. This callousness on Lot's part is really appalling. That he would think of this means of appeasing the mob certainly doesn't reflect very well upon Lot's role as a father or upon the regard his people had for women. And you wonder what his guests may have thought of him for his actions to protect them when they obviously had the power to protect themselves. Lot perhaps wanted to impress his guests how loyal a servant he was to Jehovah, how he would make the most extreme sacrifice to serve him.
6. The extraterrestrials rescue Lot from the mob and pull him inside the house. To ward off the mob they render them blind. This is interesting. Were the men of the mob made permanently or temporarily blind or was their vision merely impaired so that they could not locate Lot's door. And how was this done? Was some weapon involved, a magic spell, hypnotic suggestion? Why did they not kill a few members of the mob (those people were going to be dead in a few hours anyway)?
7. The extraterrestrials announce they are going to destroy Sodom and the cities of the plain -- probably making up their minds quickly after witnessing the actions of the Sodomite mob who seem to be out for their hide. They ask Lot if he has family. Again no omniscience: they do not know or have made no point of finding out whether he does or not. Some translations identify the heedless men Lot visits to warn of the impending destruction as his son-in-laws. Since he has two virgin daughters at home, this would mean that he has at least two additional daughters who are married and who, certainly living with their husbands, were not warned. It is more likely that the men visited were prospective sons-in-law, engaged to Lot's daughters, but not yet married to them. Therefore, Lot has just the two unmarried daughters. Nearly all recent translations agree with this interpretation.
8. The sin that sealed Sodom's doom has been much discussed and debated in the past few thousand years. There is little evidence that the sin necessarily involved homosexuality per se. In Jude the Sodomites are depicted as pursuing promiscuity and perversion ("lusting after strange flesh"), but there is no specific, unambiguous reference to homosexuality. In Ezekiel the Sodomite's shortcomings are their arrogance, indolence, lack of compassion to the poor, and insufficient attention to the laws of hospitality -- a rather low threshold of sinfulness to trigger such catastrophic destruction. All we know from Genesis is that the people of Sodom, by their riotous actions against Lot and his guests, were a rowdy, restive, inhospitable bunch. Whatever the nature of their wickedness, the divine destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah would often be sited as an object lesson.
9. The means by which Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed continues to be debated. Excluding the unlikely possibility that it is simply a story and nothing of that nature ever occurred, one is impelled to look first for an answer in natural phenomena. There is no evidence of volcanic activity in that location. The description of fire falling from the sky might occur during a volcanic eruption, but no one describing the event would omit the little detail of the erupting volcanic mountain itself. An earthquake could easily have destroyed the cities and might have ignited the tar pits that we are already told existed in the area, accounting for the fires. However, the prominent feature of an earthquake is the shaking of the ground; there is no reference to that in the account. A meteor or asteroid or comet coming from the sky and crashing to earth in that area could cause fires, but the devastation would be mostly the result of the tremendous impact. There would be a large noise, a fearsome explosion, a gaping crater. None of these things are mentioned. How could they have been ignored? No natural phenomenon could have caused anything like the destruction mentioned in Genesis. The answer obviously lies in advanced warfare. If Jehovah were an extraterrestrial visitor, a being from another planet, he would have access to an array of high-tech weaponry, and if he wanted to entirely destroy a few ancient cities, he could easily do so. An atomic bomb would have been a possible, but unlikely choice; it would have been a sledge hammer to swat a fly -- Sodom might have been a big town in those days, but it wasn't New York or Hiroshima. Incendiary bombs dropped from an aerial vehicle could easily do the job -- incinerate the place so that no one would survive and little structurally would remain. The account, in fact, describes exactly that and I have translated, accurately, I believe, the usually rendered "raining from the heavens brimstone and fire" as "bombing from the sky with sulfurous incendiaries." The incendiary bombs may not have necessarily contained sulfur (brimstone), but the ancients would not have any clear idea of their composition. (The composition of the legendary incendiary weapon Greek fire is still not exactly known.) Sulfur was always connected in ancient minds with fire; the expression "fire and brimstone" was much used and is still employed figuratively today. -- An alternative account of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah is provided by the 1st Century A.D. historian Josephus who reports that the means of S & G's annihilation was a lightning bolt. The delivery of an incendiary bomb could have resembled lightning. (One must be continually reminded of the limited experience of our ancient ancestors, their small frame of reference, the inadequate vocabulary at their disposal to describe what would be unfamiliar and unexplainable to them, and also their natural proclivity to perceive as numinous and miraculous what was merely technological and to ascribe to the divine anything beyond their meagre scientific understanding.)
10. A well-noted feature of the story is Lot's wife turning to salt. The wife (unnamed in the Bible, but traditionally called Edith) was probably not of Lot's race. There is no mention of her when Lot accompanied Abraham out of Egypt or when he was held captive by the Elamites, so it is likely she was a native Sodomite. Therefore, it is probable that she was more attached emotionally to the city than Lot was, less anxious to leave it, and perhaps more influenced by its permissive mores. The text is not helpful and instead somewhat confused. It clearly states that Lot, and presumably his family, arrive safely in Zoar before the attack on Sodom begins. But Lot's wife either "looks back" or "lags behind" (as I believe is more likely). Either implies that they have not yet reached safety in Zoar. Looking at the fiery attack could not have been harmful, at least not fatal, surely. It seems more plausible that the wife felt she couldn't leave her native town, went back, and was caught in the destruction, although this is not exactly what the text says. Whatever happened, she didn't make it. Her body turning into salt is a whimsical touch reminiscent of Ovidian Greek mythology. An explanation, though, is simple. There have long existed many weird salt formations in the area. Perhaps a notable one may have resembled a woman and a myth was created that it was Lot's wife transformed. The Genesis authors probably felt obligated to incorporate this familiar myth into their narrative. At any rate, Lot's wife is another object lesson -- don't hesitate in following the paths of righteousness or look back longingly to a life of sin, or else ...
11. The lot of Lot's daughters is hardly enviable. They are first offered as rape bait to an angry mob by their own father, their fiancees are killed off in the destruction of Sodom, their mother is also killed, they are forced by their father to live with him as recluses in some God-forsaken cave, and then when they have lost hope of finding a man to have children with, they feel compelled to have sex with their drunken, elderly father. To add insult to injury, the authors of Genesis don't even bother to give the poor dears names. But they do end up being the mothers of two peoples, the Moabites and Ammonites (who would live east of the death sea in an area now part of Jordan).
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