Sodom, Rescue and the Aftermath of Loss

Three men came to Abraham at noon; two reach Sodom at evening, a long day’s walk down from Hebron, and the third stayed with Abraham (18:22). Only now are they called angels, mal’akhim, a word that simply means messengers. Lot rises and bows to the ground exactly as Abraham did.

Lot proposes they rise early and be gone, as if he wanted them out of the city before it woke; that is an inference, but the next verses bear it out. “The street” is the open square inside the gate, where a traveller with no host would sleep.

“Pressed upon them” is patsar, the verb used in verse 9 when the mob “pressed sore upon the man”. Lot presses his guests in; the city presses on Lot. The bread is unleavened, the bread of haste, the bread of Israel’s own night of destruction and dawn escape (Exodus 12:39).

“From every quarter” is literally “from the end”, every last one. Old and young, all the people: the verse answers Abraham’s question of 18:32 before the angels say a word. There are not ten.

The scene is repeated almost word for word in Judges 19:22, at Gibeah in Benjamin: “Bring forth the man that came into thine house, that we may know him.” The Book of Judges uses Sodom to show what Israel itself had become.

Hebrew has two words here: Lot goes out through the doorway, petach, and shuts the door, delet, behind him. Between this verse and verse 11 the door is named five times. The whole chapter turns on who is on which side of it.

Lot calls the mob “brethren”, the word Abraham used to Lot in 13:8. “Do not so wickedly” uses the root of the verdict in 13:13, “the men of Sodom were wicked”. Lot speaks to them as his own people.

“The shadow of my roof” is the protection a host owed anyone under his beam. “As is good in your eyes” returns in the Gibeah account, Judges 19:24, and in the Book of Judges’ closing line, where every man did what was right in his own eyes.

“Came in to sojourn” is gur: after all his years Lot is still a resident alien to them. “He will needs be a judge” doubles the verb, judging he judges. The Judge of all the earth of 18:25 is about to judge them.

“Put forth their hand, and pulled Lot into the house to them” is the phrasing of 8:9, where Noah “put forth his hand, and took her, and pulled her in unto him into the ark”. The same Hebrew word, “the men”, serves for the angels and for the mob in these two verses.

“Blindness” is sanverim, a rare word used again only in 2 Kings 6:18, when the Syrian army is struck at Elisha’s prayer. It seems to mean a dazzling or confusion of sight rather than plain loss of vision. “Small and great” echoes the “old and young” of verse 4.

The angels now do the counting Abraham asked about. “Thy sons” are listed, but Lot is never said to have any, and none are mentioned again. The son-in-law is named first, in the singular.

“Destroy” is a participle, “we are destroying”, the word from which Exodus 12:23 names “the destroyer” who passes through Egypt on Passover night. The cry has grown great “before the face of the LORD”.

“Which married his daughters” is literally “takers of his daughters”, which Josephus and Rashi read as men betrothed to the two virgins of verse 8. “As one that mocked” is metsacheq, from the root of Isaac’s name: Abraham and Sarah laughed at a promise of life, and these men laugh at a warning of death.

“Which are here” is literally “which are found”, the verb of Abraham’s repeated “if I find” in chapter 18: four are found. “Consumed” is safah, to be swept away, the word of Abraham’s question in 18:23, “wilt thou also destroy the righteous with the wicked?”

“Lingered” is hitmahmah, a rare word that stalls in the mouth as it is said. “Set him without the city” is vayyannichuhu, from nuach, the root of Noah’s name and of rest. 2 Peter 2:5–7 names Noah and Lot together as the two rescued out of judgment.

“Escape” is malat, to slip away, and it comes five times between here and verse 22. The commands are in the singular, spoken to Lot: “thy life”, “look not behind thee”. His wife is not addressed.

Abraham argued for a city of strangers; Lot argues about his own route. The Masoretes again pointed “my Lord” as Adonai, the form used of God, though Lot has just spoken “unto them”.

“Lest some evil take me” is literally “lest the evil cleave to me”, davaq, the verb of 2:24, where a man shall cleave unto his wife. Lot fears the disaster will stick to him on the road.

“My soul shall live” are the words Abram used at the edge of Egypt in 12:13, “my soul shall live because of thee”. Uncle and nephew use the same phrase when they bargain for their own lives.

“I have accepted thee” is literally “I have lifted thy face”, the idiom of granting a request. The same idiom is used in Job 42:8–9, where the LORD accepts Job’s prayer for his friends. One man’s plea spares a town.

Zoar survived and, in time, belonged to Lot’s descendants: Isaiah 15:5 and Jeremiah 48:34 name it among the towns of Moab. The little city spared for Lot’s sake became Moabite ground.

The angels hurried Lot out at dawn in verse 15, and he is inside Zoar by sunrise. The refuge was as close as he said it was, “near to flee unto”. The day of judgment on the plain begins with the sun rising on it.

“The LORD rained … from the LORD” names God twice in one clause. Justin Martyr read two persons in it; Jewish interpreters read it as a Hebrew way of speaking. Brimstone is sulphur, and the Dead Sea basin is rich in sulphur and in the bitumen of 14:10.

“Overthrew” is haphakh, to turn over, and it becomes the fixed word for this event: “the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah” in Deuteronomy 29:23, Isaiah 13:19, Jeremiah 49:18 and Amos 4:11. “That which grew upon the ground” is the garden-like plain of 13:10.

She was walking behind him, out of his sight. Jesus says only “Remember Lot’s wife” (Luke 17:32). The Wisdom of Solomon (10:7) speaks of a pillar of salt still standing, and Josephus claimed to have seen it. Genesis never gives her a name.

The Talmud (Berakhot 26b) derived the morning prayer from this verse, reading “stood” as a word for prayer: Abraham returns at first light to where he had pleaded. He goes back to the spot, not toward the cities.

From the hills Abraham sees the whole plain at once, and there is nothing to see but smoke, rising like the smoke of a kiln. Genesis records no word from him and no reaction, only what he saw.

The verse tells the whole event over again in summary, and now God is Elohim, three times. Lot is saved because God remembered Abraham, not for any merit of Lot’s. It is 2 Peter 2:7 that calls him “just Lot, vexed with the filthy conversation of the wicked”, a verdict Genesis does not give.

Lot’s dwellings shrink as Genesis follows him: tents in 13:5, a house in a city in verse 3 of this chapter, and now a cave. The mountain he begged to be spared in verse 19 is where he ends, “for he feared to dwell in Zoar”.

“The younger” is tse’irah, from the same root as Zoar, “little”. “Not a man in the earth” sounds as though the daughters believe the world has ended, as it did in the flood. “The manner of all the earth” means the common way of marriage.

The parallel with Noah is close: a survivor of a destroyed world, wine, and shame between a father and his children (9:21–22). “Preserve seed” is the verb of 7:3, “to keep seed alive”, the purpose of the ark.

In the Hebrew the word “when she arose” carries a dot over one letter, another of the Torah’s extraordinary points. Genesis Rabbah took it to mean that Lot did know when she rose, and drank again the next night all the same.

The elder says it plainly, “I lay yesternight with my father”, and plans the second night. “Yesternight” is 1611 English for last night, the word Laban uses in 31:29 and 42.

The verse repeats verse 33 almost word for word, with the younger in place of the elder, and without the dot. Lot is given the same line both nights: he perceived not when she lay down, nor when she arose.

Leviticus 18:7 will forbid uncovering the nakedness of a father. This is the last time Lot appears in Genesis, and the last phrase with his name in it is “the daughters of Lot”.

Moab sounds like me’av, “from father”, and the Greek adds the words “saying, from my father”. Ruth the Moabitess, great-grandmother of David, comes from this line (Ruth 4:13–17).

Ben-ammi means “son of my kin”, a gentler name than Moab. Deuteronomy 2:9 and 19 say God gave Moab and Ammon their lands “unto the children of Lot”. Naamah the Ammonitess was the mother of King Rehoboam (1 Kings 14:21), so Lot’s line runs into the kings of Judah by both sons.