Genesis 13:5-13
The choice of the plain
Given first choice, he lifts his eyes and takes the green. The narrator mentions what kind of city sat in it, and says nothing else yet.
People of the Bible
Lot
Chose the better land by looking at it, and spent the rest of his life inside that choice.
Lot leaves Ur with his uncle and travels the same road towards the same promise, but the promise was never spoken to him. When the herdsmen quarrel and Abram offers him first pick of the country, he looks east at the well watered plain and takes it, and the narrator adds one line about the men of Sodom before moving on. From there he is captured in a war he had no part in, rescued by his uncle, and finally pulled out of a burning city by the arms because he is still hesitating at dawn.
Scroll down to the storyThe movements, in the order the text gives them.
The story of Lot
- 01
- 02
Genesis 14:8-16
Carried off and brought back
Four kings sweep the plain and take him with the plunder. Abram arms his household, rides through the night and brings back every person taken.
- 03
Genesis 19:1-11
The night at the gate
He is sitting in the gate of the city now, a man of standing in it, and he offers his own daughters to protect two strangers under his roof.
- 04
Genesis 19:15-26
Taken by the hand
He lingers, so the messengers seize his hand and his wife’s and his daughters’ and set them outside the city. One of the four looks back.
- 05
Genesis 19:30-38
The cave above Zoar
He ends afraid of the small town he begged to keep, living in a cave, and the account closes with two nations born out of that darkness.
Why it matters
Lot is the alternative to Abraham held up beside him. Same family, same journey, same land in front of him, and the difference is what each man decided a promise was worth against what he could see. Scripture does not write him off. He is called righteous later, and the record is of a man who was rescued repeatedly and never quite left.
10 songs
The music
Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.
