On the Eve of Destruction

The cities of Sodom and Gomorrah symbolize wickedness throughout the Bible. But I would bet if you asked most people what sin the Sodomites were guilty of, they would say “homosexuality”. After all, the tale of Sodom in Gen 19 is the origin for the term “sodomy”. However the Bible rarely spells out the great sin that made Sodom and Gomorrah so deserving of their destruction.

Prophets from Moses to Ezekiel used Sodom and Gomorrah as a cautionary tale for the fate that awaits their contemporaries if they continue their sinful ways. The prophets weren’t always very specific as to what kinds of sin though. Ezekiel (16:49-50) is one of the few to identify the sins of arrogance and lack of charity. The gospels (Matt 10:9-15; Lk 10:8-12) suggest lack of hospitality was the primary sin.

Chapter 19 of Genesis breaks down into three parts: (1) the reception of the two messengers by Lot and the people of Sodom (vv. 1-11), (2) the rescue of Lot’s family and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (vv. 12-29), and (3) Lot and his daughters (vv. 30-38).

A Tale of Two Cities

Only the first unit provides an example of why the citizens of Sodom were considered the epitome of wickedness. Two messengers (usually translated as “angels”) arrive and are greeted with hospitality by Lot. After sunset the locals surround the house and demand Lot release the strangers so they can be gang-raped. Lot offers the mob his virgin daughters as a substitute and is rejected. Before Lot’s house is stormed, the messengers strike the crowd blind and thus ends the unit.

A modern reader must wonder if the Bible truly considered Lot the only righteous man in Sodom. Knowing that the law of hospitality requires a host to put his guests before his own self-interest explains things somewhat but the thought that a father could treat his daughters as pieces of property offends our conscience.

The narrative sounds suspiciously similar to that found in Judges 19 (especially vv. 16-26). A certain Levite from the hill country of Ephraim had an argument with his concubine, who then ran away to her father in Bethlehem. After sweet-talking his wife into returning with him, the Levite and concubine are on their way home when they stop at Gibeah and plan to spend the night in the town square.

An old man returning from his work in the fields chats them up and, like the Levite, he is originally from Ephraim. He won’t hear of the visitors spending the night in the town square and invites them to his home. The men of the city surround the house, asking for the Levite in order to gang-rape him. The old man offers both his virgin daughter and the Levite’s concubine and the townsfolk reject the offer.

So far, this is almost exactly like Lot’s story. But there are no angels here. The Levite grabs his concubine and tosses her outside where the men of Gibeah proceed to rape and abuse her all night long. She collapses at the threshold to the old man’s house.

In the morning, the Levite leaves the house and almost trips on his concubine lying on the threshold. He puts her on his donkey and sets out for home. Upon his arrival he chops up her body into twelve pieces and sends them out via servants to the twelve tribes of Israel as a call to battle. (Saul later does the same with a yoke of oxen in 1 Sam 11:7.)

Scripture scholars believe the Gibeah story was patterned on the Sodom narrative. References to Bethlehem (home of David) and Gibeah (home of Saul) and logical inconsistencies in the narrative strongly suggest the incident was created or exaggerated as anti-Saul polemic.

Comparing the tales of Sodom and Gibeah, the great sin in both cases is an unbelievable violation of the law of hospitality. The purpose of hospitality as practiced in the ANE is to take a potential threat posed by a stranger and at least temporarily neutralize that threat. In neither case did a citizen of the town offer hospitality, but it fell to a resident alien (Lot and the old man from Ephraim) even if it wasn’t his place to do so. Outraged that a resident alien is harboring other aliens, the town’s citizens demand the newcomer in order to assert their dominance.

The sexual orientation of its citizens was no more the great sin of Sodom than it was the great sin of Gibeah. No one would argue that what the mob did to the Levite’s concubine was consensual. It was rape. Rape is about power and control over another person, not sex.

Rescue and Destruction

The story moves along quite briskly now. The messengers inform Lot that the city will be destroyed and tell him to leave with his family. Lot’s virgin daughters were apparently betrothed, meaning they were married but had not yet come to live with their husbands. Lot goes to the houses of his sons-in-law but is unable to convince them of the danger.

As daybreak approaches, the messengers tell Lot to leave with his wife and daughters but Lot dawdles. The messengers grab Lot and his family by the hand and lead them outside the city. They are told, “Head for the hills!” but Lot doesn’t think he’ll make it in time. He asks the messengers if he can take refuge in a small town nearby and is informed the town will be spared.

Once Lot and his family arrive at the little town of Zoar (= “little” in Hebrew), fire and brimstone rain down on Sodom and Gomorrah and the rest of the plain of Jordan. Unfortunately, Lot’s wife looked back and was turned into a pillar of salt. Both the Zoar diversion and the fate of Mrs. Lot appear to be etiological tales, one explaining how the town of Zoar got its name the other providing a folkloric origin story to the weird salt formations that appear in the area around the Dead Sea.

The Last Man on Earth

Lot was afraid to stay in Zoar (maybe the locals considered him a jinx?) so he and his daughters finally head for the hills and settle in a cave. His daughters despair of finding a man, so they take turns getting their father drunk so he can impregnate them. Their sons will become the ancestors of the Moabites and Ammonites.

Lot and his Daughters (Pieter Jozef Verhaghen, before 1811). The tableau of Lot seduced by his two nubile daughters has inspired artists for centuries, if for nothing else than it gave them an excuse to paint nudes. This is one of the tamer selections.

The purpose of the tale is apparently to provide a disreputable origin story for rival nations to the Israelites. As it currently stands, though, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Even if Zoar wasn’t an option, Lot certainly could have found a better dwelling than a cave. Maybe Abraham would have helped him out. And why would Lot’s daughters have given up on the idea of finding new husbands?

But if the Zoar origin story was interpolated into the Sodom destruction narrative, it makes more sense. Recall the messengers had told Lot to take his family and flee to the hills. Maybe they did so in the original version of the tale and sought shelter in a cave. That would explain why, seeing the wholesale destruction of the entire plain before them, Lot’s daughters thought their father might be the last man on earth. The story of a patriarch getting drunk and naked after a major disaster resonates with that of Noah after the flood.

The necessity to get Lot drunk on consecutive nights implies that Lot would not have otherwise consented to his daughters’ plan. Therefore, the sex was not consensual for Lot. In other words, his daughters raped him. Perhaps his daughters were getting revenge on their father for offering to hand them over to be raped by the mob outside his door in Sodom.

Lot would have done well to follow the Jewish version of the Golden Rule: “Whatever is hateful and distasteful to you, do not do to your fellow man.”