Saving Lot
Questions: Why was Lot saved? Was he really considered a righteous person?
Key Verses:
Genesis 19:29 And it came to pass as G-d destroyed the cities of the Plain, G-d remembered Abraham; And He sent Lot out from the overturned city, as He overturned the cities, that Lot dwelt in
19:1 Two angels/messengers came to Sodom in the evening; Lot was sitting in the Gate of Sodom. He saw and rose to greet them. He bowed his face to the ground
19:32 Come, let us cause our father to drink wine and we will lie with him, and we will live from our father’s seed
19:33 They made their father drink wine that night. The elder daughter came and lay with her father and he didn’t know when she had lain or gotten up
Were Lot and his family worthy of being the only people saved from Sodom?
The conventional wisdom is Abraham negotiated on behalf of Sodom in order to try to save the entire town. He goes through a process of testing G-d’s resolve (18:32), lowering the count of righteous from 50 to 10, but then ultimately giving up at that number. The city would not be saved for less than 10. That leaves Lot, the nephew of Abraham, as the lone individual who is saved from the destruction. In the text, there’s no negotiation for Lot. Abraham doesn’t plead for his nephew’s life. It’s accepted that he’s worthy of being saved to the degree that Abraham doesn’t even have to bargain with God.
This sounds as if Lot had a fairly impressive resume of ethical behavior. Yet, the commentators struggle to find what it was that Lot did that merited his salvation. Not much about him is known. He was part of Abraham’s entourage for several years and traveled with his uncle from Mesopotamia when Abraham departed for Canaan. That seems to be a big point in his favor. However, we know that Lot’s shepherds insisted on allowing their flocks to graze on lands that weren’t theirs. When Lot parted, he chose to dwell in the penultimate den of iniquity, Sodom, the city that would be wiped off the face of the earth because of its lack of any creditable qualities and merits.
One of the great Bible commentators, Rashi, deals with this subject (19:29), where he cites the major virtue of Lot being that he didn’t reveal Abraham’s true identity when Abraham lied to Pharaoh in Egypt. Abraham was afraid that Pharaoh’s men would seize his wife Sarah because of her beauty and dispose of him had he admitted to being her husband. Thus, he told them he was her brother. Lot was present and could have told the men the truth but stayed mum. This hardly seems to be the cause for Lot’s separation from Sodom’s fate. A passive act saved him? That doesn’t seem very likely.
In that same verse, the text says, “G-d remembered Abraham and sent Lot from amidst the upheaval.” Is the text revealing that G-d saved Lot only because he was Abraham’s nephew? Although Midrashic, Haran, Lot’s father, wasn’t spared when he was thrown in the furnace of Nimrod, despite actively supporting Abraham (at least in words). Would G-d then save his son, who passively supported his uncle? It sounds as if some information is missing.
Perhaps the text itself can shed some light on the subject of why Lot was saved. When the angels approach Sodom, the text (19:1) says Lot arose and greeted them. This sounds as if he had learned from his uncle, whose greatest attribute, according to many, was his hospitality. However, in the previous chapter (18:1), the account of Abraham’s greeting his visitors says he ran to greet them. Clearly, Lot’s deficient in the comparison. Some of the commentators cite the risk Lot took in greeting the newcomers and then hosting them – without the assistance of anyone in his household – when the Sodomites were opposed to allowing newcomers enter their city (19:4). Perhaps Lot was worthy of saving! However, the angels had come to Sodom with the intention of saving Lot, thus, it must be for a pre-existing reason that he was spared. They wouldn’t have been instructed to save him for something he didn’t already do.
The text reveals something else about Lot in 19:1. It says Lot sat in the gates of Sodom. The Midrash understands this to mean that he was a city judge. The place where judges traditionally sat was at the gates of the city. Lot was adjudicating when the angels arrived and used his prestige, or perhaps just the absence of others, to greet the strangers as they emerged. That wouldn’t solve our dilemma. Maybe Lot’s being at the city gates tells us something else, something about his character.
Lot sat at the city gates. Literally, the text says, “in” the city gates. What can that mean? Lot opted to dwell in Sodom. That was his choice of residence. However, his sitting “in the gates” can tell us he wasn’t fully comfortable. He needed to separate himself physically from the town and thus was outside the town, at its gates. But yet, the hold that the town had on Lot – perhaps more appropriately on his family – placed him with one foot in the city and one foot outside. He was a prisoner, locked in its gates. He was immersed in the city, but yet, he was different enough, as evidenced by his ability to greet strangers and welcome them to his home, to merit saving.
Lot’s spared from the destruction of Sodom. The assumption is that he merited being saved. Therefore, Lot’s considered righteous. What happens next after he and his family flee the doomed city? Lot’s found to have taken refuge in a nearby cave with his two daughters (19:30). It’s approximately 40 km to Zoar, the city that Lot ran to. Although he checks into the small village (19:30), he chooses to stay in a nearby cave with his two daughters for the night. Maybe he was distraught from the destruction and didn’t want to be around the people from Zoar. Perhaps he was in mourning over the loss of his other daughters or seeing his wife turn into a pillar of salt before his very eyes (19:26), i.e. she died too. If he hadn’t lost all his wealth, then he must have suffered a big financial hit too. He must have been depressed.
As mentioned in a previous chapter, somehow wine has been discovered and Lot impregnates his two daughters over two consecutive nights (19:33-35). The reader is supposed to feel no repugnance towards Lot for this double act of incest because he was drunk and technically raped. Or is this the Torah’s way of saving face? G-d saved this man and then he immediately committed two acts of incest? Readers should be livid, saying: “This is repugnant. Lot wasn’t righteous and shouldn’t have been saved.” Although the text specifically cites the reason for his salvation, “G-d remembered Abraham. He sent Lot from the destruction…” (19:29), Lot needs to stand on his own merits. He has to be personally salvageable. Yet, when Abraham risked his life to enter a war in order to liberate Lot from captivity (14:16), Lot spited his uncle by returning to live in evil Sodom. What happens here? G-d saves Lot and Lot immediately commits one of the most heinous sins, incest – twice! Lot spites G-d this time, following his second major salvation. This is the Book of Genesis’ dirtiest character.
But this is G-d’s book and it might be one thing to “allow” Lot to get away with spiting Abraham, but will he be allowed to spite G-d? The only way out of this mess is to somehow have wine miraculously appear in a cave and have Lot be “so drunk” that he couldn’t remember either carnal act. But it’s a tough sell. There would have to be a sizeable quantity of wine for a man not to know he was being used sexually, and this would have happened twice. Maybe the cave had more than one minibar. Even the reasoning provided in the Torah for the daughters’ action is feeble, “…There are no other men on earth to impregnate us…” Didn’t Lot just emerge from Zoar, an inhabited town that was specifically spared because Lot chose to flee there (19:21)? His daughters must have not only known there were people there, but probably saw them hours before.
Lot’s resume is awful. In addition to spiting Abraham and G-d, this is the same man who chose to live in wicked Sodom and offered these same two daughters to an unruly mob outside his home instead of giving up the visitors/angels who were in his home to advise him to flee Sodom (19:8).
It doesn’t look good on G-d to have Lot as such an ungrateful character who moments after being saved by G-d commits incest. Therefore, is it possible the narrative is changed in order for G-d to save face? How can the Bible leave generations of readers with a message that you can show your gratitude to G-d by committing incest? It can’t. The story gets changed. Lot emerges as a character with whom the reader commiserates and empathizes. His only crime was drunkenness, which really wasn’t his fault either as it was his daughters who plotted to get him drunk. Maybe he did merit saving.
For Further Thought: On the subject of Lot being “in” the gates, it shows a man who is very similar to most people. How different is Lot than any of us? Most people live in two worlds in many respects, be it a secular world and a religious world, a spiritual world and a material world, a world of ecology and a world of industry. Many, perhaps all of us, have our feet firmly planted in both these settings and have difficulty knowing where we belong and where to situate ourselves more properly. Carving out a niche in the world is not an easy task and is a process that takes a lifetime. Lot was involved in it. It merited his salvation. May it bring us, who are also involved in the process, salvation as well.