Reflections on Genesis 19

Genesis 19 (Contemporary English Version)
1. That evening the two angels arrived in Sodom, while Lot was sitting near the city gate. When Lot saw them, he got up, bowed down low,
   
2. and said, "Gentlemen, I am your servant. Please come to my home. You can wash your feet, spend the night, and be on your way in the morning." They told him, "No, we'll spend the night in the city square."
   
3. But Lot kept insisting, until they finally agreed and went home with him. He baked some bread, cooked a meal, and they ate.
   
4. Before Lot and his guests could go to bed, every man in Sodom, young and old, came and stood outside his house
   
5. and started shouting, "Where are your visitors? Send them out, so we can have sex with them!"
   
6. Lot went outside and shut the door behind him.
   
7. Then he said, "Friends, please don't do such a terrible thing!
   
8. I have two daughters who have never been married. I'll bring them out, and you can do what you want with them. But don't harm these men. They are guests in my home."
   
9. "Don't get in our way," the crowd answered. "You're an outsider. What right do you have to order us around? We'll do worse things to you than we're going to do to them." The crowd kept arguing with Lot. Finally, they rushed toward the door to break it down.
   
10. But the two angels in the house reached out and pulled Lot safely inside.
    
11. Then they struck everyone in the crowd blind, and none of them could even find the door.
    
12. The two angels said to Lot, "The LORD has heard many terrible things about the people of Sodom, and he has sent us here to destroy the city. Take your family and leave. Take every relative you have in the city, as well as the men your daughters are going to marry."
    
13. (SEE 19:12)
    
14. Lot went to the men who were engaged to his daughters and said, "Hurry and get out of here! The LORD is going to destroy this city." But they thought he was joking, and they laughed at him.
    
15. Early the next morning the two angels tried to make Lot hurry and leave. They said, "Take your wife and your two daughters and get out of here as fast as you can! If you don't, every one of you will be killed when the LORD destroys the city."
    
16. At first, Lot just stood there. But the LORD wanted to save him. So the angels took Lot, his wife, and his two daughters by the hand and led them out of the city.
    
17. When they were outside, one of the angels said, "Run for your lives! Don't even look back. And don't stop in the valley. Run to the hills, where you will be safe."
    
18. Lot answered, "You have done us a great favor, sir. You have saved our lives, but please don't make us go to the hills. That's too far away. The city will be destroyed before we can get there, and we will be killed when it happens.
    
19. (SEE 19:18)
    
20. There's a town near here. It's only a small place, but my family and I will be safe, if you let us go there."
    
21. "All right, go there," he answered. "I won't destroy that town.
    
22. Hurry! Run! I can't do anything until you are safely there." The town was later called Zoar because Lot had said it was small.
    
23. The sun was coming up as Lot reached the town of Zoar,
    
24. and the LORD sent burning sulfur down like rain on Sodom and Gomorrah.
    
25. He destroyed those cities and everyone who lived in them, as well as their land and the trees and grass that grew there.
    
26. On the way, Lot's wife looked back and was turned into a block of salt.
    
27. That same morning Abraham got up and went to the place where he had stood and spoken with the LORD.
    
28. He looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah and saw smoke rising from all over the land--it was like a flaming furnace.
    
29. When God destroyed the cities of the valley where Lot lived, he remembered his promise to Abraham and saved Lot from the terrible destruction.
    
30. Lot was afraid to stay on in Zoar. So he took his two daughters and moved to a cave in the hill country.
    
31. One day his older daughter said to her sister, "Our father is old, and there are no men anywhere for us to marry.
    
32. Let's get our father drunk! Then we can sleep with him and have children."
    
33. That night they got their father drunk, and the older daughter got in bed with him, but he was too drunk even to know she was there.
    
34. The next day the older daughter said to her sister, "I slept with my father last night. We'll get him drunk again tonight, so you can go to bed with him, and we can each have a child."
    
35. That night they got their father drunk, and this time the younger sister slept with him. But once again he was too drunk even to know she was there.
    
36. That's how Lot's two daughters had their children.
    
37. The older daughter named her son Moab, and he is the ancestor of the Moabites.
    
38. The younger daughter named her son Benammi, and he is the ancestor of the Ammonites.
    
    

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    Time had come for judgment on the city of Sodom and the towns of the plain. Lest we doubt the lack of righteous people to be found there and whether God acted justly, the total depravity of the people is depicted for us in chapter 19. The two angels that accompanied the Lord in His visit to Abraham in the previous chapter now appear in Sodom with a two-fold purpose: to destroy the city and to rescue Lot and his family. Lot was sitting at the city gate in the evening when the angels entered the city. His response to them seems to indicate that he recognized them for who they were, and one wonders if his insistance on offering them hospitality was motivated by a desire to fulfill a custom or because he was trying to rescue them from the inevitable treatment he knew they would receive should they spend the night in the city square. I suspect Lot did not offer this hospitality to every stranger who entered the gates of the city needing a place to stay but that he offered it in this instance because he did know who these strangers were.
    
    Did Lot realize the risk he took in taking these angels into his home for the night? Verse 4 says that "the whole population, surrounded the house," calling out to Lot to send the visitors out to them "so we can have sex with them!" Morality can only properly be defined in relation to God. Without God in the equation morality is simply a matter of one person's judgment over against that of another. But in its proper perspective, morality is understood as a devaluation of all that God values. God values the people He created and the good things He gave them to enjoy. Those who reject God progressively reject God's value on human life and the good things God gave man to properly enjoy this life. We see this played out in the events Lot and his visitors encountered in this chapter. The citizens of Sodom placed no value on the lives of these visitors except for the fulfillment of their own desires. Though God gave man sex as a good thing to be enjoyed in the context of marriage and for the purpose of procreation, those who reject God also reject the value He places on sex in its proper context. Outside this context sex loses its value and becomes abusive rather than pleasurable.
    
    We know from other scripture that Lot was considered to be righteous. For instance, 2 Peter 2:7, "if He rescued righteous Lot . . ." But we are also left wondering why Lot would offer his two daughters to these evil men to "do whatever you want to them." (19:8) Fortunately, the angels rescued the situation by pulling Lot back into the house and blinding those outside. They then told Lot to get any family members he had out of Sodom because they were about to destroy it. It seems Lot may have been the only righteous person in the city or in his family. His two sons-in-law did not take him seriously when he tried to convince them to leave and his wife and two daughters left only reluctantly. In the end, his wife didn't escape though she got outside the city. In her desire for what she was leaving, she looked back, inspite of being told not to, and "became a pillar of salt." (19:26)
    
    Lot and his family were clearly influenced negatively by the Sodomite society. Those who follow God are faced with this delimma of being true to God while living as citizens of a world full of such depravity. In our devotion to God we are called to be His witnesses to those of this world who are without Him. This means we cannot separate ourselves from the world, yet we are to remain above the depravity of the world. This can only be accomplished through the power of God's Spirit in us to whom we constantly give our attention.