The Bible: Commentary and Controversy

No need to go into details; I’ll just hit the highlights.

One day, while God and a couple of angels are walking around with Abraham, God decides to share his thoughts, describing Sodom and Gomorrah’s sin as “exceedingly grave.” He continues “ I will go down now, and see if they have done entirely according to its outcry, which has come to Me; and if not, I will know.” In other words, He’s heard bad things about Sodom and Gomorrah. No explanation about how He heard them, perhaps from His angels. The interesting part of this is He must personally visit Sodom to find out if the rumors are true, but as an all-knowing God, He shouldn’t need to hear about the city’s sins from an external source, and certainly shouldn’t have to see it with His own eyes to confirm it.

God doesn’t actually tell Abraham He’s going to destroy Sodom if things are as bad as he’s been told, but Abraham evidently can read between the lines, and begins to intercede for the inhabitants of the city, eventually getting the Lord to promise He won’t destroy the city if he can find just ten righteous men living there. Then the Lord leaves, heading for Sodom, following His angels, who are already headed in that direction.

One evening, as Lot is sitting “in the gate” of Sodom, he is visited by two angels – we assume the same two that were visiting with God and Abraham.  When Lot saw them, he immediately “bowed down with his face to the ground.” Obviously, he knew immediately that they were angels, but we don’t have a clue as to how he knew. We do know they didn’t have wings or halos, because the townspeople would have noticed this and commented on it later, when they come to Lot’s door. We might guess, however, that they were attractive, from the reaction of the townspeople.

The townspeople, “from every quarter,” pound on Lot’s door, demanding that he send the angels out so they can have sex with them. Lot refuses, and offers to send out his two virgin daughters instead, so the townspeople can “do whatever they like” to them. As a father of two girls, I have a rather large problem with this. I realize Lot’s predicament. But to me this offer is symptomatic of a misogynistic theme that runs throughout the bible. Women, it seems, are not on the same plane as men. Not even important enough for their names to be listed in the begats. Examples are myriad. Abraham giving Sarah to the pharaoh to save his own skin. Eve seducing Adam into eating the forbidden fruit. Job and his associates having their pompous all-male discussion. The Nephilim “taking” the daughters of men. Careful naming of Noah and his sons, but only referring to the rest of his family as “his wife and daughters.” The covenant of circumcision, which prevents women from being included. It seems women are only named when they’re a vital part of the story – the most obvious example being Mother Mary.

As I said, I understand Lot’s predicament, but looking at it objectively, I think he could have handed over the angels, apologizing profusely, knowing that they could probably take good care of themselves. After all, when the crowd became too rowdy, the angels “struck them with blindness,” neutralizing the threat, as the crowd then “wearied themselves trying to find the doorway” to Lot’s house.

Ellicot says this was not true “blindness,” but “a disturbance of vision caused by the eye not being in its proper connection with the brain.” In other words, like Lamont Cranston, the angels clouded the men’s minds. And by the way, note it was only the men of Sodom who surrounded Lot’s house, young and old: no women. Which, I guess, is a good thing.

The angels then told Lot to gather his family and get ready to leave, because “we are about to destroy this place, as their outcry has become so great before the LORD that the LORD has sent us to destroy it.”

When Lot was undecided, the angels “took his hand, and the hands of his wife and two daughters, and brought them outside the city.  “Escape for your life!” they tell him. “Do not look behind you, and do not stay anywhere in the valley; escape to the mountains, or you will be swept away.” Being his father’s son, Lot argues with the angels, and talks them into letting him go to a nearby town called Zoar. As soon as Lot and his family are safe, the Lord turns Sodom and Gomorrah into a pile of smoking rubble, causing smoke “like the smoke of a furnace.”

But Lot’s wife, “from behind him, looked back, and she became a pillar of salt.” Are you catching the rhythm, here?  She has no name. She walks behind him, as women were made to do in those times, and – in a commentary on the contrariness of women in general – she disobeys the angels and is instantly transformed into a pillar of salt. Phooey. Who needed her, anyway? It’s very much like getting rid of a character in a bad television series.

However, it does point out the necessity of faith. Hers was obviously insufficient; Lot’s, however shaky, was evidently enough. Interestingly, some scholars – trying to make the bible real – suggest that “the earthquake heaped up a mighty mass of the rock-salt, which lies in solid strata round the Dead Sea, and Lot’s wife was entangled in the convulsion and perished, leaving the hill of salt, in which she was enclosed, as her memorial.”

To me that misses the point. You’ve got a good story, here, full of sex and angels and fire and brimstone, and death, and the necessity for faith, and the power of God, and what happens if you disobey. Why mess it up trying to invent the way a fantastic event could have actually happened? Just accept the lessons and move on.