Sodom, Sex and Sisters

The Lord Yahweh suddenly appeared to Abraham one day early in the afternoon as he sat at the entrance of his tent near the sacred oak trees at the shrine of Shechem.  Abraham looked up and saw three strangers coming toward him.  He recognized them as important visitors.  He ran to meet them and bowed low in front of them. 

As was the custom in those days Abraham said to the strangers, "Gentlemen, come in, do not pass by my tent without stopping to visit.  Let me bring a little water for you so you can wash your feet, and then you can rest yourselves in the shade of the sacred tree.  Let me bring some bread so that you may refresh yourselves, and after you have eaten and rested you can continue your journey."

The men agreed to stop and rest.  Abraham rushed into the tent to Sarah and said, "Quickly, Sarah, take some of our best flour to make bread for our three guests, knead it and bake it.”  Then Abraham ran to his herd, and took a young calf and gave it to a servant, who butchered it for the meal.  Then he took cheese, milk and the meat that he had prepared and set it before the strangers.  Abraham stood by them under the sacred tree while they ate.

One of the men said to Abraham, "Where is your wife Sarah?"

"Over there, in the tent," replied Abraham.

Then one of the men said, "I will come back here in a few months and at that time your wife Sarah shall have a son."

Sarah was listening at the tent entrance out of sight behind Abraham.  Sarah was past the age when women can have children and she laughed to herself, saying, "Now that I am old and my husband is old, do these strangers really think I can get pregnant and have a child?"

The Lord Yahweh said to Abraham, "Why did Sarah laugh and say, 'How can I have a child now that I am old?'  Do you think I can't make it happen?  At the right time I will return to you and then Sarah shall have a son."

Sarah was afraid of Yahweh so she denied laughing.  Yahweh said, "Oh yes, Sarah, don’t deny it, you did laugh."

Then the men left and resumed their journey and headed down the road that led toward the city of Sodom, which was a short distance away.  Abraham walked down the road with them as they started out on their way. 

As he was walking along the road beside Abraham, Lord Yahweh was thinking about Sodom and its coming fate, and he said to himself, "Should I tell Abraham what I am about to do to Sodom, seeing that Abraham shall become father of a great and mighty nation?  I suppose I have to tell him what I am about to do because I have chosen  him to be the head of a great nation and I am requiring him, his children and his household after him to be obedient to me by being righteous and just.” 

So the Lord Yahweh said to Abraham as they continued walking together, "I have heard a lot of complaining about the behavior of the people of Sodom and Gomorrah.  I must go down and visit them and see whether they have done these awful things I have heard about, because if I don't go there and see for myself I won't know for sure if these stories are true.” 

So two of the men left Abraham standing there with Lord Yahweh and continued on their journey toward Sodom.  Lord Yahweh remained behind because he was still talking with Abraham, who said to Lord Yahweh, "Will you really destroy the good people of Sodom along with the wicked people?   Suppose there are fifty good people in the city, will you destroy the city while there are fifty good people who live there who will also be killed?  Surely it is not like you to kill the good people along with the evil ones, so that the fate of the good is just the same as the fate of the evil people?  If you are the judge, shouldn't you do what is just?  Everyone knows that it is not fair that good people suffer the same fate as evil people!”  

Then Lord Yahweh said, "OK, Abraham.  If I find fifty good people in the city, I will forgive the whole place for the sake of the good people."

Abraham was fearful of annoying the Lord Yahweh, but he said, “Lord Yahweh, let's suppose when you count the good people you are five people short of the fifty?  Will you then destroy the whole city for lack of five?"  

Lord Yahweh said, "No, I will not destroy it if I find forty-five there."

Abraham asked, "Suppose only forty are found there?"

"No, Abraham, for the sake of forty I will not destroy it."

“Lord Yahweh,” said Abraham, “don't be angry with me, but how about if there are just 30 good people in the city?”

So Abraham went back and forth negotiating how many good people had to be found to save the city from destruction.  They finally agreed on ten—if Yahweh could find ten good people in the city of Sodom he would not destroy it.  After they concluded their negotiations the Lord Yahweh continued his trip down the road, and Abraham returned to his tent.

A few days later two strangers (who were actually messengers from the Lord Yahweh) came to Sodom in the evening.  Lot was sitting near the entrance gate of the city. When Lot saw the strangers, he rose to meet them and bowed to them and, following the custom of his day to welcome strangers to his home, said to them, "Please, sirs, come to my house to spend the night and wash your feet, and then you can rise early and go on your way."

The strangers said, "No; we will spend the night in the town square."

But Lot urged them strongly to accept his invitation, so they finally accepted and came with Lot to his house, where Lot made them a feast, and baked unleavened bread, and they ate.  Later that night before they went to bed, there was a commotion outside Lot's house and all the men of the city of Sodom, all the men and boys of city, every one of them, surrounded the house.  They shouted to Lot, "Where are the men who came to your house tonight? Bring them out to us, so that we may have sex with them."

Lot went outside to talk to the men and shut the door, and said to the men of the city, "I beg you, my neighbors, do not do this. Don't molest these men.  I have given them protection in my house under the laws of hospitality and they have shelter and protection under my roof.  I have two daughters who are virgins; let me bring them out for you and you can do whatever you want to them, but please leave my guests alone."

The men of the city became angry and shouted to Lot, "Get out of our way.  You came here as a foreigner in our town and you now think you can judge us and tell us what to do?  Let us in so we can seize the young men or we will do to you what we are going to do with your guests, only worse. "

The men of the town surged forward and tried to push Lot away from the door and were ready to break down the door with force when the strangers reached out and grabbed Lot, dragged him inside the house and slammed the door.  Then the strangers blinded the men of the town so that they could not see the door. 

The two messengers from Lord Yahweh said to Lot, “Who else is in the house with you? Quickly get your family together, sons-in-law, sons, daughters, or any of your relatives and members of your household who are in the city.  You and your family have to get out of here.  We are going to destroy this city in the morning because the Lord Yahweh has heard the complaints about the behavior of the people of this city and he has sent us to destroy it."

So Lot went out into the night to the homes of his relatives and said to his sons-in-law, who were intending to marry his daughters, "Get up quickly, we have to leave right now because the Lord Yahweh is about to destroy this city."  His sons in law did not take him seriously.  They laughed and would not get up.

When morning dawned the messengers of Lord Yahweh urged Lot to go immediately.  They said to Lot, "You must leave now.  Take your wife and your two daughters and go now or else you will be consumed in the punishment of the city." But Lot was reluctant to leave, so the men grabbed him and his wife and his two daughters by the hand and brought them outside the city gates and then left Lot there with his family with a final warning: "Flee for your lives; do not look back or stop anywhere in the plain; flee to the hills or else you will be consumed by fire." 

Lot said to the strangers, "My friends, you have shown me great kindness in saving my life; but I cannot flee to the hills, for I am afraid that I cannot run fast enough and the disaster will overtake me and I will die.  There is a small city just over there, just a short distance away, close enough that I can get to it.  You can see that it is small.  Please let us go there to be safe.”

So the messenger of Lord Yahweh said to him, "Very well, I will grant you this favor too, and I will not destroy that city.  Hurry up, go there quickly, for I can't start the destruction of Sodom until you arrive there." 

That small city was called Zoar.  The sun had just risen when Lot arrived at Zoar.  Just as Lot arrived at the gate of the city of Zoar the Lord Yahweh rained fire from the sky on Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities were destroyed in the flames and all the residents of the cities were killed and their crops were destroyed.

But Lot's wife, who was following behind him, looked back, and instantly she became a pillar of salt. 

Early that morning Abraham went back to the place where he had the conversation with the Lord Yahweh about the destruction of Sodom, and he looked across the valley toward Sodom and Gomorrah and toward all the lands of the Plain and he saw smoke rising into the air like the smoke of a furnace.

A few days later Lot left the city of Zoar and settled in the hill country nearby with his two daughters, for he was afraid to stay in Zoar, so close to the cities the Lord Yahweh had destroyed.  Lot lived in a cave in the hills with his two daughters. 

Lot was old, his wife was dead, and his daughters were unmarried, their future husbands killed in the fiery destruction of Sodom.  So the older daughter said to the younger, "Our father is old, we are single, there are no men around to marry us and give us children.  So let's give our father wine and get him drunk, then we will get into bed with him and have sex, and we will become pregnant so that we will have children to take care of us in our old age.”

The younger sister agreed.  So that night they got their father drunk. The elder daughter got into bed with her father after he was asleep and had sex with him although he was not aware of it. 

The next day the sisters got their father drunk again, and this time the younger daughter got into bed with her father and also had sex with him. 

Both daughters of Lot became pregnant by their father.  The older daughter bore a son and named him Moab and he became the ancestor of the Moabites.  The younger daughter also bore a son and named him Ben-ammi and he became the ancestor of the Ammonites.

 

The first part of this story, the destruction of Sodom for its evil ways, begs the question of the specific nature of the sin for which Sodom was destroyed.  Some have argued that the sin was not homosexuality, that it was really about violating the sacred law of hospitality, a desert tradition that in the dangerous climate of the desert a stranger must be taken in, given water and food and a place to sleep, and defended with one’s life while he was under the protection of the house owner.  That was a sacred duty and the seriousness of that duty is confirmed by Lot’s willingness to surrender his virgin daughters to the crowd if it would protect the stranger.  However that can’t be the whole story, because Yahweh had decided to destroy the city even before the laws of hospitality were broken.  An alternative argument could be made that the story portrays the conflict of values between urban life and values and the simpler life style of country people and desert nomads.  From the perspective of a nomad, cities involved all sorts of evil that justifies their destruction. The second part of the story appears to be about incest, but it would be better understood as a way of explaining the questionable origins of two neighboring groups that the Hebrews fought and despised, the Moabites and the Ammonites. It was a way of insulting the ancestors of people with whom they fought regular battles.