Deeper Commentary
Yet 2 Pet. 2:7,8 reveals how Lot "vexed (Gk.
'tortured') his righteous soul from day to day with their unlawful deeds".
Seeing that he failed to influence his family to properly appreciate the
sins of that city, and that he was so attached to it that he was unwilling
to leave, this must be interpreted as little more than the sort of middle
class, respectable 'tut-tutting' that present day Christianity abounds
with. After all, he had chosen to live there, he did not have to stay, and
the record of his choice of Sodom in Gen. 13 spotlights his unspiritual,
worldly thinking in this regard when compared to Abraham, the stranger and
sojourner. Whether this assessment of Lot's character is felt to be
correct or not, it must surely be accepted that there was a serious
dualism in his position which has strong similarities with ours today-
vexing his soul about the sins of the surrounding world, and yet
increasingly involved in it and greatly benefiting from it materially, at
spiritual cost to himself and his family. Lot was effectively willing to
betray his daughters to the men of Sodom, pointing forward to the Lord's
prophecy of how in the holocaust to come, many will betray each other (Mt.
10:36), family life within the ecclesia will break up; a spirit of
dissension will fall upon natural and spiritual families. The reason for
this will be rooted in a lack of true spiritual concern for the family in
the easier years of this present life. Not for nothing does Paul warn
against marriage in the last days (1 Cor. 7:28).
19:2 And he said, See now, my lords, please turn aside into your servant’s house, stay all night, wash your feet, and you can rise up early, and go on your way. They said, No, but we will stay in the street all night- There are such distinct similarities between the record of Abraham meeting and entertaining the Angels and how Lot does likewise. They both bow to the visitors (:1) and personally entertain them, and are solicitous for their welfare. Both of them entertained Angels unaware (Heb. 13:2). As noted with Abraham, Lot was on one level "unaware" they were Angels, but on another level he surely was.
19:3 He urged them greatly, and they came in with him, and entered into his house. He made them a feast, and baked unleavened bread, and they ate- The Angels who visited Lot in Sodom wanted initially to lodge in the street, but they were persuaded by Lot to change their plans. And who is to say that to some extent this isn’t possible today, too? This connects with the theme encountered in chapter 18, of God being open to dialogue with men. The reason they wanted to stay in the street was perhaps to protect Lot, but they went to a plan B in the face of his insistence. The "feast" with unleavened bread was a sign of fellowship. To break bread together was from earliest times a sign of fellowship, and had religious significance. Always the Lord's people had an open table, as exemplified supremely by the Lord Jesus. There was no test of the worthiness of those who presented themselves.
One difference with the entertainment of Angels by Abraham is that Lot's wife plays no role in it, unlike Sarah. We are left to conclude that she was not of one mind with him about the matter. The way she longed for Sodom even after leaving it, despite the attempted rape of their visitors, indicates that she was very much in line with the local thinking rather than spiritual thinking.
19:4 But before they lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, surrounded the house, both young and old, all the people from every quarter- The double emphasis upon "the men" is in the context of their demand for sex with the attractive male visitors. As the Angels had entered at "the gate" (:1), the whole town knew of their arrival. But their desire to rape them was not pure lust, it was also xenophobia. The whole city is implicated as evidence of the fact that not even ten righteous could be found within it.
19:5 They called to Lot, and said to him, Where are the men who came
in to you this night? Bring them out to us, that we may have sex with them-
The specific sin of Sodom is well known- confirmed
by the repeated emphasis on "the men of Sodom" in the record. The
grossness of their perversion is shown by their clamouring for the Angels,
who doubtless appeared as good looking young men. Lot's response and
his offer of his daughters to them (Gen. 19:7,8) clearly shows their
intention. In the light of this, Jude warns the believers that their
punishment for this was what awaited those of the new Israel who threw off
their responsibilities. "As Sodom and Gomorrah... giving themselves over
(implying this was a conscious apostasy?) to fornication, and going after
strange flesh, are set forth an example" to us (Jude 7). In passing, it
should be noted that all Jude's examples of Divine punishment involve
people who were responsible to God, by reason of knowing His ways. Is
Sodom an exception? Perhaps
Lot had preached to them. We must give full weight to the
Lord's comment that the villages who rejected Him will have a worse
judgment than the men of Sodom (Lk. 4:21-24). To reject the saving
knowledge of the Lord Jesus is far worse than what these men did. And this
is being done by millions as we read these words. Likewise Lk. 17:26-32
speaks of being caught up with the daily stuff of eating and
drinking, marrying, planting, building... as being the essential sin of
Sodom, just as Ezekiel identifies their sin as idleness, ignoring the
poor, and "fullness of bread". It is these things which give rise to
sexual perversion. The fall of Rome, of the West today, is directly
analagous.
There can be no doubt that the sexual aspects of
Sodom's sins have great similarity to the moral filth of our present
world. But significantly it was not this aspect which our Lord chose to
highlight when speaking of how "the days of Lot" typified those of His
return. Instead He spoke of those things which were more likely to ensnare
His people: "They (as well as our present world) did eat, they
drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they
builded" (Lk. 17:28). Their obsession with daily activities without an
awareness of God was as bad as their other sins; a point we would do well
to be aware of. However, their eating and drinking must have been to gross
excess- Ez.16:49 defines "the iniquity of Sodom" as being "fulness of
bread" among other things. Some lavish Christian lifestyles frequently
feature "fulness of bread"- but because it is not perceived as a gross
sin, this unhealthy similarity with Sodom slips by unchallenged.
"They bought, they sold" suggests that Sodom was a
major trading centre, rapidly increasing in wealth; "they planted, they
builded" (Lk. 17:28) implies a real boom town. Such success resulted in
the people being proud and haughty (Ez. 16:49,50); the wealth created at
the expense of others brought about "abundance of idleness in her and in
her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy"
(Ez. 16:49). It is these aspects of Sodom which are so precisely matched
by our self-centred, money mad world. As our Lord realized, it is these
aspects which are most likely to ensnare the child of God. Yet Sodom's
people were not completely unaware of their religious conscience. Jeremiah
likened the false prophets of Israel who effectively taught that sin was
service to God to the people of Sodom, suggesting that they too said the
same (Jer. 23:14). This is another hint that the people of Sodom had some
degree of responsibility, as have latter day Israel whom they typify.
19:6 Lot went out to them to the door, and shut the door after him- Lot was willing to die in order to save the Angels. There is an intended similarity with the entrance door to the ark which was also opened and shut (Gen. 6:16), and the Angelic defence of the "door" of Israelite houses in the night of Egypt's destruction (Ex. 12:22,23). The same two Angels had also stood at the "door" of Abraham's tent (Gen. 18:1,2,10 s.w.). There is without doubt a correspondence between Abraham and Lot, but it seems the similarities are more to point a contrast between the two men, in which Lot comes out negatively.
19:7 He said, Please, my brothers, don’t act so wickedly- Lot thought that he had authority over them, as a judge who sat in the gate of the city. But their anger and lust was beyond respecting anybody. Perhaps it is specifically this incident which Peter has in mind when he writes that Lot was "distressed by the filthy conduct of the wicked" (2 Pet. 2:7), and Peter even implies that it was because of this that he was "delivered". There is no other Biblical example of Lot being "distressed by the filthy conduct of the wicked" in Sodom. It was on behalf of Abraham's intercession that he was delivered, but confirmed in another dimension by this act of genuine distress at their wickedness. Although Lot is presented as weak, this heat of the moment response was indicative of his genuine distress at their wickedness. Lot was deeply wrong to offer his daughters to be raped (:8), and the fact they raped him later reflects how his sin returned upon him. But as with Sarah's 'laughing' and expulsion of Hagar is read positively in the New Testament, so here, Lot's attitude to the Sodomites is held up as positive. God sifted through his sins, his weakness, and found something positive.
19:8 See now, I have two virgin daughters. Please let me bring them out to you, and you may do to them what seems good to you. Only don’t do anything to these men, because they have come under the shadow of my roof- This is really indefensible, and is a deep reflection of Lot's weakness and yet also of his desire to somehow do the right thing on another level. On a psychological level, the daughters took their revenge later by making Lot drunk and sleeping with him. This is absolutely psychologically credible, and confirms the veracity of the Biblical storyline here presented.
19:9 They said, Stand back! Then they said, This one fellow came in to live as a foreigner, and he appoints himself a judge. Now will we deal worse with you, than with them! They pressed hard on the man Lot, and drew near in order to break the door- The sense in which they felt he was a "judge" was in that Lot had told them that gang rape was "wicked". They were furious that he criticized their moral standards. We can assume that they intended to rape and murder Lot, and yet their passion for the Angels was unabated, and they attempted to break the door down to get in.
19:10 But the men reached out their hand, and brought Lot into the house to them, and shut the door- The same word is used of the Angelic shutting of the door of the ark (Gen. 7:16). Salvation was to be within the house, prefiguring the ecclesia in the last days; for a brief moment as the judgments are poured out on this Sodom like world, we too shall be shut in behind a door (same Hebrew phrase, Is. 26:20). "Reached out [their] hand" is used of Noah in Gen. 8:9. We note that this salvation of Lot was by grace- he has just shamelessly offered his daughters to be gang raped. But instead of turning away from him in disgust, God saves him- and offers to save his family. Again we see the juxtaposition of God's grace and human weakness. So often God's saving grace is revealed in our weakest moments, when furthest from Him.
19:11 They struck the men who were at the door of the house with
blindness, both small and great, so that they wearied themselves to find
the door-
Zeph.1:17,18 has a series of allusions to Sodom,
indicating that its destruction prefigures that of Israel in the last
days: "They shall walk like blind men (as the Sodomites did), because they
have sinned against the Lord ("the men of Sodom were wicked and sinners
before the Lord", Gen. 13:13)... neither their silver nor their gold (cp.
Sodom's wealth) shall be able to deliver them... the whole land shall be
devoured by the fire" (Zeph. 1:17,18).
I
"Lot went out" into streets filled
with blind, angry men of Sodom, in order to spread the message as the
Angels requested (Gen. 19:14). This picture of preaching amidst bitter
hostility but with Divine protection recurs in Rev. 11 concerning the two
witnesses.
19:15 When the morning came, then the angels hurried Lot, saying, Get up!- "Get up" is the same word Lot uses to his relatives in :14. Perhaps his appeal for them to "get up!" and urgently leave was none too credible because he himself was reluctant to do so. Consistently in this record, we see that Lot was saved by grace. Like his wife, he was reluctant to leave Sodom and failed to perceive the urgency of the situation. He represents God's people of the last days; and we can infer therefore that they [we] will be very weak as Lot was, and saved by grace alone.
Take your wife, and your two daughters who are here- "Are here" in the Hebrew means literally 'to come out'- as if to stress that although living with Lot, they still had made the conscious decision to leave. The fact that they did not look back like their mother would indicate a certain degree of spiritual strength- and perhaps they were still virgins because they declined to marry "the men of Sodom (who) were wicked and sinners before the Lord exceedingly" (Gen.13:13). "Who are here" is literally "who are found"; it is the same word used in Abraham's bargaining about not destroying the city if ten righteous were "found" there (Gen. 18:32). We note that the daughters, and not Lot's wife, were "found". So Lot and his daughters, three people, were "found" righteous. But the daughters will later rape their own father to get pregnant. They were "found" righteous in the sense that the not very righteous Noah was "found righteous" in his generation, and Hebrews 11 says that it was by his faith that righteousness was counted to him. And with pathetically weak Lot and his girls, it is rather sounding like they were counted righteous by the faith of uncle Abraham.
Lest you be consumed in the sin of the city- It is apparent that "sin" is sometimes used as a metonymy for 'condemnation for sin'. The AV margin here rightly suggests that "the iniquity" of the city was the condemnation / punishment for their iniquity. And there are other examples in Ps. 7:16; Jer. 14:16 and Zech. 14:19. This isn't just a matter of cold exposition; the reality is that every sin we commit- and we sin daily- is in fact a self-infliction of condemnation upon ourselves. We rather than the Lord are the ones who in essence have demanded our condemnation; His judgment is merely reflecting our own choice. The idea of self-condemnation is perhaps behind the Lord's teaching in Mt. 18:6.
This command to leave Sodom is clearly one of the source passages for Rev. 18:4 concerning Babylon: "I heard another (Angelic) voice from Heaven, saying, Come out of her, My people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues". Note that it was also an Angel who said this to Lot. Babylon is directly equated with Sodom in Is. 13:19 and Jer. 50:40. Babylon geographically and culturally represents the peoples surrounding Israel of our last days- and therefore it is not surprising that related Arab nations like Edom, Moab and Ammon are also paralleled with Sodom (Jer. 49:18; Zeph. 2:9). This continues a long-standing Biblical theme that the curses on apostate Israel are the same as those on the Arabs / people of the eretz- thus Sodom is representative of both Jews and Arabs.
19:16 But he lingered; and the men grabbed his hand, his wife’s hand, and his two daughters’ hands, Yahweh being merciful to him; and they took him out, and set him outside of the city- Just as the men grabbed him and pulled him inside the house (:10), now they grab him and drag him out of Sodom. Continually we want to use the word "pathetic" about Lot. But he was counted righteous, and saved by grace, thanks to Abraham's intercession. And we have so many people like him in our lives; their salvation may depend finally upon our intercession. They believe, but they are weak; they fail temptation, time and again; and are passive as Lot was.
Lot had been attracted toward Sodom by materialism, and it had consumed most of his family, and almost himself. For despite all he had been through in the last 24 hours, he still lingered, thinking of his wealth, and was saved by special grace alone. He left Sodom with nothing but the clothes he stood up in. Just as we will at our exit from this world. Israel were not to "linger" in leaving Egypt on Passover night (s.w. Ex. 12:39); the urgency of the situation becomes all the more relevant to us once we perceive that the call to leave "Sodom" is not just when the Lord comes, but right now; for we now are not to "look back" as Lot's wife did (Lk. 9:62; Phil. 3:13).
The importance of leaving the world immediately the
Angel comes is shown by the consistent impression in the record that the
Angels urgently "hastened Lot" (Gen.19:15-17,22), implying that if he did
not hurry then he would perish. It was not foreordained that he would not
perish- "Arise... lest thou be consumed in the iniquity of the
city... escape for thy life; look not behind (the Hebrew root means 'to
delay') thee, neither stay thou... lest thou be consumed"
(Gen. 19:15,17 AV). It is quite possible that the speed of our response
to the call will be the proof of our acceptability. The speed of response
was the basic difference between the wise and foolish virgins. It was only
after he had left Sodom that the Angel said that he could not "do any
thing till thou be come thither", i.e. to Zoar (Gen.19:22). Yet Lot "lingered", the Hebrew meaning 'to question or argue', as we see him doing
later in the record in his discussion with the Angel concerning the danger
of going to the mountain as he had been told, and asking leave to go to
Zoar. "Lingered" literally means 'Why?' or 'What!', indicating severe
incomprehension on Lot's part. We would be foolish to think that we too
will not be prone to a serious sense of incomprehension when the Angel
appears. Only repeated meditation upon that moment and a true love of the
Lord's coming will stop us being so flustered by the Angel's call that we
fail to respond to it with the necessary speed.
Therefore the Angel "grabbed" Lot's hand, a Hebrew word elsewhere translated 'to take courage', and
definitely meaning to strengthen or encourage. Angels frequently said to
faithful men "Fear not" when they have appeared to them. It is therefore
tempting to think that our Angel will speak similar words of strength and
encouragement to us on their appearing. The typology of Lot would support
this. But we have to remember that in Lot's case the Lord was "merciful
unto him"- such grace as was shown to him cannot be presumed upon. "Merciful" certainly carries the idea of pity in Hebrew- if we have had a
loving relationship with our guardian Angel now, surely we may look
forward to their 'pity' then. Despite all this, Lot's wife still looked
back; and 'remember her'. The pull of family and materialism was such for
that woman, that all this supreme demonstration of mercy and love
was not enough to convince her that nothing else mattered apart from
obedience to God.
19:17 It came to pass, when they had taken them out, that one of them said, Escape for your life! Don’t look behind you, and don’t stay anywhere in the plain. Escape to the mountains, lest you be consumed!- "Escape" or "flee" is malat and is related to the word "Lot". Lot was born to flee [the word is used five times in :17,19,20,22]; but he failed to be the man he was intended to be. Yet he was dragged out, made to flee, by the higher hand of grace, operating on behalf of Abraham's intercession. The exit from Sodom was a type of our calling out of the world on the eve of its destruction in the last days; but when we first respond to the Gospel, we are likewise warned not to "look back" (Lk. 9:62; Phil. 3:13). We are to try to live now in the intensity of the second coming, living on a knife edge, realizing that the ultimate issues of eternity are before us. The world in which we live is as Sodom, ripe for destruction. "The mountains" were exactly where Abraham was living, the barren uplands which Abraham had accepted when Lot chose the fertile plain. He was being driven to reconsider that decision he had taken, and to realize how much he had suffered because of it. The whole "plain", the fertile area once so attractive to Lot, was to be destroyed. And so on the eve of this world's destruction, we need to earnestly consider whether we are as Lot or Abraham.
LXX "lest perhaps thou be
overtaken together with them" shows that despite Abraham's intercession
being a factor in Lot's salvation, he still would have lost that salvation
if he chose to tarry longer.
"Look" means to view intensely with love or
pleasure; that these words were said to Lot must indicate that he was
tempted to look on Sodom in that way. There seems to be a pointed contrast
with Abraham, who looked at Sodom burning without being punished,
presumably because he had no attraction towards it (Gen. 19:28). Thus for
all his vexing of soul for the sins of the city (2 Pet. 2:8), Lot was still tempted to
love it. Our repulsion at the ways of the world is not necessarily a sign
of our spiritual safety- there is an uncanny love within human nature for
the environment we know. Thus there can be homesickness for drab streets
and scenes which we despised whilst living among them. Such love, taken to
its logical end, is a love of the world which militates against our desire
to see the end of this age and to enter the Kingdom.
It is amazing that with the clear command echoing in
his ears, Lot could ask leave to live in Zoar, a small city of the plain,
and not go to the mountain. He clearly failed to appreciate the reality
and seriousness of the Angel's coming- and this will certainly be a
temptation to us in that moment when the typology of Lot is fulfilled in
us. The only way to guard against this is by consciously living our lives
now in awareness of the fact that now we have been called to leave the
world and its ways, and therefore our whole life now should have the
spirit which we will have when we leave this world when the Angel comes.
This is confirmed by an oblique allusion which our Lord makes to this
Angelic command in Lk. 9:62: "No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for
the Kingdom of God". The context shows that starting to plough represents
the start of our new life in response to the Gospel call- but the allusion
to the Angel's words to Lot show that we should live our whole lives in
response to that call as if we are on the way to the judgment, having been
called away by the Angel.
It is a breathtaking thought that all the intricate
typology of the judgments on Sodom has been worked out for our benefit-
the generation who will be alive at the second coming. To a lesser extent,
the believers of the first century could have seen that the story of Sodom
also represented the judgments to come upon Jerusalem in AD70. An
impressive group of Old Testament prophets had associated Jerusalem with
Sodom: Is. 1:10; Am. 4:11; Dt. 29:23; Jer. 23:14; Lam. 4:6; Ez. 16:46.
Jer. 4 and 5 are prophecies which have relevance to Israel's latter day
judgments (Jer. 4:28 = Mt. 24:30). Jer. 5:1 seems to allude to God's
requirement for their to be some faithful men in Sodom to prevent its
destruction: "Run ye to and from through the streets of Jerusalem, and
see... if ye can find a man... that seeketh the truth; and I will pardon
it". This associates Sodom, Jerusalem and the last days. It confirms the
exposition offered on chapter 18- that if only one righteous had been
found in Sodom, it would have been saved. And there was one righteous,
namely Lot (2 Pet. 2:7). But Abraham set the limit at ten, and God
accepted that. As the faithful
remnant were miraculously allowed to leave Sodom, immediately unleashing
the Divine judgments by doing so, the faithful Christian remnant were
allowed to leave Jerusalem just before the final Roman onslaught of AD70,
doubtless spurred on by their Lord's command: "Let them which are in
Judaea flee to the mountains; and let them which are in the midst of it
(Jerusalem) depart out" (Lk. 21:21). The reference to fleeing to the
mountains would have suggested a conscious allusion back to the
command to Lot to flee out of Sodom "to the mountain".
All this shows an incomprehension of what the Angel
had said. Firstly, Sodom was to be destroyed at any moment, including the
men whom Lot feared. Either he did not properly believe this, or he
thought that God's judgment would not involve total destruction. Secondly,
he had been explicitly told "neither stay thou in all the plain
(including Zoar)... lest thou be consumed" (Gen.19:17 AV). Insufficient
attention to the words of the Angels therefore resulted in his foolish
reasoning which almost cost him his life. It is easy to imagine that the
moment of the Angel's coming will fill the weak latter day believer,
perhaps distracted as he will be by the persecutions of the holocaust to
come, with such a sense of confusion and incomprehension that he too will
fail to take careful note of what is said to him. A love of God's word
now, rejoicing in its detail, is surely the preventive for this.
The connection between the Angels as God's eyes and His hearing of prayer
becomes more relevant once it is realized that to 'find grace in God's
sight' (eyes-Angels) is equivalent to saying 'please hear my prayer'- see
Gen. 19:19; 32:5; 33:10,15; 34:11- at least in Genesis. This again
explains why early believers conceived of God in terms of an Angel, as
they would have prayed to the Angel and received the answers and other
revelation of God from one.
The Angels make things potentially possible, but the realization of
their potential plans depended upon Israel's freewill effort. When Lot
says that he "cannot" flee from Sodom, the Angel responds by saying that
he "cannot" [same Hebrew word] do anything until Lot has left- as if to
suggest that the Angel's mission depended upon Lot's freewill decision for
its realization (Gen. 19:19,22). The same word is found on the lips of
another Angel in commending Jacob that he had "prevailed" (Gen. 32:28)-
literally, he had 'coulded'. He had achieved what had been made
potentially possible in terms of his relationship with that Angel. Caleb
and Joshua perceived that Israel were "well able" to overcome the tribes
and inherit the land, seeing that the Angel-hornet had gone ahead and
prepared the way; and yet due to Israel's disabling of this possibility at
the time, it was in some ways so that God Himself was "not able" to give
them the inheritance, because they judged that they were
" not able" to take it (Num. 13:30,31; 14:16).
19:20 See now, this city is near to flee to, and it is a little
one. Oh let me escape there (isn’t it a little one?), and my soul will
live-
The Hebrew for "flee" is also translated 'to hide in', carrying
the idea of being chased into. Again, his fear of the Sodomites is shown
to loom large in his thinking. The Angel had bidden him flee from the
Divine wrath that was soon to consume all the cities of the plain. But
instead Lot was preoccupied with the fear of human vengeance against him.
Such an attitude appears crazy to our cool, armchair analysis of what
happened. Yet Lot is certainly a type of the believers who are alive at
the Lord's return. There can be no doubting, therefore, that whatever our
theoretical willingness now to leave all and follow the Angel, there will
then be at least the temptation to get consumed with the kind of
double-think that seized Lot's reasoning. He even tried to accommodate his
human desires to the desires of the Angel: "Is it not a little one?", as
if to imply that there was little wrong with the place spiritually. The
Hebrew translated " little one" is also rendered "a short time"- as if
to say 'You are asking me to be quick about leaving Sodom- so I'll go to
Zoar, as it won't take long to get there'.
The righteousness of a single man [cp. that of the Lord Jesus] wasn't
perceived by Abraham as powerful enough. Perhaps Paul had this in mind
when he writes in Romans of how for the sake of "the one", the Lord Jesus,
many sinners can be counted righteous. And surely God was trying to bring
out the same possibility when we read of how Lot asked for the sake of
Zoar- just for his singular sake. And God spared Zoar- just for the sake
of one man, Lot. Note how the Hebrew word used for "spare" in Gen.
18:24,26 recurs in Gen. 19:21, where God assures Lot that He will indeed
spare Zoar [AV "I have
accepted"]. We are surely
intended to reflect that God would have spared Sodom for Lot's sake too.
Perhaps God is alluding to the same point when He says that for the sake
of just one righteous man He would have spared Israel in Ezekiel's time
(Ez. 22:30). Surely there was one righteous man in Ezekiel's time, not
least Ezekiel himself. But there was nobody with the spiritual vision to
intercede with God to spare Israel for the sake of that one man; their
lack of vision of His grace and pleasure in the righteousness of even one
person was akin to Abraham's lack. And are we not intended to see some
allusion to Abraham's failure in the way that Moses, just one man, prayed
for and received Israel's salvation? And could not Abraham have asked for
Sodom to be spared for his own sake, had he had a broader vision of God's
grace? Perhaps his legalistic attitude is reflected in his appeal for "the
judge of all the earth" to do what was
right, in not destroying the righteous with the
wicked. He perceives God as legalistic judge, not gracious Father. He
asked for justice- not mercy. His basis is that the Judge of all the earth
shall “do judgment”- note that “do right” is a poor translation. The
Hebrew word translated “Judge” is the same root as “do judgment /
justice”. It’s as if Abraham is almost simply observing that the Judge /
Justice will of course do justice, and so he’s drawing to His attention
that there are in fact just people in Sodom, and therefore God’s justice
will surely preclude Him from destroying them. He assumed there were ten
people in Sodom who were righteous; but perhaps later Scripture alludes to
this by stressing that there is not one truly righteous person, not one
(Rom. 3:10). Paul brings out the point that therefore salvation is by
grace, not personal righteousness. And in the end, Lot was saved- but only
because he threw himself upon God's grace. Yet he too perhaps suffered
from Abraham's legalism; it is possibly referred to by the men of Sodom
when they complain that he who had come in to sojourn amongst them "would
play the judge" (Gen. 19:9). Significantly, Lot's salvation out of the
burning Sodom is applied to all God's people in Am. 4:11. His entire
people are saved by a like grace.
19:22 Hurry, escape there, for I can’t do anything until you get there. Therefore the name of the city was called Zoar- When Lot says that he “cannot” flee from Sodom, the Angel responds by saying that he “cannot” [same Hebrew word] do anything until Lot has left- as if to suggest that the Angel’s mission depended upon Lot’s freewill decision for its realization (Gen. 19:19,22). The same word is found on the lips of another Angel in commending Jacob that he had “prevailed” (Gen. 32:28)- literally, he had ‘coulded’. He had achieved what had been made potentially possible in terms of his relationship with that Angel. The two usages of "I cannot..." suggest that God and man are now at loggerheads. Lot "cannot" obey the required precondition, and God "cannot" go ahead with His plan. And the situation was resolved by God dragging Lot out of the situation by pure grace.
19:23 The sun had risen on the earth when Lot
came to Zoar- Just as God reads the situation of the
righteous as prayer even if they don't verbalize it, so God sees the
behaviour / situation of the wicked as a cry ascending up to Him, as
prayer does. Sodom's cry reaching unto Heaven is the obvious example (Gen.
18:20,21; 19:23); but Ps. 74:23 also speaks of the voice of God's enemies
'rising up' [Heb.] to Him in Heaven.
The rising of the sin invites comparison with the description of the
second coming as the rising of the sun in Mal. 4:2; the judgments upon
this Sodom like world are to come the moment the Lord returns. "But his wife looked
back from behind him" (Gen.19:26) suggests the picture of the wife
following behind Lot, filled with remorse at the loss of all she had held
dear. Our Lord comments concerning not desiring our "stuff which is in
the house" in the day of his coming: "Remember Lot's wife. Whosoever
(like her) shall seek (Greek: 'plot') to save his life shall lose it". We
can infer from this that she plotted and schemed how to save her
possessions- i.e. her 'life', seeing that for her, her life did consist of
the abundance of the things which she possessed (Lk. 12:15). These feelings
grew so strong that she paused to take a loving, wistful look at the city.
Remember that the fire only fell after Lot was in Zoar; therefore the city
was looking as it normally did. Their exodus was at night- "the sun was
risen upon the earth when Lot entered into Zoar" (Gen. 19:23), so she would
have seen the flickering lights of the city in the distance. Compare this
with how the virgins of Mt. 25 go out to meet their Lord at night.
As a result of Abraham's intense prayer, believing
that this coupled with the spiritual preparedness of others really could
change God's stated purpose, the judgment of Sodom need not have come. So
with Jerusalem in AD70, had there been a suitably large, repentant
'remnant' those horrific judgments could have been avoided. Despite the
definite associations of Jerusalem with Sodom in the prophets, the Old
Testament also uses Sodom as a symbol of total, permanent destruction of
the type which has not and will not come on Jerusalem, the future capital
of the Kingdom (Dt. 29:23; 32:32; Is. 13:19; Jer. 49:18; 50:40; Am. 4:11;
Zeph. 2:9). It is for this reason that Paul makes the point that for the
sake of the tiny group of Jews who did still hold and practice the truth,
Israel would not suffer the judgments of Sodom in totality (Rom. 9:29 cp.
Is. 1:9). This would indicate that there will also be a latter day Jewish
remnant which will stop the faithless Israel of today receiving the
judgment of permanent destruction. But of course for the individuals of
both natural and spiritual Israel who have consciously rejected God, "it
shall be more tolerable in that day (of judgment) for Sodom" than for them
(Lk. 10:12). Jer. 20:16 has a graphic description of the people of Sodom
screaming out in anguish, both mental and physical, as the judgments of
God fell upon them: "The cry in the morning (when the judgments began,
Gen. 19:23,24), and the shouting at noontide". This is in reality a
picture of the rejected in the last days.
19:24 Then Yahweh rained on Sodom and on
Gomorrah sulphur and fire from Yahweh out of the sky- The 'raining'
invites us to compare this with the coming of the flood, thereby
connecting Lot with Noah. The same word is used in Gen. 7:4. The
days of Noah and Lot are brought together in the New Testament; Noah and
Lot are clearly intended to be compared. They both sinned through wine after their
gracious deliverance. Evidence of this has been uncovered by Albright and
other archaeologists, finding it superimposed upon a once fertile area:
"Evidence of five freshwater oases have been located at the southeast
corner of the Dead Sea, obviously used for irrigation to service the
cities of the circuit when they were in existence. Adjacent to these
oases, on a plain elevated above the level of the Dead Sea some 500 feet
(152.4m), there were found the remains of a great fortified enclosure, a
high place for religious festivals. According to these archaeologists, the
evidence suggests that the population of the area ended abruptly about
2000 B.C. It also showed, that at that time, the area was densely
populated, fertile and prosperous".
Abraham prayed for the city of Sodom to be
saved for the sake of ten righteous who might be there. He didn't
specifically mention what was his heart's desire- that Lot be
saved. But God discerned the spirit of his prayer, and saved Lot,
even though Abraham 'knew not what to pray for' and asked for the 'wrong'
thing in order to obtain what he really wanted, i.e. the salvation of Lot.
"Remember Lot's wife" suggests that we should
meditate upon her position as it has especial warning for the last days.
Her leaving of Sodom appears to have been due to the personal influence of
Lot her husband, yet ultimately she failed to have that personal desire to
obey God. It would not be pushing the type too far to suggest that the
wives of latter day believers may feel that they can enter the Kingdom in
the spiritual shadow of their husbands. One cannot help wondering whether
she left Ur not through personal response to the promises but because the
others were leaving. Doubtless her husband's uncle Abraham would have led her and
the whole family in regular prayer and meditation during the journey
towards Canaan. But somehow the reality of the God of Israel was never
allowed to touch her inner being, and the years of the soft life in Sodom
would have sealed her spiritual state. It is hard to avoid making the
point that many of us may be in a similar position.
Gen. 19:14 RVmg. brings out the likely immediate
background to her decision. Lot’s sons in law “were to marry” his
daughters. The Lord too perceived that they were marrying and giving in
marriage the very day the flood came, and He pointed out the similarities
with the Sodom situation (Lk. 17:27-29). Could it not be that the very day
of the double wedding, they had to leave? With all the build up to the
wedding, Lot and his wife would so wanted to have stayed just another day
to see the wedding of their two daughters. It is to the girls credit that
they both left. But Lot’s wife had invested so much in it emotionally that
she just had to look back.
It is to be expected, therefore, that the fall of
Babylon chronicled in Rev. 18 is shot through with allusions back to the
Sodom record. The following are the more evident points of contact:
|
Babylon (in Rev.) |
Sodom |
|
"I will shew unto thee the judgment of the great
whore" (Babylon); 17:2
|
Cp. God showing Abraham the judgment of Sodom. |
|
The beast supporting Babylon "was and is not and
shall ascend"; 17:8
|
Sodom and surrounding cities were |
|
"Her sins have reached unto Heaven,
God hath remembered her iniquities"; 18:5 |
"The cry of Sodom... is great because their sin is
very grievous ... the cry of it is come unto me"
(Gen. 18:20,21) |
|
"She hath glorified herself, and lived deliciously"; 18:7
|
"Pride... fulness of bread" (Ez. 16:49) |
|
"Utterly burned with fire"; 18:8
|
'Sodom' = 'burning'. |
|
"Her plagues... death... and famine"; 18:8 |
"He overthrew all the inhabitants of the cities,
and that which grew upon the ground" (cp. "famine"; Gen. 19:25). |
|
"The great city... great Babylon"; 16:19
|
The city of Sodom.
|
|
"There fell upon men a great hail out
of heaven" (16:21)
|
"The Lord rained upon Sodom... brimstone
and fire from the Lord
out of heaven" (Gen.19:24). |
|
"They shall see the smoke of her burning,
standing afar off for the fear of her torment (18:9,10)
|
Abraham standing far away and seeing the smoke of
Sodom's
burning indicates that the surrounding kings did likewise
(Gen. 19:28). |
|
Merchants suffered through Babylon's fall
(18:11-19)
|
Sodom was a trading centre (Lk. 17:28) |
|
" ...a great millstone cast into the sea
... thus with violence shall... Babylon... be found no more at all"
(18:21) |
Sodom now appears to be submerged in the Dead Sea,
to be found no more. |
|
"Her smoke rose up" (19:3) |
"Sodom... the land of the plain... the smoke of
the country went up"
(19:28) |
We have reasoned that Lot's call out of Sodom
represents how the Angels will call us out of this present evil world.
Indeed, our Lord said that Sodom represents the world just prior to the
second coming (Lk. 17:28). The evident connections with latter day Babylon
would suggest that 'Babylon' too represents the world of the last days; "
Come out of her my people" (Rev. 18:4) therefore refers to the Angel's
plea to us at the second coming, in addition to any previous
historical reference it may have to the Catholic apostasy. The call for
the first century Jews to leave Rome or for true believers to come out of
apostate systems were pointers towards the ultimate fulfilment of these words,
which will be in our leaving this life at the behest of the Angel who
comes to call us away. Our obedience then will be the summation of all the
previous decisions God's people have made to 'come out' from the 'world'
in its various forms.
If 'Babylon' refers specifically to the powers
surrounding Israel,
it is possible to see Sodom representing the world under Arab control in
the last days, offering great material wealth. Yet the obvious Biblical
basis for the language of "come out of her my people" is in the many
references to Israel being called on to leave the soft life of Babylon and
return to the land during the restoration (e.g. Zech. 2:6,7). In this
there is a remarkable similarity with Sodom. The Jews in Babylon
maintained their separateness, and yet became heavily involved in the
government of Babylon (as witness Daniel and his friends, along with
profane history). This is parallel to Lot's position in Sodom. Yet the
prosperity of Babylon made the Jews disinclined to leave it in order to go
to Jerusalem, as Lot had a similar disinclination. And the easy life of
the present world will also seem a greater attraction to the unworthy of
the new Israel, when the Angel calls them to go to Jerusalem to meet their
Lord.
19:29 It happened, when God destroyed the cities of the plain, that God remembered Abraham, and sent Lot out of the middle of the overthrow, when He overthrew the cities in which Lot lived- The situation has many connections with the flood, where God likewise "remembered Noah" and saved a remnant from the total destruction which came (Gen. 8:1). 'Remembering' a person can be read as an idiom for responding to their prayers. Abraham's intercessory prayer in Gen. 18 apparently failed- Sodom was destroyed, and his condition of ten righteous in the city was not met. But the essence of his prayer was 'Please save my righteous nephew Lot'. And that was heard. Just as the essence of our prayers is heard. And here we have a case of a weak believer being saved from condemnation by the prayers of a third party (as Mk. 2:5). This is why the prophets say that Judah and Jerusalem would have been as Sodom- were it not for the intercession of a righteous remnant. They were the seed of Abraham, praying and believing in his spirit.
We learn from this verse that Lot had lived in the cities of the plain, until he eventually settled in Sodom. This adds to the impression of a steady slide downwards in his spirituality. It was only by taking all his wealth and family away from him, until he ended up living as a caveman, that he could be saved. Such is the terrible power of materialism and the soft life.
The days of Sodom are to be read as types of our last days. Thus in the type of the last days, the prayers
and loving spiritual concern of the faithful remnant really can have an
effect on the salvation of our weaker brethren. Note that Abraham's prayer
that Sodom would be saved if ten righteous were found there, was not
answered; but God knew the real spirit of his prayer, that Lot should be
saved, and that God's justice should be upheld in not destroying the
righteous with the wicked. It was this which God recognized and answered,
even though Abraham had not specifically verbalized those thoughts in
prayer. Our true spiritual love for our brethren, expressed in such
intense prayer, will likewise be heard in these last days.
The record of Lot's leaving of Sodom (a remarkable
type of our 'exodus' at the second coming) has the repeated hallmark of
'haste'. This is found repeated in the record of both the Passover and the
crossing of the Red Sea. They were told, "You shall eat it in haste" (Ex.
12:11); "they were thrust out of Egypt, and could not tarry" because
" the Egyptians were urgent upon the people, that they might send them out
of the land in haste" (Ex. 12:39,33). Lot was "sent out" of
Sodom by the hastening of the angels. It may be
that in some cases our angels will hasten us to leave through their
influencing of the surrounding nations (Egypt), rather than through their
physical presence.
19:33 They made their father drink wine that night: and the firstborn
went in, and lay with her father. He didn’t know when she lay down, nor
when she arose- We wonder how this could quite have been the case. To
achieve ejaculation when so drunk that there is a memory blackout, and for
both women to conceive within 24 hours of each other after only one act of
intercourse... all seems a straining of physical credibility. It could be
that we have here an example of human perception being stated, without any
footnote to the effect that 'this is just how they liked to see it and
present it'; we have plenty of examples of this kind of thing when we
consider the language of demons and exorcism in the New Testament.
19:36 Thus both of Lot’s daughters were with child by their father-
I have suggsted on :33-35 that those verses are a transcript of the agreed
version of events distributed by the family. Perhaps this is the force of
the word "Thus", as if to say, "This is the explanation offered as to how
Lot's daughters were with child by their father". But this doesn't have to
mean that it actually happened as they said; the girls' complaint that
there were no males to marry was also untrue, as noted on :31.
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