- No Sons in Sodom
Sodom gave Mr Lot plenty of grasses for his flock. It gave him bread, like Moab, but there were taxes to pay, in the future. Years later, the sinful cup of Sodom and Gomorrah had filled to overflow, inviting judgment from the Most High. Heaven promptly dispatched a fact-finding delegation to the United Republics of Sodom and Gomorrah. The findings verified the litigations that had been filed in the courts of Heaven against those places and their peoples (Genesis 18:20-21). A sentence of fire and sulfur was reluctantly passed upon them – there had been no intercessor. Even Abraham had given up on the people at Count 10. He could have pushed on as the one man in the gap (Ezekiel 22:30-31). The fires were on their way, but for righteous Abraham’s sake (rather than for Lot’s) the fires would wait until Lot was out of the way (Genesis 19: 22, 29).
In the hasty escape from Sodom before the fires fell, Lot lost his wife whose soul could not leave the place even while her body doubtfully followed her husband and his foreign guests out of town. Again, that is a story for another day.
While Lot lingered in Sodom, bidding time with the angels of destruction before their execution of the sentence of fire, “Lot went out and spoke to HIS SONS-IN-LAW, who had MARRIED HIS DAUGHTERS, and said, ‘Get up, get out of this place; for the Lord will destroy this city!’” (Genesis 19:14). Those in-laws mocked him off. He had to hurriedly take his wife and two daughters to escape (Genesis 19:14-16).
Lot pleaded with the MEN who had married HIS DAUGHTERS, not with his sons, or with the daughters who had married his sons. He had no sons in Sodom. (That might not matter in your culture, but not in the days of Lot.) At last, Lot escaped hurriedly with his wife and the two unmarried daughters who were still in the house with them. Sodom had made sure that Lot had no sons to sustain his name. That was the first aspect of the mysterious Bread Tax that had to be paid. Moab was later to raise the Sodom stakes in how the taxes were paid. Even the daughters that Sodom conceded to Lot were not wholesome girls, or so it seemed. The ones who had married Sodom’s men had perished with their men when the fire fell from heaven. Their Sodom husbands had not let them flee with their righteous father. The surviving two girls themselves were a story for another chapter.
- The Daughters of Lot
Mrs Lot (we don’t know her first name) didn’t survive the escape from Sodom. She ended in a salty wasteland midway between Sodom and their Promised Land. The powers of Sodom, it seemed, wouldn’t let her soul go even if it lost her body. She was Sodom’s first casualty on the other side of the fires; a memorial pillar of salt somewhere between the fires and freedom.
The surviving girls were virgins, according to their father (Genesis 19:8), but they carried with them the strange seed of Sodom. In the cave where they had taken refuge from the judgment fires of God, they were concerned that Sodom, though already gone with the flames, seemed to have programmed a code to delete the memory of their dad. They came up with a smart plan. They would take turns to sleep with their father and raise a name for him. We may ask, Where did they learn such audacious incest? Where else but in Sodom!
37 The firstborn bore a son and called his name Moab; he is the father of the Moabites to this day. 38 And the younger, she also bore a son and called his name Ben-Ammi; he is the father of the people of Ammon to this day (Genesis 19:37-38, NKJV).
- If Lot had Looked Well…
Lot was the ancient father of Moab. A streak of Sodom ran through the lines of Moab, at least in the patterns of the Bread Tax. If Moab became a future reproach, if Ruth carried a stigma, it was because, centuries before, an ancestor had been fooled by what he saw, choosing potential annihilation masked as greener pastures than Papa Abraham could ever find.
Sometimes, potential disasters come with alluring benefits that tend to blind the common sense of their prospective preys. Then, even the voices of loving caution tend to sound like the macabre grunts of jealous witches. When at last the monster has claimed its prey, then we raise elegies of regret for the road signs ignored.
That you can see does not mean that you can see everything well. “Open thou mine eyes” is still a prayer to pray. Not all that looks good is good. Ask Eve (Genesis 3:6). Moab still gives bread, but Moab gives no free bread – neither does Sodom, but you will never know while it allures with green grasses and tantalising breads. No bread is ever free – especially in Moab and Sodom. Somebody has either paid, or will; somehow, someday. That’s where my story ends.
From The Preacher’s diary,
September 12, 2022.
