Genesis 19 · The Lantern

Lot Welcomes the Angels

And the two angels came to Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting in the gate of Sodom. And Lot saw them and rose to meet them, and bowed with his face to the ground,

Lot was not inside Sodom "but at the gate." I might have said, just as Abraham was sitting outside his tent, out of hospitality, even at an inconvenient time (for it was the middle of the day) on the lookout for travelers, so his relative and the imitator of his morality "was sitting at the gate" ready to invite those passing through the land, even though evening had now come.

Scripture seems to have made no mention at all of angels before the flood. Only now [does it mention angels], as though seeing fit to have instructed people abundantly, by the length of the time past, to regard as God and Lord of the universe only that one Being who had made the created universe and supplied human beings, beginning with Adam, with the appropriate knowledge.

And the two angels came to Sodom in the evening, while Lot was sitting at the gates of the city. Not without cause, the angels who had come to Abraham at midday are reported to have come to Sodom in the evening, because they came to announce prosperity and joy to the former, but to bring adversity to the latter; he was burning with the fruit of light towards heavenly things, bu…

and said, “Look now, my lords — turn aside, please, to your servant’s house, and spend the night, and wash your feet; then rise early and go on your way.” And they said, “No — we will spend the night in the square.”

But he pressed them hard, and they turned aside to him and came into his house. And he made them a feast, and baked unleavened bread, and they ate.

Before they lay down, the men of the city — the men of Sodom — surrounded the house, from young to old, all the people from every quarter.

And they called to Lot and said to him, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us, so that we may know them.”

And Lot went out to them at the entrance, and shut the door behind him,

and said, “Please, my brothers, do not do evil.

Look now, I have two daughters who have not known a man. Let me bring them out to you, and do to them what is good in your eyes — only do nothing to these men, for they have come under the shadow of my roof.”

And they said, “Stand back!” And they said, “This one came in to sojourn, and now he keeps playing the judge! Now we will treat you worse than them.” And they pressed hard against the man, against Lot, and came near to break the door.

But the men reached out their hands and brought Lot in to them, into the house, and shut the door.

And the men who were at the entrance of the house they struck with blindness, from small to great, so that they wore themselves out trying to find the entrance.

Lot Flees to Zoar

And the men said to Lot, “Who else do you have here? A son-in-law, your sons, your daughters — whoever you have in the city — bring them out of the place.

For we are about to ruin this place, because their outcry has grown great before the face of the LORD, and the LORD has sent us to ruin it.”

And Lot went out and spoke to his sons-in-law, who were taking his daughters, and said, “Get up, get out of this place, for the LORD is about to ruin the city.” But he seemed to his sons-in-law like one who was joking.

And as the dawn rose, the angels urged Lot: “Get up, take your wife and your two daughters who are here, or you will be swept away in the punishment of the city.”

But he lingered. So the men seized his hand, and his wife’s hand, and the hands of his two daughters — in the LORD’s compassion for him — and they brought him out and set him outside the city.

And when they had brought them outside, he said, “Escape for your life! Do not look behind you, and do not stand anywhere in the plain. Escape to the hill country, or you will be swept away.”

And Lot said to them, “Please, no, my lords.

Look now, your servant has found favor in your eyes, and you have made great the loyal love you have done with me, keeping my life alive. But I — I cannot escape to the hill country; the evil will overtake me, and I will die.

Look now, this city is near enough to flee to, and it is small. Let me escape there, please — is it not small? — and my life will live.”

And he said to him, “Look, I have granted you this thing also: I will not overthrow the city of which you have spoken.

Hurry, escape there — for I can do nothing until you come there.” Therefore the name of the city was called Zoar.

The sun had risen over the earth when Lot came to Zoar.

The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah

And the LORD rained on Sodom and on Gomorrah sulfur and fire, from the LORD, out of the heavens.

And he overthrew those cities, and the whole plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew from the ground.

But his wife looked back from behind him — and she became a pillar of salt.

And Abraham rose early in the morning, to the place where he had stood before the face of the LORD,

and he looked down over the face of Sodom and Gomorrah and over the whole face of the land of the plain, and he saw — and look, the smoke of the land went up like the smoke of a furnace.

And it happened, when God ruined the cities of the plain, that God remembered Abraham, and he sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow, when he overthrew the cities in which Lot had lived.

Lot and His Daughters

And Lot went up from Zoar and lived in the hill country, and his two daughters with him — for he was afraid to live in Zoar. And he lived in a cave, he and his two daughters.

But in that, in the moral treatment above, we drew Lot himself to the rational sense and the manly spirit, but his wife, who looked back, we called the flesh given over to concupiscences and pleasures — do not, O hearer, take these things carelessly.

(Verse 30.) And Lot went up from Segor and settled in the mountain, and his two daughters with him. For he was afraid to stay in Segor. It is asked why, when he first preferred the mountain of Segor for his escape, and wanted to be saved in it as his dwelling, he now flees from Segor back to the mountain?

Lot went up from Zoar and stayed on the mountain with his two daughters. He had feared to stay in Zoar. He hurried to ascend the mountain from Zoar because he recognized that this was more pleasing to the angels through whom he was rescued, fearing that the city which at the moment of his intercession had escaped the danger of death might later, due to the citizens' sins, be co…

And the firstborn said to the younger, “Our father is old, and there is no man in the land to come in to us after the way of all the earth.

Come, let us make our father drink wine, and let us lie with him, and keep seed alive from our father.”

And they made their father drink wine that night, and the firstborn went in and lay with her father — and he did not know when she lay down or when she rose.

And it happened the next day that the firstborn said to the younger, “Look, I lay last night with my father. Let us make him drink wine tonight also, and you go in and lie with him, and we will keep seed alive from our father.”

And they made their father drink wine that night also, and the younger rose and lay with him — and he did not know when she lay down or when she rose.

And the two daughters of Lot conceived by their father.

And the firstborn bore a son and called his name Moab; he is the father of Moab to this day.