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[Reconnoiter]

John,

I have always had questions about aspects of Genesis 19 and I was hoping you'd answer for me.

1) Why would any man, let alone a man of God (Lot), willingly give up his daughters for rape?

2) When the Bible says that Lot's wife turned into a pillar of salt, what do you think actually happened? Truly, she didn't turn into an actual pillar of salt, right?

3) What is the historicity of Sodom and Gomorrah? I believe that this is an actual event. Was it an earthquake or some form of natural disaster? God must have known this natural disaster was on the brink so he used it to send a message w/ its destruction of S&G?

Thanks in advance for your thoughts.

[jimwalton]

Glad to talk and answer. And, by the way, I'm Jim.

> Why would any man, let alone a man of God (Lot), willingly give up his daughters for rape?

Obviously Lot thought this was a workable negotiation or he would not have suggested it. Maybe he was thinking that if the men just needed to ejaculate, he could accommodate them with his daughters and their sexual tension would be relieved, but this doesn’t make sense, because if it was just a need to ejaculate, they could have used each other. So the issue was not sex, nor was it particularly homosexual sex, but sex with his two guests! Then again, the issue of the chapter and the offense was homosexual sex, because they didn’t want the two women.

We still need to understand why he would have offered his two daughters. My brother John has a guess that actually makes sense—that Lot was speaking tongue-in-cheek and not making a serious proposal. "It’s possible that he is not offering his daughters to be gang-raped as much as he is saying, 'I would as soon have you violate my family members as violate those whom I have taken in and offered hospitality!' It might be the same as saying sarcastically to your mortgage company, 'Why don’t you just take the clothes off my children’s backs and the food off their plates?' If this is the case, his statement is meant to prick the conscience of the mob. Just as they would (hopefully) not consider treating a citizen’s daughters in this way, so the same inhibitions should protect his guests."

The "but," however, to me makes this untenable in my view. ("But don't do anything to these men...")

Ancient Hittite morality perceived “abomination” (“this wicked thing” of v. 7) as an offense against the culprit’s city, making them liable to divine wrath. Assyrian law demanded that a homosexual rapist be “cut off” from the community. Other Assyrian laws call for castration in the case of homosexual rape (see my notes on Lev. 18.22). Perhaps Lot is pondering local understandings of judgment and consequences, knowing himself to be a “judge” in the town, and is aware of the repercussions of what they are doing.

Even though in ancient Hittite culture rape was punishable by death, here what Lot is proposing is not technically rape since he is giving a father’s permission. What he is suggesting is a horrid Catch 22 compromise. His moral compromises, the character of the city, and the circumstances of the evening have brought him to an untenable place. He cannot maintain his integrity, protect his guests, protect his family, and indulge his neighbors and friends all at the same time. But why, given the choices, would he give away his daughters to be ravaged? Well, he can’t give away his wife (that’s adultery and punishable by death); he can’t give away his guests (that’s pederasty and punishable by death); he can’t give away himself (it demeans his status in the community, and sex between equals is not what they were after, but a superior-to-submissive penetration common in their era). His only “moral” option, given the horror of his paradox, is to give away his daughters to placate his attackers (such a strategy worked in Judges 19), assume his daughters will get over it (sleeping around may have been more common in their era [cf. Gn. 38.13-26]), and “I’ll somehow survive this night.” It was a horrid conundrum, an impossible moral dilemma, and a life-threatening situation. As Jean Valjean said in Les Miserables, “If I speak, I am condemned; if I stay silent, I am damned.”

> When the Bible says that Lot's wife turned into a pillar of salt, what do you think actually happened? Truly, she didn't turn into an actual pillar of salt, right?

Right. She didn't. The region is characterized by a lot of salt and sulfur in the soil. What's likely is that God ignited the elements all over the region (perhaps by lightning), and a great explosion took place of petroleum, bitumen, salt, and sulfur (Deuteronomy. 29.23). These elements were thrown into the sky and fell back to earth in flaming rain of ignited material. Meanwhile, Lot's wife, not wanting to leave, changed her mind, turned back (Lk. 17.31-32) and got caught in the mess. The result is that she was overcome by the ignited sulfur and salt and was killed. She was overcome, probably fell to the ground and became to some extent encrusted in the fallout.

> What is the historicity of Sodom and Gomorrah? I believe that this is an actual event.

I have found no reason to doubt its historicity. There is no evidence that makes me question or doubt it.

> Was it an earthquake or some form of natural disaster? God must have known this natural disaster was on the brink so he used it to send a message w/ its destruction of S&G?

There have been several theories.

1. A volcanic eruption. There is plenty of basalt in the region.
2. An earthquake followed by a violent electrical storm, igniting the vast quantities of combustible material. The region does lie on a fault line. (See below for footnote 1)
3. An airburst (see below for footnote 2).

FOOTNOTE 1: Geologists Graham Harris and Anthony Beardow believe that the bitumen common in the area could have ignited during an earthquake and the resulting fire would have helped to destroy the city. There are historical accounts of similar occurrences. In 37 BC, the town of Helice in Greece was reportedly lost through liquefaction, as were thousands of miles of area in China in 1921. More recently, a section of Valdez, Alaska, liquefied in the 1950s.

FOOTNOTE 2: Steven Collins, in Biblical Archaeology Review (2013): "We continue to find significant evidence that some kind of “airburst” (of cosmic origin) occurred over the kikkar sometime between 1750-1650 BC. The magnitude of the event was somewhere between the Tunguska, Siberia airburst of 1908 and the one in 2013 that exploded over southern Russia. All of the phenomenological language of destruction preserved in Gn. 19 is consistent with this kind of cosmic impact. The evidence on the ground also supports such a cataclysmic, targeted destruction.

"Based on the hard evidence at and around Tell el-Hammam, we believe that the disintegration of a cosmic body (comet fragment or small asteroid?) put an end to the sophisticated Bronze Age civilization of the Jordan Disk (kikkar) between 1750-1650. (We’re still working with the diagnostic ceramics and other dating methods.) According to laboratory analysis, the heat index required to produce desert glass and melt the surface of fired pottery in the manner we’re observing exceeds 8,000 degrees Kelvin, or about 14,000 degrees Fahrenheit. This is commensurate with that of cosmic airbursts."

[Reconnoiter]

Jim! I'm so sorry, I know this is your forum. I was reading something by John Walton the other day and began typing without thinking. ugh!

Once again, thank you for your response.

In regards to Lot's wife. I appreciate your reference to Luke. The Sunday School school version of this event is that she just looked back and that was her demise. Of course that is understandable because just about every translation nonchalantly mentions that all she did was look back. It never crossed my mind though that she may have been (perhaps even defiantly) going back. I wonder why she would have turned back? Didn't seem like a safe place for her, especially alone.

Also, I love how the angels negotiated with Lot as if their original intent was to also destroy Zoar. I think it is a neat thought that even though this was a natural disaster, that God still has precise control to maneuver the destruction around Lot and his daughters.

Speaking of his daughters. You're right, what an absolutely terrible conundrum. However, you find out later that these same daughters get their dad drunk and have sex with him AND bear children who become fathers of their own nation. Maybe this family is just a little weird and offering the daughters to the men of S&G isn't as extreme as it looks. I don't know. Just one of those weird aspects of Genesis. I know that the context of the culture is important to understand, but still it is weird.

[jimwalton]

> I wonder why she would have turned back? Didn't seem like a safe place for her, especially alone.

We can only guess, but it seems her heart was still in the city and with her friends. She must have been under some delusion that she could make this work. People are notoriously bad at this game. When they want to do something, they manage to justify in their minds to the point where they're convinced it's a good idea, to their own destruction. People have an almost boundless capacity to destroy their own lives.

> I love how the angels negotiated with Lot as if their original intent was to also destroy Zoar. I think it is a neat thought that even though this was a natural disaster, that God still has precise control to maneuver the destruction around Lot and his daughters.

It's amazing how flexible God is. People so often complain that it's all set in stone, that we don't have a choice, that Adam and Eve didn't have a choice, that they were railroaded, that eternity is predestined, blah blah blah. But looking at Gen. 18 where God negotiates with Abraham, Gn. 19 where the angel negotiates with Lot, Jonah 3 where God forgives the Ninevites after prophesying their destruction, and passages like Jer. 18.1-12, and we get a completely different picture. If only people who complain about God and the Bible would actually read the Bible.

> Maybe this family is just a little weird

We are never shown anything moral about the daughters. They are a moral and spiritual wasteland, like the rest of the city, as far as we can tell. And yet God chooses to spare them on Lot's coattails. What grace! Then they rape their dear-old dad and become the mothers of nations who are a pain in Israel's butt. Interesting how often God lets people make their own choices, even to the own detriment. Free will is that important. It's all telling the tale of how sin has ravaged the human soul and human communities—all telling us the sordid picture of sin and how desperately we need God.