Lot

File:Lot-flees-sodom.jpg

Lot and his daughters flee Sodom, while Lot's wife is turned to a pillar of salt.

In the Bible, Lot (Arabic: لوط, Lūṭ ; Hebrew: לוֹט, Standard Lot Tiberian Loṭ ; "Hidden, covered") was the nephew of the patriarch, Abraham or Abram. He was the son of Abraham's brother Haran. (Gen. 11:27)

Biblical account

File:Abraham-Lot.jpg

Lot parts ways with Abraham.

The story of Lot is told in the Book of Genesis, chapters 11-14 and 19.

Lot was the son of Haran, the brother of Abraham. Lot's father died while the clan was living in the Mesopotamian city of Ur. He then accompanied his grandfather, Terah, and his uncle Abraham on a journey northwest from Ur to settle at a location apparently named for his father, Haran. (Gen 12:1-5) After an indeterminate period, Lot travelled further west with Abraham, who migrated with his clan to Canaan. There, Lot apparently settled with Abraham in the town of Shechem. It is likely that Lot assisted Abraham in the contruction of ancient religious altars at both Shechem and Bethel.

After a famine threatend, Lot also accompanied Abraham's clan on a journey to Egypt. By the time they returned to Canaan, both Lot and Abraham had developed large flocks of sheep and goats. Grazing disputes soon developed between the two clan leaders' herdsmen. Abraham gave Lot the choice of his abode. Lot made a fateful decision to head southeast toward the well-watered plains of the Jordan River, while Abraham remained in the hill country near the altars he had constructed in honor of his God. Lot pitched his tents near the town of Sodom. (Gen. 13:6-12)

About about eight years, a war devleoped among the kings of the region's several towns. When Sodom fell, Lot was taken captive. Abraham heard of Lot's ill-fortune and came to his rescue with a force of 318 armed men. He recovered the spoils they had taken and liberated Lot with the other captives.

Several years intervene here, and by the time Gen. 19 opens, Lot is no longer living in tents tended his flocks, but has settled in Sodom with his wife and two daughters, none of whom is named. Two angels arrive in Sodom on a mission from God to destroy the town for it's wickedness. However, they will first warn the righteous Lot and give him and his family a chance to escape. Lot offers the angels — here called "men" — hospitality. However, the wicked men of Sodom demand the visitors be brought out to them to rape to rape them (19:5). Horrified out this outrage, Lot offered the men his virgin daughters instead (19:8), but the would-be attackers only threaten to break down the door in order to have their way with Lot's guests.

The angels immediately strike the townsmen with blindness and warn Lot of the impending doom that God has pronounced on Sodom. At their suggestion, Lot attempts to warn his sons-in-law — who were legally pledged but not yet married to his daughters — of the catastrophe, but they do not take him seriously.

At dawn, the angels led Lot and his family out of the city, taking each of them by the hand when Lot hesitated. "Flee for your lives!" one of them commanded. "Don't look back, and don't stop anywhere in the plain! Flee to the mountains or you will be swept away!"

Hendrik Goltzius' 1616 painting Lot and his daughters shows Lot being seduced by his two daughters.

Lot feared he had insufficient time to reach the mountains and asked instead to find shelter in the small town of Zoar. The angels agreed not to destroy this town, on the grounds that it is only a small village and therefore not very wicked. With Lot safe in Zoah and the sun now fully risen, God destroyed both Sodom and Gomorrah, as well as the surrounding plain and all of its vegetation. Lot's wife, however, made the tragic mistake of looking back toward Sodom while the destruction proceeded, and was immediately turned into a pillar of salt as a result.

Now afraid to remain in Zoar, Lot retired with his two daughters to a cave in an adjacent mountains. There they lived together for an inderminate period. Believing they were the only females in the area to have survived the devastation, the two women decided on a desperate plan. They got their father so drunk on wine for two nights in a row. On they first night, the older daughter seduced him into having sexual intercourse, and on the second night the younger daughter did likewise. Each of the women became pregnant by him. The son of the elder daughter was named Moab ("from the father" [meh-Av], patriarch of the nation known as the Moabites. The second son was named Ben-Ammi ("son of the people"). He became the patriarch of the nation of the Ammonites.

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Rabbincial literature

Lot flees Sodom with his daughters

The rabbincal tradition has much to say about Lot beyond what is contained in the Bible. The midrash Genesis Rabbah (50:14) declares that Lot actually had four daughters at the time of Sodom's destruction, two married and two betrothed. Only the latter escaped death. He also had another daughter named Pelotet, who was married to one of the men of Sodom. However, she secretly practiced hospitality and was sentenced to be burned when this was discovered. Lot's wife was named either "Irit" or "Idit." The reason she looked back toward Sodom was to see if her two other daughters were following. (Pirke R. El. 50c)

However, Lot himself is generally represented by the rabbis in an unfavorable light. Lot grazed his flocks in fields that belonged to neighboring peoples, and he quarreled with Abraham over this fact. When Lot separeted himself from Abraham, he also separated himself from God, saying, "I have no desire either in Abraham or in his God." Lot chose Sodom as his residence because he was lustful. Lot was also prone to over-imbibing, and the account Lot and his daughters was once read every Saturday in some synagogues as a warning to the public against drunkenness. If lot had been more careful, his daughters' attempted act of incest would have failed. Lot was also very greedy for wealth, and at Sodom he practiced usury. His hesitation to leave the city was due to his regret for the wealth he was obliged to abandon. The protection that Lot received from God were granted through the merit of Abraham; otherwise he would have perished with the people of Sodom. (Genesis Rabbah 41-51)

Other rabbincal accounts, however, show a much milder attitude toward Lot. His being spared at the time of the destruction of Sodom is said to have been a reward for not having betrayed Abraham to Pharaoh with regard to the fact that Sarah Abraham's wife. (ibid.) The Pirke Rabbi Eliezer calls him a zaddik — a truly righteous man. It also praises Lot's hospitality which he practiced at the risk of his life at Sodom. (Pirke R. El. 25) The Alphabet of Ben Sira, following the the Qur'an, (suras 7:78-82; 22:43), calls Lot "a perfectly righteous man" and a prophet.

Critical views

Lot is regarded by the critics as an eponym representing the supposed common ancestor of the two tribes or nations of Moab and Ammon. His relation to Abraham is in this view intended to mark the ethnographic connection of these two tribes with the Israelites; and his choice of an eastern location may be taken as indicating a voluntary relinquishment of all claims of the Moabites and Ammonites to Canaan. His relations with his daughters probably represent some rough pleasantry common among the Israelitish folk and indicating their scorn for their nearest neighbors. Fenton, however ("Early Hebrew Life"), suggests that in a matriarchal state such unions would not be indecorous, since in social stages where descent was tracedonly through the mother the father would be no relation to the children.

The story about Lot's wife, also, bears marks of popular origin, and is regarded by critics and travelers as a folk-legend intended to explain some pillar of crystallized rock-salt resembling the female human form. Owing to its composition, such a pillar would soon dissolve. One in the neighborhood of the Dead Sea was identified by Josephus ("Ant." i. 11, § 4) as that of Lot's wife; and another (or the same) had that name at the time of Clement of Rome (I Cor. xi. 2).

As Lot is declared to have dwelt in a cave (Gen. xix. 30), Ewald ("History of Israel," i. 313) and Dillmann (ad loc.) identify him with Lotan, the leader of one of the tribes of Horites or cave-dwellers (Gen. xxxvi. 22, 29). The Dead Sea is still called "Baḥr Luṭ."E.

Jewish tradition names Lot's wife Edith or Ildeth and several questions are proposed concerning Lot's wife being changed into a pillar of salt. Some suggest that being surprised and suffocated with fire and smoke, she remained in place, as immovable as a rock of salt, as is the case with those in Pompeii. Others say that a column or monument of salt stone was erected on her grave, or that she was stifled in the flame and became a monument of salt to posterity; that is, a permanent and durable monument of her impudence. Yet another interpretation is that during the cataclysm that destroyed the city, which might have occurred in the form of an earthquake or meteor strike, large blocks of salt that form in the hypersaline Dead Sea may have beached themselves, creating the impression that missing persons had been turned into "pillars" of salt. Finally, it has been suggested this is a metaphor meaning she was made barren, in allusion to salting fields making them infertile.^{[citation needed]}

The common literal interpretation is that she was suddenly and miraculously petrified and changed into a statue of rock salt, which is a soft rock or a halite.

Islamic view

The major difference between the story of Lot (Lut) in the Qur'an and the story of Lot in the Bible is that Qur'an omits Lot's drunkennes and his incestuous relationship with his daughters. Thus, Lot is thus unambigously a righteous man and is also considered to be a prophet.

According to Islamic tradition, just as in the Bible, Lut lived originally in Ur and was a nephew of Ibrahim. Traditional Islamic scholars use his story to show that homosexuality is haram ("unlawful"). Rather than choosing to go to Sodom as a result of the lack of grazing land in the Canaanite hill country he shared with his uncle, Lot was commanded by God to go to the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to preach against homosexuality. Lut's prophetic message, however, was rejected, and thus Sodom and Gommorrah were. The Qur'an describes Lot's ministry as a prophet in these terms:

When their brother Lut said to them, "Will you not do your duty? I am a faithful Messenger to you. So heed God and obey me I do not ask you for any wage for it. My wage is the responsiblity of no one but the Lord of all Worlds of all beings, do you lie with males, leaving the wives God has created for you? You are people who have overstepped the limits."::(Qur'an,26:161-166)

The Qur'an's description of the fate of Lot's wife also differs from that of Genesis. Instead of being punished for "looking back," Lot's wife — in one account — stays behind in Sodom. In another, she is left behind by divine command:

So We rescued him and his family — except for his wife. She was one of those who stayed behind. We rained down a rain upon them. See the final fate of the evildoers!::(Qur'an, 7:80-84)

They [the angels] said, "Lut, we are messengers from your Lord. They will not be able to get at you. Set out with your family — except for your wife — in the middle of the night and none of you should look back. What strikes them will strike her as well. (54:33)

Midrash

Jewish midrash records a number of additional stories about Lot, not present in the Tanakh. These include:

• Abraham took care of Lot after Haran was burned in a gigantic fire in which Nimrod, King of Babylon, tried to kill Abraham.
• While in Egypt, the midrash gives Lot much credit because, despite his desire for wealth, he did not inform Pharaoh of the secret of Sarah, Abraham's wife.

Criticism

Some have described the Biblical narration as Lot offering his daughters for gang-rape , adding "so much for Lot being a righteous man!"

The Islamic view denounces the Biblical account of Lot offering his daughters to be gang-raped (Genesis 19:8) and later impregnating both of them due to excessive alcohol consumption (Genesis 19:30-36).

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Calmet, Augustin (1837). Calmet's Dictionary of the Holy Bible. Boston: Crocker & Brewster. LCC BS440.C3. 

See also

• Abraham
• Similarities between the Bible and the Qur'an

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