1. Birth Announcement (18-19)
One day three men appeared at Abraham's door. As the account develops we learn that one is Yahweh and the other two apparently the angels that rescue Lot. Abraham prepared a bedouin banquet for these visitors, and the disguised Yahweh in return promised that Abraham and Sarah would have a son by the same time next year. When Sarah overheard this prediction she could not suppress a loud guffaw because she was so old.
After the meal Abraham and "the men" gazed down on Sodom, and Yahweh revealed that he intended to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah for their wickedness. Because Lot lived there Abraham bargained with God to save Sodom if even ten righteous people could be found. But there were not even ten righteous ones to merit saving the city.
| Dead Sea Salt Formations The Dead Sea has a high concentration of minerals. Salt pillar condensations are everywhere to be found. In the biblical tradition Lot's wife became a salt pillar when she disobedied and turned back around to view Sodom's destruction (19:26). Photo by Barry Bandstra |
The two angels entered Sodom to rescue Lot. To demonstrate the depravity of Sodom we are told that the men of the city demanded that Lot throw out his visitors so they could "sodomize" them. The angels urged Lot to leave, and he took his wife and two daughters with him. After they reached safety "YHWH rained brimstone and fire from YHWH out of heaven on Sodom and Gomorrah" (19:24). But when Lot's wife cast a longing glance back toward Sodom she was converted into a salt pillar. Lot's daughters despaired of finding husbands, so they got their father drunk enough to sleep with them. Their children of incest became the Moabites and Ammonites; the Israelites had quite an engaging way of casting aspersions on their neighbors.
Sodom and Gomorrah. The ruins of Sodom and Gomorrah have not been located. The only possible candidates are Bab edh-Dhra and some related towns near the eastern shore of the Dead Sea, for they are the only sites in the area that were occupied before the Roman period (see Harland 1980 and van Hatten 1981). British geologists Harris and Beardow (1995) argue that Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed when an earthquake liquefied the ground on which they stood. This leveled the cities, then caused them to sink beneath the waters of the Dead Sea. They theorize that the earthquake also ignited bitumen deposits, which are common to the area, resulting in the "fire and brimstone" description (19:24).
| Lot and his Daughter, by Albrecht Altdorfer 1537, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna -- Artchive |
