'And when the morning arose, then the angels hastened
Lot, saying, Arise, take thy wife, and thy two daughters,
which are here; lest them be consumed in the iniquity of
the city. And while he lingered, the men laid hold upon
his hand, and upon the hand of his wife, and upon the
hand of his two daughters; the Lord being merciful unto
him: and they brought him forth, and set him without
the city. And it came to pass, when they had brought
them forth abroad, that He said, Escape for thy life;
look not behind thee, neither stay thou in all the plain;
escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed. And Lot
said unto them, Oh, not so, my Lord: Behold now, Thy
servant hath found grace in Thy sight, and Thou hast
magnified Thy mercy, which Thou hast shewed unto me in
saving my life; and I cannot escape to the mountain, lest
some evil take me, and I die: Behold now, this city is
near to flee unto, and it is a little one: Oh, let me
escape thither, (is it not a little one?) and my soul
shall live. And He said unto him, See, I have accepted
thee concerning this thing also, that I will not overthrow
this city, for the which thou hast spoken. Haste thee,
escape thither; for I cannot do any thing till thou be
come thither. Therefore the name of the city was called
Zoar. The sun was risen upon the earth when Lot entered
into Zoar. Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon
Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven;
And He overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and
all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew
upon the ground. But his wife looked back from behind
him, and she became a pillar of salt.'--GENESIS xix. 15-26.
The religious significance of this solemn page of revelation is but
little affected by any of the interesting questions which criticism
raises concerning it, so that I am free to look at the whole narrative
for the purpose of deducing its perennial lessons. There are four
clearly marked stages in the story: the lingering of Lot in the doomed
city, and the friendly force which dragged him from it; the prayer of
abject fear, and the wonderful answer; the awful catastrophe; and the
fate of the wretched woman who looked back.
1. Lot's lingering and rescue by force. Second thoughts are not always
best. When great resolves have to be made, and when a clear divine
command has to be obeyed, the first thought is usually the nobler; and
the second, which pulls it back, and damps its ardour, is usually of
the earth, earthy. So was it with Lot. Overnight, in the excitement of
the terrible scene enacted before his door, Lot had been not only
resolved himself to flee, but his voice had urged his sons-in-law to
escape from the doom which he then felt to be imminent. But with the
cold grey light of morning his mood has changed. The ties which held
him in Sodom reassert their power. Perhaps daylight made his fears seem
less real. There was no sign in the chill Eastern twilight that this
day was to be unlike the other days. Perhaps the angels' summons roused
him from sleep, and their 'arise' is literally meant. It might have
given wings to his flight. Urgent, and resonant, like the morning
bugle, it bids him be stirring lest he be swept away 'in the punishment
of the city.' Observe that the same word means 'sin' and
'punishment,'--a testimony to the profound truth that at bottom they
are one, sin being pain in the root, pain being sin in the flower. So
our own word 'evil' covers all the ground, and means both sin and
sorrow. But even that pealing note does not shatter his hesitation. He
still lingers. What kept him? That which had first taken him
there--material advantages. He had struck root in Sodom. The tent life
which he had kept to at first has been long given up; we find him
sitting in the gate of the city, the place for gossip and friendly
intercourse. He has either formed, or is going to form, marriage
alliances for his daughters with men of the city who are as black as
the rest. Perhaps his wife, whom the story will not name, for pity or
for horror, was a Sodomite. To escape meant to leave all this and his
wealth behind. If he goes out, he goes out a pauper. So his heart,
which is where his treasure is, makes his movements slow. What insanity
his lingering must have seemed to the angels! I wonder if we, who cling
so desperately to the world, and who are so slow to go where God would
have us to be for our own safety, if thereby we shall lose anything of
this world's wealth, seem very much wiser to eyes made clear-sighted
with the wisdom of heaven. This poor hesitating lingerer, too much at
home in the city of destruction to get out of it even to save his life,
has plenty of brothers to-day. Every man who lets the world hold him by
the skirts when Christ is calling him to salvation, and every man who
is reluctant to obey any clear call to sacrifice and separation from
godless men, may see his own face in this glass, and perhaps get a
glimpse of its ugliness.
What a homely picture, full of weighty truth, the story gives us, of
the angels each taking two of the reluctant four by the hand, and
dragging them with some degree of kindly force from destruction into
safety! So, in a great fire, domestic animals and horses seem to find a
strange fascination in the flames, and have to be carried out of
certain death by main force. They 'set him'--or we might read, 'made
him rest'--outside the city. It was but a little distance, for these
'cities' were tiny places, and the walls were soon reached. But it was
far enough to change Lot's whole feelings. He passes to feeble despair
and abject fear, as we shall see. That forlorn group, homeless,
friendless, stripped of everything, shivering outside the gate in the
cold morning air, may teach us how wise and prudent the man is who
seeks the kingdom of God second, and the other things first.
2. There was a pause outside the city. A new voice speaks now to Lot.
'They' brought him forth; but 'He' said 'escape.' The same 'Lord' to
whom Abraham had prayed, has now rejoined the mysterious pair whom He
had sent to Sodom. And Lot's entreaty is addressed to Him whom he calls
'my Lord.' He uses singular pronouns throughout, although the narrator
says that he 'said unto _them_.' There seems to be here the same idea
as is embodied in the word 'Elohim'; namely, that the divine powers are
regarded as in some sense separable, and yet all inhering in a personal
unity. At all events, we have here a distinct representation of an
intercourse between God and man, in which thoughts are conveyed to the
human spirit direct from the divine, and desires pass from the human to
the divine. The manner of the intercourse we do not know, but the
possibility of the fact can scarcely be denied by any believer in a
God; and, however we may call this miraculous or abnormal, the essence
of the event can be repeated in the experience of each of us. God still
speaks to men, and men may still plead with God. Unless our religion is
communion, it is nothing.
The divine voice reiterates the angels' urgent command in still more
stringent words: 'Escape for thy life.' There is to be no more
angel-leading, but Lot's feet are to be made as hinds' feet by the
thought of the flaming death that is pursuing. His lingering looks are
sternly forbidden, since they would delay his flight and divide his
heart. The direction of his flight is for the first time pointed out.
The fertile plain, which had lured him down from the safe hills, is
prohibited. Only on the mountain-side, probably the eastern mountains,
where the morning red was beginning to blush, is there safety.
Lot's answer shows a complete change of feeling. He is too fully
alarmed now. His fright is so desperate that it has killed faith and
common sense. The natural conclusion from God's mercy, which he
acknowledges, would have been trust and obedience. 'Therefore I can
escape,' not 'but I cannot escape,' would have been the logic of faith.
The latter is the irrationality of fear. When a man who has been
cleaving to this fleeting life of earthly good wakes up to believe his
danger, he is ever apt to plunge into an abyss of terror, in which
God's commands seem impossible, and His will to save becomes dim. The
world first lies to us by 'You are quite safe where you are. Don't be
in a hurry to go.' Then it lies, 'You never can get away now.' Reverse
Lot's whimpering fears, and we get the truth. Are not God's directions
how to escape, promises that we shall escape? Will He begin to build,
and not be able to finish? Will the judgments of His hand overrun their
commission, like a bloodhound which, in its master's absence, may rend
his friend? 'We have all of us one human heart,' and this swift leap
from unreasoning carelessness to as unreasoning dread, this failure to
draw the true conclusion from God's past mercy, and this despairing
recoil from the path pointed for us, and craving for easier ways,
belongs to us. 'A strange servant of God was this,' say we. Yes, and we
are often quite as strange. How many people awakened to see their
danger are so absorbed by the sight that they cannot see the cross, or
think they can never reach it!
God answered the cry, whatever its fault, and that may well make us
pause in our condemnation. He hears even a very imperfect petition, and
can see the tiniest germ of faith buried under thick clods of doubt and
fear. This stooping readiness to meet Lot's weakness comes in wonderful
contrast with the terrible revelation of judgment which follows. What a
conception of God, which had room for this more than human patience
with weakness, and also for the flashing, lurid glories of destructive
retribution! Zoar is spared, not for the unworthy reason which Lot
suggested--because its minuteness might buy impunity, as some noxious
insect too small to be worth crushing--but in accordance with the
principle which was illustrated in Abraham's intercession, and even in
Lot's safety; namely, that the righteous are shields for others, as
Paul had the lives of all that sailed with him given to him.
God's 'cannot' answers Lot's 'cannot.' His power is limited by His own
solemn purpose to save His faltering servant. The latter had feared
that, before he could reach the mountain, 'the evil' would overtake
him. God shows him that his safety was a condition precedent to its
outburst. Lot barred the way. God could not 'let slip the dogs of'
judgment, but held them in the leash until Lot was in Zoar. Very awful
is the command to make haste, based on this impossibility, as if God
were weary of delay, and more than ready to smite. However we may find
anthropomorphism in these early narratives, let us not forget that,
when the world has long been groaning under some giant evil, and the
bitter seed is grown up into a waving forest of poison, there is
something in the passionless righteousness of God which brooks no
longer delay, but seeks to make 'a short work' on the earth.
3. So we are brought face to face with the grim story of the
destruction. There is a world of tragic meaning in the simple note of
time given. 'The sun was risen upon the earth when Lot entered into
Zoar.' The low-lying cities of the plain would lie in shadow for some
time before the sun topped the eastern hills. What a dawn! At that
joyous hour, just when the sunshine struck down on the smiling plain,
and lake and river gleamed like silver, and all things woke to new
hopes and fresh life, then the sky darkened, and the earth sank, and
horrible rain of fiery bitumen fell from the black pall, salt mud
poured in streams, and over all hung a column of fat, oily smoke. It is
not my province to discuss the physical cause of the destruction; but I
may refer to the suggestions of Sir J. W. Dawson, in his _Egypt and
Syria_, and in _The Expositor_ for May 1886, in which he shows that
great beds of bituminous limestone extend below the Jordan valley and
much of the Dead Sea, and that the escape of inflammable gag from these
through the opening of a fissure along a great 'line of fault,' is
capable of producing all the effects described. The 'brimstone' of the
Authorised Version is probably rather some form of bituminous matter
which would be carried into the air by such an escape of gas, and a
thick saline mud would accompany the eruption, encrusting anything it
reached. Subsidence would follow the ejection of quantities of such
matter; and hence the word 'overthrew,' which seems inappropriate to a
mere conflagration, would be explained.
But, however this may be, we have to recognise a supernatural element
in the starting of the train of natural causes, as well as in the
timing of the catastrophe, and a divine purpose of retribution, which
turns the catastrophe, however effected, into a judgment.
So regarded, the event has a double meaning. In the first place, it is
a revelation of an element in the divine character and of a feature in
the divine government. To the men of that time, it might be a warning.
To Abraham, and through him to his descendants, and through them to us,
it preaches a truth very unwelcome to many in this day: that there is
in God that which constrains Him to hate, fight against, and punish,
evil. The temper of this generation turns away from such thoughts, and,
in the name of the truth that 'God is love,' would fain obliterate the
truth that He does and will punish. But if the punitive element be
suppressed, and that in God which makes it necessary ignored or
weakened, the result will be a God who has not force enough to love,
but only weakly to indulge. If He does not hate and punish, He does not
pardon. For the sake of the love of God, we must hold firm by the
belief in the judgments of God. The God who destroyed Sodom is not
merely the God of an earlier antiquated creed. 'Is He the God of the
Jews only? Is He not also of the Gentiles? Yea, of the Gentiles also.'
Again, this event is a prophecy. So our Lord has employed it; and much
of the imagery in which the last judgment is represented is directly
drawn from this narrative. So far from this story showing to us only
the superstitions of a form of belief which we have long outgrown, its
deepest meaning lies far ahead, and closes the history of man on the
earth. We know from the lips which cannot lie, that the appalling
suddenness of that destruction foreshadows the swiftness of the coming
of that last 'day of the Lord.' We know that in literality some of the
physical features shall be reproduced; for the fire which shall burn up
the world and all its works is no figure, nor is it proclaimed only by
such non-authoritative voices as those of Jesus and His apostles, but
also by the modern possessors of infallible certitude, the men of
science. We know that that day shall be a day of retribution. We know,
too, that the crime of Sodom, foul and unnatural as it was, is not the
darkest, but that its inhabitants (who have to face that judgment too)
will find their doom more tolerable, and their sins lighter, than some
who have had high places in the Church, than the Pharisees and wise men
who have not taken Christ for their Saviour.
4. The fate of the loiterer. Her backward look must have been more than
momentary, for the destruction of the cities did not begin till Lot was
safe in Zoar. She must have lingered far behind, and been overtaken by
the eruption of liquid saline mud, which, as Sir J. W. Dawson has
shown, would attend or follow the outburst of bituminous matter, so
that her fate was the natural consequence of her heart being still in
Sodom. As to the 'pillar of salt' which has excited cavils on the one
hand and foolish legends on the other, probably we are to think rather
of a heap than of a pillar. The word does not occur in either meaning
elsewhere, but its derivation implies something raised above the level
of the ground; and a heap, such as would be formed by a human body
encrusted with salt mud, would suit the requirements of the expression.
Like a man who falls in a snowstorm, or, still more accurately, just as
some of the victims at Pompeii stumbled in their flight, and were
buried under the ashes, which still keep the outline of their figures,
so Lot's wife was covered with the half-liquid slimy mud. Granted the
delay in her flight, the rest is perfectly simple and natural. She was
buried in a horrible tomb; and, in pity to her memory, no name has been
written upon it. She remains to all generations, in a far truer sense
than superstition dreamed of when it pointed to an upright salt rock as
her prison and her monument, a warning of the danger of the backward
look, which betrays the true home of the heart, and may leave us
unsheltered in the open plain when the fiery storm bursts. 'Remember
Lot's wife.'
When the angels awoke Lot, the day was breaking. By the time that
Abraham had risen 'early in the morning,' and reached the place by his
tent from which he had yesterday looked on the smiling plain, all was
over, and the heavy smoke cloud wrapped the dead with its pall-like
folds. So swift and sudden is to be the coming of the Son of man,--as
the lightning which rushes in one fierce blinding flash from one side
of heaven to the other. Wherefore, God calls to each of us: 'Escape for
thy life; look not behind thee.'