Fire and Salt

Welcome back to the Jordan River Valley's rounded plain, in which are nestled five cities whose reputation has entered the halls of infamy. Accusations had been lodged in heaven, an outcry against the alleged extreme evil of the two leading cities there, Sodom and Gomorrah, places whose prosperity had led to luxurious living, to selfish injustices and xenophobia, to careless license in all things including sexual pleasures. Or so the charges went. To investigate how closely they resembled reality, the Almighty had dispatched a pair of undercover agents to infiltrate Sodom and put its reputation to the test. There, they found lodging with no one but Lot, who offered them hospitality in unconscious imitation of his uncle Abraham, with whom they'd spent the afternoon. Here, however, a vast mob surrounded Lot's house in the latest hours, demanding the presentation of the visitors to their appetites, with little regard in their proposal for trifling matters like consent, propriety, or natural law. Lot ventured forth to oppose and brave their violence; and when matters grew too fraught, then did his visitors haul him back within his dwelling and bolt the door against the inbreaking crowd (Genesis 19:1-11).

Looking back just hours earlier, while these angel spies had still been en route, Abraham had negotiated with the Almighty for this city, succeeding in setting a criterion of judgment, a standard where the presence of only ten righteous people in the whole city of Sodom would suffice to cover and spare the city as a whole, regardless of how guilty their corporate body should prove to be (Genesis 18:32). The question ever since has been if that measure would be met, if Sodom could meet that shockingly low threshold for immunity to prosecution. But in the night, Lot's home had been wickedly besieged and schemed against by “the men of the city, the men of Sodom, both young and old, all the people from every quarter” (Genesis 19:4). What more evidence do the inspectors need? “Sodom could not boast of ten righteous souls” who stood apart from the crowd.¹ Guilty.

Now, only now, do the visitors give Lot an idea who they really are. In rescuing him from the mob, they wield a miraculous power to dazzle the masses and make their battering against the door ineffective by concealing it from their senses. “The LORD has sent us,” they tell their erstwhile host (Genesis 19:13). They are not men of an ordinary nature; they are men of heaven, whose purpose here is not to pass through but to carry out higher orders in this very place. The critical hour has arrived for their mission to bear its fruit.

God had previously chastised the people of Sodom through the enemy armies who stole them away captive with their riches, and yet God had relented and redeemed them by the hand of Abraham so that they might look to him and to Lot and “abandon their errors and learn to serve God and follow the precedent for good works” that Abraham modeled; but it now was clear that “they were unwilling to be reformed from their wickedness.”² So, said the messengers, “we are about to destroy this place, because great is their outcry to the face of the LORD, and the LORD has sent us to destroy it” (Genesis 19:13). “God did not spare the neighbors of Lot, abominable in their pride” (Sirach 16:8), but rather “condemned the whole people of the Sodomites to destruction.”³ He did it “to hinder us from imitating them and to educate us to the self-control he wished from us,”⁴ because we can plainly see that “the people of Sodom, when they did an abundance of evil, were recompensed justly” in their destruction.⁵ They're no less guilty than the ancient world, and as the Flood came to judge the world of old, now a judgment is coming to the cities of the plain, leaving Lot to star in a remake of the days of Noah.

That means he needs to be warned. It also means he needn't be warned alone. “Have you anyone else here?” ask his angel guests. “Sons-in-law, sons, daughters, or anyone else you have in the city – bring them out of the place” (Genesis 19:12). Lot is given a special privilege here. He is warned to exit the place doomed to death, so that he might survive. But after being chosen, he is entitled to bring all those for whom he has responsibility as a head of household. The critical point they raise is this: Lot is a father, just as Noah was. And as a father, it isn't on him just to see to his own safety, but to seek the salvation of his house. To Lot precisely as a father, the angels “wish to grant him the salvation of all his family.”⁶ But they task him with making it happen. It is Lot, precisely as a father, who bears a responsibility to bring his family out of the place of doom and damnation.

And so Father Lot once more left his house into the blackness of night, the very cover of darkness under which all the men of Sodom had been dazzled and drained by the splendor of their rebuke. Evidently, unlike Abraham, Lot had fathered no sons, only daughters. But “Lot went out” to enter a different house, waking “his sons-in-law who took his daughters” (Genesis 19:14). Readers have bickered over the years whether these are men already married to older daughters of Lot we're just now hearing of,⁷ or, more likely, that these are two men engaged to the two maiden daughters still living in Lot's house.⁸ It's only to them that he goes – which is odd, if you think about it, because didn't he used to have servants and herdsmen before he adopted urban living (Genesis 13:5-7)? What ever happened to those guys?⁹ Evidently they've been let go and have either left the plain or assimilated to its society, and Lot makes no efforts to reach out to them. But his son-in-laws he will.

Lot found his sons-in-law, probably at their separate respective houses, waking them at midnight with an urgent message. “Up! Get out of this place! For the LORD is about to destroy the city!” (Genesis 19:14). It's a word that no doubt comes as a surprise, especially because Lot isn't fully relaying what he's been told. The visitors told Lot the LORD would destroy the city through them, and Lot repeats that bit except for their involvement – fine. The visitors urged Lot to bring those with him out of the city, and Lot repeats that bit. But the visitors also told Lot the reason for the destruction, that “great is their outcry before the LORD” (Genesis 19:13) – that the destruction isn't the tantrum of a senseless god but a calculated divine response to human injustice and sin. And that's the one and only thing Lot drops when he relays the message to his sons-in-law. Though he'd earlier stood against the city's evil action, he now glosses over the justice of their judgment.

Maybe as a result, “he seemed to his sons-in-law like one who laughs” (Genesis 19:14). A chapter ago, when a heavenly messenger prophesied that the elderly Sarah would bear a son, she laughed to herself, thinking it was an obvious joke, a prank at her expense (Genesis 18:12). Now, when Lot prophesies the destruction of his city, his own sons-in-law think he's having a laugh, that he's pulling a prank, that this is an ill-timed comedy routine he's woken them up for – and they think it despite the fact that every man in town has just experienced a miracle in their blindness in the streets! Apparently, “Lot had no moral persuasion,” no gravitas as a father; so fond of dad jokes was he that his own sons-in-law didn't take him seriously when it counted.¹⁰ Of course, that's just as much on them, exemplars of Sodom's stubborn pride. “Ridiculing as an absurdity what they were told by Lot,”¹¹ they “instead persisted in their evil way,”¹² “mocking Lot as he delivers the message of doom.”¹³ Where Noah got all his daughters-in-law on the ark, Lot lures zero of his sons-in-law out of the city.¹⁴ Neither man of Sodom has what it would take to graduate from a son to a future father of Lot's grandsons, Israel's cousins.

Hours pass, and we're told that morning is dawning. The angels had impressed on Lot the importance of getting his family out of the city, and if his failed overtures to his sons-in-law happened around midnight, surely Lot is well out of the city by now, having led his family forth on an emergency exodus from Sodom, a fitting flight-by-night sequel to their Passover-like feast of unleavened bread (Genesis 19:3)?¹⁵  Except they aren't moving. Darkness is fading, yielding to the day of judgment, and there are Father Lot and his family, still in the target zone. Maybe they're fretting over last-minute packing for the trip; maybe they took a nap. Lot doesn't have the decisiveness of Noah or the immediacy of Abraham. “As morning dawned, the angels urged Lot, saying, 'Up! Take your wife and your two daughters who are here, lest you be swept away in the iniquity of the city!'” (Genesis 19:15). The stakes just couldn't be any higher.

Lot isn't only in a life-or-death situation himself. As a father, it's his calling to model leadership in this crisis for his family. “But he lingered,” we read (Genesis 19:16). He lingered, he dilly-dallied, he dawdled even when his family's very life was on the line. One commentary harshly dubs this “Lot's ineffective dithering,” even “Lot's vacillating buffoonery.”¹⁶ Another characterizes him as “dimwitted pragmatically as well as morally.”¹⁷ How different does that really make him from the sons-in-law unworthy of future fatherhood, when Lot seems not to be taking the angels' message with any more seriousness than his sons-in-law took his?¹⁸

In the end, Lot's faltering fatherhood needed a heavenly helping hand – or four. The angels, still in human guise and form, used each of their hands to grab hold of a member of Lot's household. If they wouldn't avoid disaster voluntarily, they'd be given some extra momentum involuntarily. “The men seized him and his wife and his two daughters by the hand, the LORD being merciful to him, and they brought him out and set him outside the city” (Genesis 19:16). For the first time in a long time, we see Lot definitely on the other side of Sodom's town wall. He's now outside. But that doesn't mean he's all the way to safety. The angels only mean to jumpstart things.

“And as they brought them out, he said” – one of the two heavenly guests now takes the lead in speaking, as one of the three did before and was revealed as the LORD. What's he say to Lot? “Escape for your life!” That should come naturally to Lot, because Lot's name actually sounds a lot like this Hebrew word for 'escape' or 'flee.'¹⁹ “Escape for your life! Do not look behind you” (Genesis 19:17). He and his must, “never straying, keep their eyes ahead, facing open country, never turning back their gaze to see the fires lording it over the city walls.”²⁰ “Do not stop anywhere in the plain; escape to the hills, lest you be swept away” (Genesis 19:17). The scope of destruction will fill the entire plain, so they need to get all the way to the eastern mountains, where they can find safety. Lot is called now to abandon the very region that entranced his eye decades earlier when he bade Uncle Abram farewell (Genesis 13:10). And he's got to give it up fast; their lives remain in danger.²¹

So you'd think that, given that the alternative is certain death, Lot would now begin to run. I mean, who would knowingly loiter outside Pompeii as Vesuvius begins to bellow? Apparently, Lot would. He decides that this is surely the time and the place to bargain over the terms of his salvation. “Oh no, my Lord!” comes the obsequious objection, opening almost the same way as his rebuke to the villains of Sodom (cf. Genesis 19:7). Then, aping Abraham's bidding the angels as his guests, Lot goes on: “Behold, please, your servant has found favor in your eyes, and you have magnified your mercy which you have shown me in keeping alive my soul” (Genesis 19:18-19). He's laying it on a bit thick, but he's hardly wrong – yet. “But I am not able to escape to the hills, lest the evil cling to me and I die!” (Genesis 19:19).

In Lot's eyes, this plan of salvation just doesn't suit him; in his fear, “he did not trust the Lord himself,” despite acknowledging God's magnified mercies.²² The heavenly plan for Lot delivering his life is exactly what Lot believes would spell his death.²³ He thinks he'll fall short of what the plan demands; he's “afraid that he might never succeed in reaching the place specified by them,”²⁴ so that the judgment would “destroy him... on the journey.”²⁵ The mountains are too far, his legs are too weak, so he suggests a destination “near enough to flee to” and begs it as a superior safe haven to the one of heaven's choosing (Genesis 19:20). He bargains for an alternative path of salvation, one “making the effort less demanding” for him.²⁶ Yet Lot speaks more truly than he knows, because the evil of Sodom has some roots in even him. The city life has such a hold on Lot that he struggles to imagine life outside one any more, hence his plea for a city to fly to.²⁷ The word he uses for 'cling' has only shown up once in the Bible so far, in the garden's pledge of a man cleaving or clinging to his wife in wedlock; now Lot fears that disaster, or evil, will cling to him, will wed him and bed him – a lethal prospect.²⁸

Lot has made “a presumptuous request at... the most inopportune moment.”²⁹ So it surprises us when he gets a yes, though I have to think it came with a galaxy-sized eye roll from the heavenly being with whom he's begging. Abraham, with his decidedly humanitarian motives, bargained for the salvation of the city Sodom, and he fell short through no fault of his own. But Lot, when he bargains to spare the small city of Bela, now Zoar, with purely self-interested motives, ironically has his prayer indulged in full. “He said to him, 'Behold, I lift up your face also about this thing, that I will not overthrow the city of which you have spoken'” (Genesis 19:21).

But the indulgence comes with a last warning: “Hurry, escape there, for I am not able to do a thing until you come there” (Genesis 19:22). Lot had moments earlier protested his inability to reach the mountains before the falling of God's judgment; now God, or an angel speaking on his behalf, mirrors Lot and assures him of a divine 'inability,' so to speak, of judging before Lot is safe and sound.³⁰ The habitually lingering Lot is being allowed to almost set the pace of divine intervention in the evils of his world. And that assurance incentivizes him to get a move on. They must have hightailed it on their trek through the plain, for Father Lot to lead his family nearly all the way to Zoar by the time “the sun had risen on the earth” (Genesis 19:23).³¹ It's 5:00am or thereabouts; none of the four have slept, but adrenaline has aided their now-hasty flight from mortal peril.

Then we hear how “the LORD” brought forth destruction “from the LORD out of heaven” (Genesis 19:24). Jews and Christians puzzled mightily at this unusual phrasing, which “seemed to posit two Lords, one in heaven, the other” on earth.³² Early Christians realized that we have here the LORD, a divine person standing on earth, one who had just been talking to Lot, now calling down judgment from the LORD, a divine person up in heaven.³³ It was a mystery that, on gradual reflection, God opened up to them. “The LORD our God, the LORD is one,” yes (Deuteronomy 6:4), yet he appears here twice in two persons: “the Lord rained from the Lord, the Son from the Father.”³⁴ It being Trinity Sunday, we mustn't pass blithely by this testimony, which dimly hints at the mystery later unveiled in the Church: that the LORD God Almighty is eternally one God, but that the timeless life of this LORD is dynamic, interactive, identical with the relations between three persons, each essentially the one God. The Father eternally begets the Son, they eternally breathe forth their Spirit, the three eternally dance the dance of love that just is the inner life of God, and then, in all they do facing outward toward creation, they act as one. Here, it seems, the Father had sent the Son to earth, and just as the Son would one day pour out the Spirit from the Father, so here the Son calls forth the Father's fire from heaven to earth – the Trinity in action.

Once before, God had rained down judgment by water from the skies (Genesis 7:4); now, God rains judgment from the skies again, “a replay in miniature of God's destruction of the entire world,”³⁵ but not this time global and not this time by water.³⁶ “The LORD rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the LORD out of heaven, and he overthrew those cities and all the inhabitants of the cities” (Genesis 19:24-25), “God destroyed the cities of the plain” (Genesis 19:29). “The LORD executed the judgment of Sodom and Gomorrah and Zeboiim and all the district of the Jordan, and he burned them with fire and sulfur,”³⁷ “burned them up with fire and brimstone and made them an example to later generations.”³⁸

See, the cities by the Dead Sea lay in a geologic rift, near underground “sulphur and bitumen deposits and petrochemical springs.”³⁹ A fateful earthquake could well have released heat and gases which, if ignited then by lightning strikes, would have combusted, raining fire and sulfur down over everything in the depression below.⁴⁰ That, from a natural perspective, is probably how God triggered the dramatic overthrow he'd planned. Ancient Jewish, Samaritan, and Christian readers all imagined how “the flames streamed down massed in one constant and perpetual rush,”⁴¹ and “the people of Sodom... all perished in a flash,”⁴² “they perished in fire and fumes,”⁴³ “consumed and burned up in fire and sulfur,”⁴⁴ so that “in one day, populous cities had become the grave of the inhabitants, and fabrics of stone and timber had turned into ashes and fine dust.”⁴⁵

Meanwhile, the day's first light had roused Abraham from his bed, where undoubtedly he slept not a wink more than Lot and his family did, awash in anxiety as he must have been. “And Abraham went early in the morning to the place where he had stood to the face of the LORD,” desperate to see for himself the outcome of his ardent prayers (Genesis 19:27). Had there been enough righteous in Sodom to forestall judgment? Had anyone at all been spared, been saved? “And he looked to the face of Sodom and Gomorrah and to all the face of the land of the plain, and he saw – and behold! the smoke of the land went up like the smoke of a furnace!” (Genesis 19:28) – a morbid parody of a burnt offering unto the Lord, a sacrifice of a land become all blemish and blame, unfit to rise unto the heavens. Abraham had not a word to say; there could only be an awful grief in reverent silence.⁴⁶

It sounds terrifying, horrid, grotesque, repulsive. But from another angle, Scripture tells us that God is himself “a consuming fire” (Deuteronomy 4:24; Hebrews 12:29); and, if so, it can fairly be said that God “did not give [Sodom and Gomorrah] any punishment other than intimacy with himself.”⁴⁷ An All-Consuming Fire, the God who is Love and burns with only love, has embraced them passionately, so passionately that they cannot endure him; nothing in them had love's strength unto life. The Consuming Fire loved the cities to death.

But now there were no more cities at all – God “had condemned them to extinction” (2 Peter 2:6), “annihilated them to this day.”⁴⁸ He'd removed them not only as social and political units, but he'd nullified their populations. Even “what grew from the ground,” cultivated and uncultivated alike, was burned away (Genesis 19:25), as fully as life had been blotted “from the face of the ground” by the flood (Genesis 7:23). Centuries later, prophets and poets and philosophers said “the fearful fire... turned a fruitful land into salt,”⁴⁹ “a land possessed by nettles and salt pits, a waste forever” (Zephaniah 2:9), “so completely that it should yield neither plant nor fruit whatsoever from that time forward.”⁵⁰ Thus was “the whole land burned out with sulfur and salt,” said Moses, “nothing sown and nothing growing, where no plant can sprout” (Deuteronomy 29:23), just “ruins and cinders and brimstone and smoke,”⁵¹ “lumps of pitch and heaps of ashes.”⁵²

There, “as a testimony to its wickedness,” said a later visitor, “even yet there remains a smoking desert, plants bearing fruit that never ripens” (Wisdom 10:7). Jews and Christians alike came to imagine that the fire of God had “penetrated right down into the earth itself, destroyed its inherent life-power, and reduced it to complete sterility..., and to this day it goes on burning..., for a monument of the disastrous event remains in the smoke which rises ceaselessly and the brimstone which the miners obtain,”⁵³ “an everlasting reminder to later generations, teaching everyone through its peculiar barrenness the wickedness of its inhabitants.”⁵⁴ Some added that “the sea has now poured over and covered... the very earth on which those cities stood.”⁵⁵ That a valley once akin to Eden could become so desolate is heartbreaking, but it's written that “Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities... serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire” (Jude 7).

In the midst of the overthrow, “Lot himself escaped from among them by an angelic revelation,” and his wife and daughters followed after him.⁵⁶ Why was he warned? Why were he and they delivered? It's been said that he somehow “merited to escape unsullied... and unharmed” from the judgment.⁵⁷ To some, Lot “alone did not fall in with the multitude when they turned aside to licentious living.”⁵⁸ According to other readers, Lot “escapes the conflagration for this reason alone: because he opened his house to strangers.”⁵⁹ Either way, on one reading, Lot “was freed from the fires of the Sodomites as a reward for his upright living,”⁶⁰ having therefore been “judged... worthy of salvation.”⁶¹ Some go so far as to say that Lot's virtues actually “earn him salvation.”⁶² To be sure, the New Testament stresses, “God... rescued righteous Lot” (2 Peter 2:7).

Much of that is by no means untrue, but it's also not the last word or deepest insight, because how does the story end itself? “When God destroyed the cities of the plain, God remembered Abraham and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow when he overthrew the cities in which had dwelt Lot” (Genesis 19:29). It's the very same language as when “God remembered Noah” aboard the ark amidst the flood (Genesis 8:1).⁶³ As the escapee who leads his family to safety, Lot is supposed to be the Noah here, but consider how his righteousness has fallen short, how he's hemmed and hawed, how he's argued with angels, how he's had to be practically dragged and shoved into salvation. Not unfairly does one commentator quip that, “left to his own devices, he would have remained in Sodom to be destroyed.”⁶⁴ It seems that Lot is as much saved in spite of himself as on account of himself, and this he owes to the mercy of the LORD (Genesis 19:16). And that mercy is shown, we now find, because God heard Abraham's prayer for the city and did something with it. “Lot was freed, rather, because of Abraham's merits,”⁶⁵ not owing to his own worth, though he then had to cooperate with the grace of salvation.

So, when push came to shove, Lot belatedly complied with what God required of him in the crucial moment. Lot fled from Sodom, ran through the plain, not stopping or turning until reaching his destination, no matter what. As they neared the gates of Zoar, the fires began to fall behind them, but Lot and his family were “headed in the right direction..., making progress” from death toward life.⁶⁶ But just then, “his wife behind him looked back” (Genesis 19:26). Maybe it was a natural curiosity to see the cataclysm with her own eyes, to witness the fateful moment, “curious to observe its fate.”⁶⁷ Maybe she suddenly panicked to imagine that “the whole world would perish by heavenly fire.”⁶⁸ But most certainly it was a gesture of attachment to Sodom and its life. Jews speculated, not unreasonably, that “the wife of Lot was from the daughters of the Sodomites,” having been a native of the city whom Lot married only after moving there.⁶⁹ But whether native or assimilated, she could be “longing for what she left behind,”⁷⁰ “looking wistfully at the world she was leaving.”⁷¹

She looked. But there was a reason Lot had been so vehemently exhorted, “Do not look behind you!” (Genesis 19:17). “The one who looks back identifies with the city, and is therefore destroyed along with it.”⁷² It's just practical common sense – when death's hot on your heels, don't slow down to see it! It's also spiritual wisdom. In looking back, Lot's wife “became negligent of the command” and “violated the imposed law.”⁷³ As a result, the destruction swept over her, no less than if she'd “remained in Sodom.”⁷⁴ Perhaps she was “engulfed in the fallout of fire and chemicals” through her tardiness,⁷⁵ and so “became a pillar of salt” (Genesis 19:26). That pillar is “the tomb of a disbelieving soul” (Wisdom 10:7), and as ancient witnesses reported, “I have seen this pillar, which remains to this day,”⁷⁶ “a monumental warning and a memorial of her wicked choice.”⁷⁷

So ended the life of Lot's wife, and the existence of the unspared sinful cities, whose story ever since has been “an example to lead men to holy salvation.”⁷⁸ In centuries to come, Moses threatened his nation's sin with “an overthrow like that of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim, which the LORD overthrew in his anger and wrath” (Deuteronomy 29:23). For “just as the sons of Sodom were taken from the earth, so too all those who worship idols,” or who “act according to the pollution of Sodom,” “shall be taken away.”⁷⁹ But “how can I hand you over, O Israel? How can I make you like Admah, how can I treat you like Zeboiim?” the prophets heard their Lord wrestle (Hosea 11:8). “I overthrew some of you as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and you were a brand plucked out of the burning, yet you did not return to me, declares the LORD” (Amos 4:11). The prophets preached, in the fallout, that “if the LORD of Hosts had not left us a few survivors, we should have been like Sodom and become like Gomorrah” (Isaiah 1:9). At last came the dreadful overthrow of Jerusalem. “The chastisement of the daughter of my people has been greater than the punishment of Sodom, which was overthrown in a moment” (Lamentations 4:6). It felt then as though the Lord's holy nation had “become like Sodom... and perished forever... until such time as the Most High visits the earth.”⁸⁰

And visit the LORD Most High did. The Father sent his Son, and called him Jesus. Sending his twelve disciples through the land of Canaan, they became his angels to test each city of Israel. “Whatever town or village you enter, find out who is worthy in it, and stay there until you depart” (Matthew 10:11). But when a village outside Israel refused any hospitality, James and John wanted to imitate the days of Lot, calling down fire from heaven; and Christ forbade them (Luke 9:52-55). Yet if the villages of Israel refused to hear the gospel, “shake off the dust from your feet when you leave that house or town; truly I say to you, it will be more tolerable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah than for that town” (Matthew 10:14-15; cf. 11:23-24).

For “just as it was in the days of Lot – they were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building, but on the day when Lot went out from Sodom, fire and sulfur rained from heaven and destroyed them all – so will it be on the day when the Son of Man is revealed” (Luke 17:28-30), “revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God” (2 Thessalonians 1:7-8). When the last enemy rises up to lead the opposition, “I will rain upon him and his hordes... fire and sulfur,” hears the prophet (Ezekiel 38:22), and that's just what the apostle foresees, that when they besiege “the camp of the saints” like Sodomites at Lot's door, “fire came down from heaven and consumed them” (Revelation 20:10).

On that last day, the prophets say, “the LORD will come in fire... to render his anger in fury..., for by fire will the LORD enter judgment... with all flesh” (Isaiah 66:15-16), when “the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience” (Ephesians 5:6), a sinful world with “a fearful expectation of judgment and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries” (Hebrews 10:27). The ancients envisioned that “a great river of blazing fire will flow from heaven and will consume every place..., and all the souls of men will gnash their teeth, burning in a river and brimstone and a rush of fire in a fiery plain, and ashes will cover all,”⁸¹ while “the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved” (2 Peter 3:12) so that “darkness and obscurity shall... clothe and veil the whole world.”⁸² For “the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly” (2 Peter 3:7). God “will destroy everything by fire, and it will be smoking dust.”⁸³

God “will send the impious down into the gloom in fire, and they will realize what impiety they committed.”⁸⁴ “Whoever does not obey the Son..., the wrath of God remains on him” (John 3:36). For all those who align themselves with beastliness against the true Son of Man “will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels..., and the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever” (Revelation 14:10-11). “As for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death” (Revelation 21:8), “the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matthew 25:41). It's strong language, it's vivid imagery, but whatever reality such pictures portray, it's the truth.  These are not my words, but the Lord's. So, as for me and as for you, hear these words: “Flee from the wrath to come!” (Matthew 3:7).

Sadly, much like Father Lot, “left to our own devices, we would remain in our sinful habits,” in the place of life and of soul ripe for the fire.⁸⁵ Our natural selves, “dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world” (Ephesians 2:1-2), were empty of power to even set foot past Sodom's walls, much less reach the mountains and become new and living human beings. We “were by nature children of wrath, like the rest,” like the men and women of Sodom and Gomorrah (Ephesians 2:3). But, in the face of all our Lot-like ditherings and dilly-dallyings, God was “rich in mercy” to us as to him (Ephesians 2:4), and sent forth “Jesus, who delivers us from the wrath to come” (1 Thessalonians 1:10). “For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us” (1 Thessalonians 5:9-10), that the Father would remember his Son and deliver us from the overthrow for his sake, whose name is on us.

But Jesus himself urges that we “remember Lot's wife!” (Luke 17:32). She remains a symbol of all “those who, after having been called by the grace of God, look back” on life outside him, and the Lord pronounced that “no one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:62).⁸⁶ If we are in the Lord, “we have been freed from the Sodom of our past lives.”⁸⁷ So “since you have left Sodom..., left evil and sin..., do not turn toward Sodom,” do not imitate Lot's wife as judgment nears.⁸⁸ Instead, “let each, recognizing his own sins, not give heed to the things which are behind, to which the devil calls us back, but to the things which are ahead, to which Christ calls,”⁸⁹ the final salvation unto which we hope in him. Amen.

Their Sin is Very Grave

When we left Abraham a couple weeks ago, what was happening? It's been a couple dozen years since he heard the call of God and made the great trek to Canaan. He got separated from his nephew, his household expanded, and he's been clinging to the promises. He's had a son with a slave-woman, and now that he's been inducted into the covenant of circumcision to discipline his flesh, he's been promised a son with his wife Sarah despite their extreme old age. That promise was reiterated when, in the guise of strangers, he showed hospitality to the Lord and his angels. Now, after a mighty lunch, he's escorted them onward and found them looking down into the valley and its plain, just beyond the edges of Canaan (Genesis 10:19), at a cluster of cities anchored by Sodom and Gomorrah. God has let Abraham in on a secret: Sodom and Gomorrah have been accused of serious sin, and God is launching an investigation before proceeding to judgment. Abraham has, ever since, been haggling with God over standards of evidence sufficient to convict a city as a place, and secured a promise that, should Sodom have even ten residents whose hands are clean, the city itself will be acquitted.

So far, we've been content to just trust that something isn't right down there in the cities. Abraham, for his part, has simply contented himself with the general label of 'wicked' for the cities – that Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboiim were “evil, unclean places,”¹ and that “the men in those parts were exceedingly evil and wicked.”² But how? We've heard that “the men of Sodom were wicked” (Genesis 13:13), but what do the rumors say? For apparently, it wasn't just one thing – the tradition warns us against “every lawlessness of Sodom.”³

One of the first things we learn about Sodom, Gomorrah, and their neighbors is that they're nestled in a rounded plain within the Jordan River Valley, and that this rounded plain is “well-watered everywhere like the Garden of the LORD” (Genesis 13:10). It's lush, it's luxurious, it's an Edenic environment. Based on this description, later Jews understood that the cities were blessed with “the never-failing lavishness of their sources of wealth, for, deep-soiled and well-watered as it was, the land had every year a prolific harvest of all manner of fruits.”⁴ The prophet Ezekiel remarks that “Sodom... and her daughters,” the other cities, therefore had “excess of food and prosperous ease” (Ezekiel 16:49). They enjoyed tranquility, they were at rest, they were secure and undisturbed by outside forces most of them time; and they never needed to worry about where the next meal would come from, because they had seemingly everything they wanted, ripe for the picking.

But “from abundance came extravagance” in their way of living: this care-free access to food, coupled with the wealth gained from trading other natural resources like the nearby copper deposits and the bitumen occurring in the region, allowed for a self-indulgent consumption of the food and goods they had.⁵ Therefore, “plunging like cattle, they... applied themselves to deep drinking of strong liquor and dainty feeding,” and became “brimful of innumerable iniquities, particularly such as arise from gluttony.”⁶

Naturally, Ezekiel adds that Sodom and her daughters “had pride,” that “they were haughty” (Ezekiel 16:49-50). It was later said that the Sodomites were “overweeningly proud of their numbers and the extent of their wealth,” so that they “showed themselves insolent to men and impious to the Divinity, insomuch that they no more remembered the benefits that they had received from him.”⁷ For “the beginning of pride is stubbornness in withdrawing the heart from one's Maker, for sin is a reservoir of insolence, a source which runs over with vice” (Sirach 10:12-13). And that's what was happening in Sodom and Gomorrah. They had forgotten God and become fundamentally irreligious. They credited themselves with the blessings. Even when delivered from the hands of their enemies through Abram, even when hearing him point them to the teachings of Melchizedek, the people failed to glorify God; they patted themselves on the back and boasted in their successes as a city.

Despite the abundant plenty which the cities had, they “did not aid the poor and needy” (Ezekiel 16:49). You might hear of a good Samaritan stopping to help the man beaten on the road to Jericho, but there are no parables of the good Sodomite. Charitable giving and human kindness were so foreign there that one Jewish paraphrase of the story claimed that “they oppress the poor and decree that whoever gives a morsel of bread to the needy shall be burned by fire.”⁸ Sodom and Gomorrah give neither handouts nor hands up; they won't give you a fish, and they won't teach you how to fish. They'll watch you starve through their window as they fill up their fourth plate, and not a tear will cross their eye as you beg for scraps. They could save you with ease. But they won't.

In like manner as their own poor and needy were beneath their notice, the people of Sodom infamously “did not receive unfamiliar visitors” except “unwillingly” (Wisdom 19:14-16). As later readers came to understand it, they habitually “hated foreigners and declined all [social] intercourse with others.”⁹ They became notorious for “unqualified hatred and mistreatment of strangers,”¹⁰ a reputation later said to be a cultivated way of avoiding having to share any of their property with outsiders to their little world.¹¹ And honestly, it wasn't unheard-of, in ancient cities like this, for city authorities to be so suspicious of visitors as potential enemy agents or spies that they'd arrest, interrogate, and even kill strangers on sight, depending on the prevailing mood.¹²

God says that what reached him is “the outcry of Sodom and Gomorrah” (Genesis 18:20), and an 'outcry' was usually in the face of injustice, oppression, violence – like when Abel's blood “cried out” to God after Cain's murderous violence (Genesis 4:10), or the Israelites' cry for help when forcibly enslaved in Egypt (Exodus 2:23; 3:7). Isaiah cried out that the “rulers of Sodom” and “people of Gomorrah” had “hands full of blood” (Isaiah 1:10, 15), and later rumor had it that “the people of Sodom were evil, one toward the other, and they were very guilty... of the shedding of blood.”¹³ So one commentary puts it that in Sodom you'd find “heinous moral and social corruption, an arrogant disregard of basic human rights, a cynical insensitivity to the sufferings of others.”¹⁴ It's already sounding like St. Paul's hard-hitting litany, that “they were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice..., envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness” (Romans 1:29) – that the people of Sodom are “insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil..., foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless” (Romans 1:30-31). For “the inhabitants of Sodom acted insolently and became notorious for their crimes.”¹⁵

But we've also heard from the outset that the men of Sodom were “great sinners against the LORD” (Genesis 13:13), and in Genesis, references to sins 'against the LORD' tend to mean sexual sins (Genesis 20:6; 39:9).¹⁶ Cities throughout history have often been places which fostered various kinds of sexual license,¹⁷ and rumor had it that Sodom and Gomorrah were “guilty before the Lord of revealing their nakedness.”¹⁸ Jeremiah suggests that to be “like Sodom” is to “commit adultery and walk in lies” (Jeremiah 23:14); centuries later, Jews heard how the people of Sodom and Gomorrah “were polluting themselves, and they were fornicating in their flesh, and they were causing pollution upon the earth.”¹⁹ Jewish teachers consequently warned their people against being “sexually promiscuous like the promiscuity of the Sodomites.”²⁰ No wonder Jude remarks that “Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities... indulged in sexual immorality” (Jude 7), or Peter calls them “those who go after the flesh in the lust of defilement” (2 Peter 2:10). It was said that “they committed fornication without restraint, and were continually inflamed by their frenzied passion for the objects of their lust.”²¹

Here, in fact, is where things get controversial, because it was widely rumored that in this frenzied passion, the people of “Sodom... departed from the order of nature.”²² Beyond just fornication and adultery, Jews warned that there were further depths to sink to until “your sexual relations will become like Sodom and Gomorrah.”²³ We hear how the Sodomites “pursued different flesh” than one would expect (Jude 7), because “they had overturned the laws of nature and had devised novel and illicit forms of intercourse,”²⁴ a testimony to “the force of the lust which mastered them.”²⁵ The priest-prophet Ezekiel had already heard God say that, as a result of Sodom's pride, they “did an abomination before me” (Ezekiel 16:50). To a priest, that was technical language from the Holiness Code of Leviticus, where the only time 'abomination' appears in the singular is about one particular offense: “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman: it is an abomination” (Leviticus 18:22); “if a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination” (Leviticus 20:13).²⁶

What we find rumored about Sodom and Gomorrah is that “from extravagance came foul lusts,”²⁷ an “unnatural and unholy lust,”²⁸ the devil having provoked the men of the cities “to an unnatural and fruitless passion for men.”²⁹ One Jewish writer at the turn of the age declared that “they threw off from their necks the law of nature and applied themselves to... forbidden forms of intercourse,” namely, that “not only in their mad lust for women did they violate the marriages of their neighbors, but also... little by little, they accustomed those who were by nature men to submit to play the part of women” in “unnatural... intercourse.”³⁰ His description sounds like St. Paul's assessment of a culture which, refusing to acknowledge natural law as reflecting the authority of a loving Creator, “their foolish hearts were darkened” so that “God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves..., for their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature, and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men” (Romans 1:21, 26-27).

Clearly, this is far from the only thing rumored to be awry in Sodom or in Gomorrah. But it so stood out to those who heard about it that it ultimately became known, euphemistically, as “the deed of the Sodomites,”³¹ as “the iniquity of Sodom and Gomorrah.”³² This was “just one of their sins, but it was the sin that illustrated the extreme degree of their sinfulness,”³³ connecting to their “special brand of injustice” by showing just how curved in on itself their civic life had become within their defensive walls.³⁴

So that's the testimony outside Sodom. That's the outcry that's risen before the Lord in heaven. That's the claim that there's a bunch of wickedness and uncleanness and sin against God going on there. But what God has said to Abraham is that it's not enough for Sodom to be lambasted in the rumor mill. These accusations warrant an investigation. In fairness to Sodom, God has sent his angel detectives to sniff out the truth of the situation. And if God aims to wait and see, then Genesis likewise invites us to get an eyewitness peek inside the infamous city.

So “the two messengers came to Sodom in the evening” (Genesis 19:1), a fact often later taken to symbolize “the darkness of its vices,”³⁵ and which surely portends “the moral blackness of the events that follow.”³⁶ What would happen when they got there? “Sodom... did not recognize the Lord's angels.”³⁷ No born-and-bred citizen of Sodom, not one, offered these strangers a place to stay, a warm meal or a roof for the night. They only stared in suspicious fear and anger. The visitors did then gain lodging, but it was a non-native, Lot, who provided it.

Then, “before they lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, surrounded the house, both young and old, all the people from every quarter” (Genesis 19:4). Reports of the unexpected visit must have spread fast to bring all the men there to “essentially lay siege to Lot's house.”³⁸ One early reader quipped here, “Extraordinary their unity in evildoing!”³⁹ Sodom and Gomorrah “strengthen the hands of evildoers, so that no one turns from his evil” (Jeremiah 23:14); they “not only do [sins] but give approval to those who practice them” (Romans 1:32). That's what produced this unified mob: mutual reinforcement.

Once gathered, “they called to Lot: 'Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us, that we may know them!'” (Genesis 19:5). This isn't mere inquisitiveness or even an interrogation of visitors, for which only city officials would be needed. This mob was “intent only on committing crimes.”⁴⁰ When they say 'know them,' make no mistake, they mean it in the way that “Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain” (Genesis 4:1). This is “a reference to sexual knowledge.”⁴¹ The men of the city have gathered, seeking this new men like 'fresh meat' among prison inmates, for the sake of sexual intimacy on demand. As a later reader took it, “the Sodomites, on seeing these young men of remarkably fair appearance whom Lot had taken under his roof, were bent on violence and outrage to their youthful beauty.”⁴² This is weaponized sexuality as a tool of “domination and control,”⁴³ a “horrible plan for mistreating the seemingly helpless visitors – not just that they wanted to mistreat them, but the way in which they chose to mistreat them,”⁴⁴ amounting to what multiple commentators label a scheme of “homosexual gang rape.”⁴⁵ In the mob, the aggression of the city elites and the simple lusts of the commoners, from teenagers to elderly men, mingled into one revolting intention,⁴⁶ seeking unknowingly to “commit acts of lewdness even against angels.”⁴⁷

When their demand was resisted by the strangers' host, when he labeled their conduct wrong, how did the men of Sodom react? “They said, 'Stand back!' And they said, 'This one came to sojourn, and he judges as a judge?'” (Genesis 19:9). The way they refer to Lot – “Hey, get a load of this guy!” – is packed with contempt, aiming to “strip him of identity and significance” in their society.⁴⁸ Rather than accept his words as those of the brother he puts himself forward as, they now dissociate him from themselves as an irrelevant sojourner himself, a foreigner whose existence there is merely at their mercy and whose voice is therefore devoid of weight.⁴⁹

This is all the more galling because, after all, who is Lot? The nephew of Abraham. And who was Abraham to Sodom? Just their savior. Remember, one or two decades before this incident, the people of Sodom and their lauded riches were carted away captive by conquerors, perhaps already as a divine judgment on the town; but, for Lot's sake, Abraham came and rescued them all and returned them safely home, possibly enriching them even further in the process (Genesis 14). The men and women of Sodom had experienced salvation through the hand of Abraham, and quite obviously on Lot's account. It was their chance to learn from him, to turn over a new leaf, to begin living as befits those who've been saved. But they'd already been “so corrupted by sin that they can neither be improved by threats nor moved by kindnesses.”⁵⁰ So not only did they resume their old ways, but now they speak as though their savior's kinsman is a freeloading foreigner forborne until now. And why the sudden turn? Simply because now, at last, he's decided to speak up and speak out.

The men of Sodom here prove themselves “bold and self-willed,” people who “despise authority” (2 Peter 2:10). They're deeply offended that anyone should presume to correct them, and their knee-jerk defense is to undercut the authority of the critique by condemning the condemnation. “So habituated were they to their unspeakable vileness that now wickedness set the standard of justice,” St. Augustine said, “and it was the person who forbade it rather than the one who perpetrated it that was reproved.”⁵¹ “Like good postmodern people,”⁵² the citizens of Sodom “hold themselves beyond good and evil, bound only by their own habitual selfish ways,” a kind of ancient “moral relativism.”⁵³ Holding themselves immune to moral judgment, the exercise of such judgment becomes “the worst accusation they can throw at Lot.”⁵⁴

Infuriated by correction “like lunatics bent on assailing their doctor,”⁵⁵ the men of Sodom announce, “Now we will deal worse with you than with them!” (Genesis 19:9). If they initially masked their intention as an invitation, now the mask comes off, and they threaten violence. Nor does it take long for them to escalate from threatening to acting. “They pressed exceedingly against the man Lot, and drew near to break the door down” (Genesis 19:9). And so, “by using force, they strove to make [others] like themselves in their wicked deeds and to involve them in their crimes.”⁵⁶ Only at this point do the angels reveal their power, “and the men who were at the entrance of the house they struck with blindness from small to great” (Genesis 19:11), as God did to the army that threatened Elisha (2 Kings 6:18), by “a sudden, immobilizing, blazing flash of light.”⁵⁷ You'd expect that to stop their attack, as it did to the Syrians, but in Sodom “even by this they were not admonished, for after this, they wore themselves out groping for the door,”⁵⁸ persisting relentlessly in their lust and in their rage.

So now the angels, and we with them, have gotten a look inside Sodom. Sad to say, not a one of the accusations against them seems unsupported by the eyewitness evidence. As St. Paul would say, “since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not be done” (Romans 1:28). The cities have a culture which “allows nothing to be pure, nothing to be spotless, nothing to be clean.”⁵⁹ In all that they do, “the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these” (Galatians 5:19-21). Even if one or two of those aren't in evidence, Sodom is clearly a place for living for flesh.

But why should we care today about some Middle Eastern town almost four thousand years ago, and why take all this effort to autopsy it and see what was wrong there? Simply this: we trust these things were recorded for good reason, since each and every piece of Scripture is “profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness” not only then but here and now (2 Timothy 3:16). In looking dispassionately at Sodom as presented in the Bible and understood by the Bible's early readers, we've found a city which enjoyed unimagined abundance by the standards of their world. But rather than give thanks to God and humbly receive this bounty with a sense of grateful responsibility, they disregarded Creator and creation, proudly asserting themselves as lords of their destiny. This city of plenty overindulged itself and chased selfish pleasures. Not only did they fill themselves on fine things, but they disdained and despised the poor and needy. They curved in on themselves as a society, cultivating mistrust of and hostility toward strangers within their walls. Liberating themselves from norms, they let their lusts lead the way, disregarding even biology in their pursuit of flesh. They denied standards of justice other than what was good or evil in their own eyes, and they harshly rejected as intolerably intolerant anyone who might beg to differ. They refused to submit to any judgment, and sought to exclude and delegitimize any witnesses to another way. And not only were they like this, but they encouraged each other to it openly, parading their chosen way proudly, shouting it from the rooftops.

All this to ask: On a scale from 1 to Sodom, where exactly would we place America in the year of our Lord 2025? If you just thought of a number, I'm guessing it wasn't less than five. The tough truth is that few things described in Sodom are absent from our national culture. No matter which American cultural bloc you look to, there are Sodomite sins not only practiced but promoted as necessary evils or outright goods. Some will imitate Sodom in our license, waving flags of all colors and insisting that the only wrong in certain areas is to judge as Lot was said to judge. This month tends to make that rather clear. Others of us imitate Sodom, though, just as much in our other indulgences and in how we react to strangers or to the poor. Sadly, the sins of Sodom, in one form or another, are deeply relevant to twenty-first-century America. “I warn you, as I warned you before,” says the Apostle, “that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God” (Galatians 5:21). A later teacher explained why: it is possible for some “to lose Christ because of their addiction to sin.”⁶⁰

But remember that we've only told half the story. The main character isn't actually Sodom here; it's Lot. Lot is a man who was reared in the house of Abraham; some later readers believed that “association with the patriarch led him to the very pinnacle of virtue.”⁶¹ But as we've seen him so far, Lot seems to be aiming to ape Abraham, except that “Lot never quite gets anything right.”⁶² Lot is a bargain-bin Abraham, “a pale and failed imitation.”⁶³ He wants to be a man of righteousness, but we've seen him deficient in wisdom and charity when he separated from his uncle to move to the Jordan Valley plain, “having regard only for the nature of the land and not considering the wickedness of the inhabitants.”⁶⁴ He traded his tents for an urban life in Sodom, chose to return to Sodom after his redemption from captivity, and now, as the climax of his Sodomization, this latest chapter opens with Lot “sitting in the gate of Sodom” (Genesis 19:1).⁶⁵ City gates were more than big doors; they were venues with benches where leading citizens would sit to transact civic affairs (Proverbs 31:23), and it looks like Lot has become “a man of prominence in Sodom,”⁶⁶ maybe even “a leader in the city.”⁶⁷ Obviously, “while he lived in Sodom, he was not subjected to any bodily persecution or told that he could not stay there,” so long as he was compliant with their civic customs.⁶⁸

The question at issue in the story, then, is: Who is Lot going to be? To what extent has he actually “become like those among whom he dwells”?⁶⁹ Is Lot going to identify himself with Sodom and its culture, or is he going to align himself with the way of the Lord despite Sodom's culture? Will he live in Sodom like a Sodomite or like an Abrahamite?⁷⁰ And the choice of Lot matters a lot, because the same choice seems to face us all the time.

Tradition receives Lot as ultimately “found righteous in Sodom,” at least on balance.⁷¹ We're later told in the New Testament that “righteous Lot was greatly distressed by the sensual conduct of the wicked, for as that righteous man lived among them day after day, he was tormenting his righteous soul over their lawless deeds that he saw and heard” (2 Peter 2:7). For “the bad people persecute the good, not with steel and stones, but by their life and behavior,” their way of living being an affliction to the souls of the righteous.⁷² That, we're given to understand, is what it was like for Lot on a daily basis in Sodom, a quiet suffering despite his prominence.

Lot wants to be an Abraham. And so when the visitors arrived, although they found no hospitality from the men of Sodom, Lot “rose to meet them and bowed himself with his face to the earth and said, 'My lords, please turn aside to your servant's house and spend the night and wash your feet; then you may rise up early and go on your way'” (Genesis 19:2). Lot acts “nearly the same as... Abraham” did to the same angels just a chapter ago.⁷³ Unlike with Abraham, the angels initially decline Lot's offer, determined to “lodge in the town square” since their aim was to test Sodom as a whole, something most conveniently done by openly displaying themselves as bait.⁷⁴ But Lot “pressed them exceedingly” – the same phrase we'll later find when the men of Sodom 'press strongly' on Lot and his door. Lot is no less forceful in aiming to protect these strangers. “So they turned aside to him and entered his house, and he made them a feast and unleavened bread, and they ate” (Genesis 19:3). Again, Lot looks a lot like Abraham despite now being in the belly of Sodom. He does good openly anyway.

We've already said what the men of Sodom do next – how they surrounded Lot's house in the night and insisted he present his visitors so they could 'know' them, become intimately acquainted with them (Genesis 19:4-5). So what will Lot do, given that he has the solemn moral obligation to protect guests who've entered under the shade of his roof?⁷⁵ “Lot went out to the men at the entrance, and he shut the door after him, and he said, 'Please don't, my brothers, do this evil!” (Genesis 19:6-7). “Lot adjured them to restrain their passions.”⁷⁶ He doesn't hesitate to label their planned action as an evil. Lot doesn't obfuscate, doesn't dodge, doesn't take refuge in gentle ambiguities. By implication, he “condemned the moral depravity of the Sodomites.”⁷⁷ At the same time, Lot doesn't go into rhetorical overdrive. He doesn't expostulate at length on their filthiness. He doesn't get graphic in his moral critique. He doesn't insult, doesn't yell, doesn't boil over with sputtering anger.

Lot even goes so far as to call them 'brothers,' coming alongside them as a peer bearing witness rather than as the haughty judge they nonetheless perceive him as. He's making an appeal to their conscience, however badly formed, as one of them – from the inside, not from the outside. But their reaction contradicts him. They accuse him of presumption in judging them, but the same verb for 'judging' means 'doing justice,' as Abraham was called to charge his household to do just earlier that day (Genesis 18:19).⁷⁸ The Sodomites' accusation itself reattaches Lot to the house of Abraham and, it seems, to the Way of the LORD.⁷⁹

Of course, Lot's offer to turn over his two engaged virgin daughters to the mob of men to use as they please is about as Sodomite as it gets. We'll revisit that tidbit in a couple weeks, but suffice it to say that many have taken this as evidence that, for all Lot wants to be an Abraham, and for all the Sodomites see him as such, he's let Sodom creep in the back door to his mind and heart after all – and if it's not quite true that Sodom has “almost completely eroded his moral compass,”⁸⁰ it's still fair to say he's partially “adopted a Sodomite system of values.”⁸¹ He thinks he's got the solution to 'What Would Abraham Do?', but as with so many things in Lot's life, the execution leaves something critical to be desired; singing Abraham's song, he's inserted Sodom's notes.

Still, he was trying to get across the extremities he was “willing to suffer to protect and defend his guests.”⁸² Remember that “Lot went out to the men at the entrance, and he shut the door after him” (Genesis 19:6). Now, as the riotous townsmen demand he back down and stand aside, as they threaten him with harm, as they begin to assail and press against him and rush to break down his home defenses, Lot stands firm (Genesis 19:9). He “stood up to the whole population” and, as many see it, “gave evidence of unspeakable bravery.”⁸³

The door behind him functions as an image of the border between good and evil – the Sodomites want to knock it down, but Lot stands in front of it as its defense. And when his strength begins to fail, two groups of men are stretching out their hands. The hands of the men of the city beat him, press him, coerce him; the hands of the men from heaven grasp at him, pull him back, rescue him, and then bolt the door firmly in front of him (Genesis 19:10). And that's where the meaning of the story becomes clearest: which men are Lot's people, the earthly or the heavenly city? Where does Lot really belong?⁸⁴ One thing's for sure: when the angels bolt that door, it has the same feel as when God sealed the ark door behind Noah (Genesis 7:16).⁸⁵

In a way, our calling in our culture is to be as “this body of Christ living in the world like Lot in Sodom, living in the midst of trials and temptations, seeing many things it doesn't like, but not in the least consenting to the deeds of evil men.”⁸⁶ And yet Lot is only an imperfect example, because for whatever he got right, we can still tell that his foolish immersion in Sodom has soaked it into him and tainted him more than he can recognize.⁸⁷ We need something stronger than an example. Living in Sodom requires something else.

And that's why today is worth celebrating. “When the day of Pentecost arrived,” the apostolic household “were all together in one place” (Acts 2:1) in the midst of “the great city that is called spiritually Sodom... where their Lord was crucified” (Revelation 11:8). “And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind..., and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:2-4). Despite the lawless violence in the city, God “poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing,” Peter said (Acts 2:33), “and with many other words he bore witness and continued to exhort them, saying, 'Save yourselves from this crooked generation!'” (Acts 2:40). The Holy Spirit allowed the apostles to thrive in the midst of a spiritual Sodom.

Of them it was written that “they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God in boldness” (Acts 4:31), a courage exceeding that of Lot. For “God gave us a Spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control” (2 Timothy 1:7). As he said through a prophet of old, so God says again to us in Sodom today: “My Spirit remains in your midst – fear not!” (Haggai 2:5). “God chose you... to be saved through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth; to this he called you through our gospel, so that you may obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. So then, brothers, stand firm” (2 Thessalonians 2:13-15). Recognize the influence of Sodom by “the Spirit of wisdom” (Ephesians 1:17). Bear witness by a wise and good example how to follow Abraham's footsteps better even than Abraham did, even in the streets of Sodom. When the occasion arises, witness passionately and sensitively to a better way than the way of this world. “Walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh” (Galatians 5:16), “and those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” (Galatians 5:24). And understand that “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Galatians 5:22-23) – whatever the world does or doesn't do, however grave the sin around you, let the Spirit's fruit flourish in your home orchard. Do this, and however Sodom-like the world waxes, you may obtain glory yet. Hallelujah!