The Book of Genesis

Hebrew Study

Explanation

Lot "sat in the gate of Sodom", the gate was the place of civic authority, so the man who once pitched his tent toward Sodom (13:12) and then dwelt in it (14:12) now sits among its rulers. He has traveled the full road of compromise. Yet a spark of his uncle's character remains: he rises, bows, and urges the strangers into his home rather than leave them to abide "in the street," which he knows is not safe. That danger was real, for verses 4 through 11 unfold the horror: "the men of the city, even the men of Sodom, compassed the house round, both old and young, all the people from every quarter," demanding Lot's guests for their abuse. But these visitors needed no rescue from Lot; they were angels. When his attempt to reason with the mob failed, and they "pressed sore upon the man, even Lot, and came near to break the door," it was the angels who "put forth their hand, and pulled Lot into the house," and struck the mob with blindness, so that "they wearied themselves to find the door." The man who thought to shelter them was in the end sheltered by them. The city has proven the outcry against it true; there are not ten righteous here.

We must not pass over the most shocking thing Lot did. To shield his guests he offered the mob his "two daughters which have not known man" -- his own virgin daughters -- saying, "do ye to them as is good in your eyes." Scripture records it; it nowhere commends it. This is not the wisdom of a righteous man but the panic of a soul so long steeped in Sodom that its very judgment is half-poisoned by the city it lives in. The honesty of the Bible is one of its glories: it paints its people with every flaw showing. Scripture still calls Lot a just and righteous man (2 Peter 2:7-8) -- not because he never sinned grievously, but because he still "vexed his righteous soul" over Sodom's evil (2 Peter 2:8) and God counted him righteous by faith, as He did Abraham. That a justified man could sink to such an offer is a warning, not a pattern: it shows what the world does to a believer who makes his home in it, dulling the conscience until he will barter even his own children to keep the peace. Grace rescued Lot; it never excused this.

Gospel Focus

Scripture names Sodom's sin plainly, and it is a sin the culture around Lot celebrated. Jude says the people of Sodom, "giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire" (Jude 7). But Ezekiel widens the diagnosis: "this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy" (Ezekiel 16:49). Sin is never a single act; it grows in a soil of pride, ease, and hardness, until it fills a city. And notice the tragedy of Lot's witness: after years among them, when he pleads with the men of Sodom they scoff, "This one fellow came in to sojourn, and he will needs be a judge" (verse 9). A believer who settles into the world for its advantages forfeits his voice in it. Lot "vexed his righteous soul from day to day" (2 Peter 2:8), yet he had no power to change the city he had chosen to join.

Hebrew Study

Explanation

The night's events have proven the verdict; now mercy races the sunrise. The angels had told Lot to gather everyone belonging to him, but when he warned his sons-in-law, "he seemed as one that mocked unto his sons in law" (verse 14). His compromised life had drained his words of weight even within his own family. At dawn the angels press him, and then comes one of the most searching lines in Genesis: "And while he lingered." With fire only hours away, Lot hesitates, still tied to the place. So the Lord's mercy lays hold where Lot's own resolve failed: "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." He did not simply walk out; he was led out, rescued by a mercy stronger than his hesitation.

Then, in verses 18 through 22, Lot pleads, afraid to flee to the mountains, asking instead for refuge in the little town of Zoar. The Lord graciously grants his request, delaying the judgment until Lot reaches safety. Here we see that God's mercy is sufficient without compromising His holiness. His judgment does not bend: the cities of the plain are not spared, and the command not to look back admits no exception. Yet His mercy patiently bears with a fearful man, meeting Lot in his weakness and preserving a little Zoar for his sake. Lot's deliverance ultimately rested not on the strength of his faith but on the Lord's mercy, for "the LORD being merciful unto him" held him when he could not hold himself.

Gospel Focus

"While he lingered" is a warning written for every believer who half-loves the world. Lot did not want to perish, but he did not want to leave; his heart was divided, and division is deadly at the hour of judgment. The New Testament calls the same urgency down our own street: "come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord" (2 Corinthians 6:17), and "Flee also youthful lusts" (2 Timothy 2:22). And here is the grace that saves lingering people: "the LORD being merciful unto him," the angels seized his hand. Salvation is finally God's grip on us, not ours on Him; Jude describes this very ministry, "others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire" (Jude 23). If you are being pulled toward the door of escape and dragging your feet, do not resist the hand of mercy. Do not look for a Zoar to compromise on; run all the way to the mountain God appoints.

Hebrew Study

Apostolic Note on "the LORD... from the LORD"

Verse 24 says "the LORD rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the LORD out of heaven," and some read two divine persons into the doubled name. But the Hebrew here is a known emphatic idiom, a speaker naming himself in the third person for solemn stress, as when the LORD declares, "I the LORD have said, I will surely do it" (Numbers 14:35), or, "I will have mercy upon the house of Judah, and will save them by the LORD their God" (Hosea 1:7, where the LORD speaks of Himself). The verse magnifies that this fire came from no earthly source but directly from the one LORD in heaven; it does not divide the one God into persons. Scripture's foundation holds: "The LORD our God is one LORD" (Deuteronomy 6:4).

Explanation

The judgment is total: "brimstone and fire" on the cities, the plain, the inhabitants, and even "that which grew upon the ground." Then verse 26 records the tragedy inside the rescue: "his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt." She had been pulled out by the hand with the rest, yet she turned back toward the city God had told them to flee. Scripture does not tell us what was in her heart, whether longing for the old life or mere curiosity turned her head; what we do know is that she looked back when God had said not to, and it cost her everything on the very threshold of safety. Verse 29 lifts the eyes from the ashes to heaven's bookkeeping: "God remembered Abraham, and sent Lot out." Lot was spared not chiefly for his own righteousness but because God remembered the intercessor of chapter 18. The prayers of Abraham reached further than Abraham knew.

Gospel Focus

Jesus reduced this whole scene to two words for the last days: "Remember Lot's wife" (Luke 17:32). In the same breath He said, "Whosoever shall seek to save his life shall lose it; and whosoever shall lose his life shall preserve it" (Luke 17:33). She is the eternal picture of the one who starts to escape but cannot let the old life go; "No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God" (Luke 9:62). Sodom's fire also became the Bible's standing type of final judgment: Jesus warned it would be "more tolerable" for Sodom than for cities that reject Him (Matthew 10:15), and Peter says God, "turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrha into ashes condemned them with an overthrow, making them an ensample unto those that after should live ungodly" (2 Peter 2:6). But verse 29 is the gospel shining through the smoke: "God remembered Abraham." Lot was spared not for his own righteousness but on account of another; and we too are saved not by our own goodness but through Jesus Christ, our one Mediator, who "ever liveth to make intercession" for us (Hebrews 7:25). This is no second God pleading with a first, for "there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus" (1 Timothy 2:5): the one God Himself came to us in flesh, bore our judgment, and now lives to save to the uttermost all who come to Him. Do not look back. Run to the mountain, and rest on the Intercessor who always lives to remember you.

Hebrew Study

Explanation

The chapter ends in a cave, and the sin recorded there is grievous. Fearing even Zoar, Lot hides in the mountains with his two daughters. The daughters, shaped by the morals of the city they were raised in and despairing of any future, hatch a wicked plan: they make their father drunk on two successive nights and conceive by him. Scripture reports it plainly, and it excuses no one. The daughters bear the guilt of the scheme; but Lot is not blameless either, for whatever he failed to perceive, he chose to drink himself senseless, not once but twice, and a man drowned in wine cannot guard his house or himself. Scripture still calls him "just Lot" (2 Peter 2:7, "just" meaning righteous), yet even a righteous man, long steeped in compromise, ends this chapter drunk and dishonored in a cave. The fire had carried them out of Sodom, but Sodom had not been carried out of them, not out of the daughters, and not out of their father. The sons born of these nights are Moab and Benammi, fathers of the Moabites and Ammonites, nations that would trouble Israel for centuries. This is the last, quiet cost of a tent once pitched toward Sodom: a man may be pulled out of the fire, yet still reap in himself and in his children the world he chose to live in.

Gospel Focus

Two truths close the chapter. First, a warning: compromise sows seeds that ripen in the next generation. Lot lost his wealth, his wife, his witness, and finally his daughters' purity, and the last of these was the fruit of where he had raised them. "Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners" (1 Corinthians 15:33), old words for the truth that evil company corrupts good habits. Second, a wonder of grace that reaches even here: from Moab, generations later, would come Ruth the Moabitess, who clung to the God of Israel, married Boaz, and became the great-grandmother of King David, and so an ancestress of Jesus Christ (Ruth 4:17; Matthew 1:5). God, who forbade Moab and Ammon from the assembly (Deuteronomy 23:3), reached down into that very line and lifted a believing woman into the ancestry of the Messiah. No family is so broken, no origin so shameful, that grace cannot redeem a soul out of it. The God who remembered Abraham and rescued Lot still saves the lingering, and still grafts the outcast into the line of the Redeemer.