COME AS A CHILD - LESSON 53 - THE DAUGHTERS OF LOT

(Written by Sheila Gail Landgraf)

The next part of our story gets to be very strange indeed.  It takes quite a bit of thought and meditation to let all of the rest of this story sink in completely so that we can even begin to make any sense of it.

 This story in the life of Lot is yet another reason to exclaim the worthiness of knowing the scriptures and looking at the whole picture whenever we consider a portion of the bible.  If you only look at one small section and base all of your thoughts and actions around just that one incident you will become off balance and out of order with your final conclusions about the story.    In the passage of Genesis 19 where we come to the life of Lot after Sodom it is especially important to keep this in mind. 

If we remember this concept as we study;  we will also arrive at the same conclusion most all true biblical scholars have formulated; that God has had a plan for mankind from the very beginning and that all things, both large and small, are a part of that great, wonderful plan.  No decision any human makes can alter God’s plan.  He will fulfill everything just as He has said from the beginning. 

In all of our life journeys as human beings there is the process of making choices.  God grants us the ability to make our own choices and decisions.  He has a plan that will come about no matter what we decide, but our decisions and choices allow us to either become a part of the grand plan or to reject the grand plan.  In other words what we decide will either keep us in the plan or remove us from it completely.

We have mentioned earlier that it was God’s original instruction to Lot to leave Sodom and head straight up the mountain.  We noted that Lot rejected this plan at first.  He asked to sojourn in Zoar, which he was allowed to do.  That moment in time, that mountaintop experience was totally wasted by Lot.  The whole rest of the story could have been different.  Lot took a detour in time.  It was allowed but not without consequences.  Detours from God’s exact plan always have consequences.

As the sun was going down that evening they had arrived in Zoar.  Lot, minus a wife who could not let go of her life in Sodom,  and his two daughters who had never married.  The scriptures do indicate that these two virgin daughters HAD BEEN engaged and their future husbands had chosen to stay in Sodom and not flee with Lot and his family.  Once again, choices matter. 
  

The records and the math from the known scriptures indicate that Lot would have been about 65 years old at this point and time in his life. 

Zoar was as bad as Sodom.  Evil lurked around every corner.  Lot quickly realized he had once again made a terrible mistake.  He noted his loss of a home and all of his wealth, his loss of two daughters and two sons-in-law, and the future husbands of his virgin daughters,  his loss of his wife, and now he had to learn to cope with life in another strange and evil place without the resources of his money or the ability to lean on the reputation of Abraham.  In Sodom those two things had made a huge difference.  Here in Zoar, circumstances were very different for Lot.  For Lot’s sake Abraham had rescued Sodom once.  Abraham’s name meant nothing to the immoral residents of Zoar.  Lot looked around him and soon became very, very afraid.  How long would it be before God finished His plan to rid the earth of this evil and destroyed Zoar?  He decided to keep his daughters out of this evil city.  He sat outside the gates and wondered what to do next.  He had already refused God’s plan to go to the mountains but he began to re-think that.

While Lot’s fears rose by the minute, the imagination of Lot’s daughters who were left also ran wild.  They had heard the stories of the earth being destroyed by a flood long ago when the men of the earth had turned from God.  They had heard the promise of the rainbow too; the beautiful sign that there would never be another flood.  They had also learned that the next time God destroyed the earth it would be by fire.  Everything that they had ever known had now been destroyed by fire.  They thought it was the end of the world and they alone had survived.  They thought the city of  Zoar would also soon be devoured in the same manner of Sodom.  It took only a few seconds of being there to realize that the cities were alike.   Had the angel not made an exception for it for their sake alone?  They reminded their father of the angel’s instructions.  They wanted to leave quickly and Lot thought about it and agreed.

Finally, much too late, they obeyed God and fled to the mountain.  There Lot found a cave for them to hide in and they lived a strange life there, surviving off the land and never leaving their cave unless they had to.  Apparently instead of turning to God, Lot let his fears take over.  He allowed this to drive him to drinking on a regular basis.   It appeared that Lot’s daughters considered the three of them to be the last people left from a burnt up planet.  

They thought they were the beginning of the rest of the history of mankind after the end of the world.  They were like Adam and Eve after they had been cast out of the garden, but there was no Adam, only Eves and their father.

They clearly did not want to be the last people on earth.  They had never given birth or had children of their own.  They pondered this.  Surely Zoar had been destroyed by now.   After they died there would be no more people left.  They devised a plan to get their father so drunk that he did not know what he was doing and have intercourse with him in order to conceive a child.  The oldest daughter did this first and the youngest daughter followed suit.    

There was nothing right about the reasoning of Lot’s daughters.  They were operating out of human desire once again, the way of Sodom, instead of waiting on God to show them a plan.   Their drunken fearful father was not helpful in leading them in the right direction.  They went the way of all the people they had seen growing up.  They made their own plan.  There was no mention of them praying or consulting God.  This was incest, it was not right.  There is no way to know if they even believed in God or if they simply knew He would not approve of their plan and they were determined to do it anyway.  They were living the way they had learned to live while growing up in Sodom.  Lot had given them nothing to hold on to.    He had not instilled the ways of God into their hearts while they were young.

All of this sounds very odd and you have to read between the lines to come up with this particular telling of the story that is widely known from the Hebraic sages.  The oddest part is the fact that Lot was so drunk both times that he had no memories of what happened.  Does that make Lot once again innocent by default?  Not of the sin of drunkenness.  The other question is debatable, but never the less, it happened.  There is a story in the Midrash that suggests why this happened the way it did.

Most men would die before they let harm come to their wives or daughters.  Lot did just the opposite – he offered his virgin daughters willingly to the men of Sodom to do with as they pleased in order to spare the lives of the angels (who could easily defend themselves) from the men of Sodom.  The Midrash (Tanhuma, Vayera 12) points out God’s displeasure with this.  It explains that Lot’s punishment from God would be according to his own actions. 

Instead of Lot’s daughters becoming the unwilling victims of abuse, he would eventually fall to this same abuse himself by his daughters.  Lot would have to bear the shame that his daughters were offered.  His daughters taking advantage of his drunkenness was simply a reversal of what he had tried to do to them.  Even the giving of the name of Moab to the oldest daughter’s son would always bring shame to Lot every time the name was mentioned.

 

Whatever the cause of what happened, we learn that Lot’s oldest daughter gave birth to a son and named him Moab, which means “came from my father.”  The youngest daughter also gave birth and had a son which she named Benammi.

Moab became the founder of the Moabite people.  Benammi became the founder of the Ammonite people.  Both of these two nations that came from their descendants became continuous enemies of the nation of Israel that sprang from the descendants of Abraham.  In spite of all of Abraham’s efforts to keep peace, Lot created a situation that caused division and adversity. 

Yet, this was a part of the history of The People of God.  God takes our mistakes and misdeeds and weaves and works with them until they become a beautiful part of the tapestry of Heaven.  He uses what we intended for evil and changes it for good in the end.  That is because we serve an unbelievably merciful and gracious God.  He would not have His people living in shame forever.  God is so gracious!  He is constantly making all things new. 

The lineage of King David, from whom came the lineage of the family of Christ, The Messiah, was shameful and full of shadows.  David’s Father descended from Moab yet Moab was the product of incest between Lot and his eldest daughter.  The lineage also came to David through Ruth a Moabite convert who married Boaz. 

When things look the darkest and the most hopeless, God comes through for His people.  When his servants are humble and repent and turn from their wicked ways God changes and cleanses and makes whole again and again. 

Lot’s daughters were neglected and abused.  They never had a real chance at life.  Their father wasted their youth in an evil place where they learned evil ways.  They were not taught right from wrong.  God is merciful in that he took the blameless and shameful mess of their lives and eventually made something wonderful and awesome and perfect come from it. 

Many think this a quite unusual miracle, but those who have eyes to see notice it happens every day.  It happens every time a hopeless person turns to Christ and submits themselves to the ways of God.  Eventually God can take the most vile and evil parts of us and change them into something pure and good.  It is a very common miracle, simply because the evil of this earth has almost reached the heights of Sodom and the earth is full of Lot’s daughters.  Yet; there are still 10 good and godly men in some cities and God is busy using them to change the hearts of their own children as well as the hearts of the children who have become like Lot’s daughters.  Sometimes this is a process that takes generations, one heart at a time, but the process must begin today if we are to have hope for a future. 

This is the last time we hear of Lot. 

It is said that people can reach a point where they become completely wicked and cannot return to being righteous.  The heart becomes hardened and there is a point of no return.  The Apostle Peter referred to Lot living in Sodom and brings up the fact that at one point Lot was a righteous man who resisted the evil acts of Sodom.  One has to wonder if this righteousness lasted.  If you sit in sin day after day you become conditioned to it.  It is possible if you try very hard to resist and seek God's help that you can walk away.  Peter’s statement seems to indicate that it was possible.   He does not say that Lot never sinned; he only refers to the fact that he resisted the sins of Sodom for a time.  He does not say how long this went on, and one has to wonder if this last sin of drunkenness where Lot made yet another huge mistake was the point of no return for him.

 

Did Lot become so filled with shame and regret and bitterness at that time that he allowed himself to give over to total depravity and wickedness for the rest of his life?   Did he totally quit seeking forgiveness from God and give in completely to a life of sin?

We have no way to know.  The scriptures become very silent about Lot at this point and we never hear his name again.