Genesis 19

PART THIRTY-SIX RECAPITULATION: SURVEY OF THE PATRIARCHAL AGE

From A Class-Book of Old Testament History, pp. 73-76

by G. F. Maclear, D.D. Published by Macmillan, London, 1881, now long out of print.

With the death of Joseph the Patriachal Age of Israel’s history may be said to close. The Family had now thrown out many branches and was now on the point of emerging into the Nation. At this juncture, then, it may be well to look back, and review some of the chief features of the Patriarchal Life.

1. And the first of these that claims attention is its Nomadic character. Unlike the founders of Egypt, of Babylon, of Nineveh, the Patriarchs were not the builders of cities and towns, but pilgrims and sojourners, dwellers in tents (Hebrews 11:9). But they were very different from rude hordes, like the Amalekites and other sons of the desert, abhorring any higher mode of life. Abraham was no stranger to the highest form of civilization that his age afforded. He was acquainted with Ur, with Nineveh, with Damascus, with Egypt; he had left his home in one of the chief cities of Mesopotamia, not from choice, but in consequence of a direct personal call from God. Moreover, so far from regarding his present mode of life as an ultimate end, he and Isaac and Jacob were ever looking forward to a time when it would close, when their descendants should be settled in the Land of Promise, and become a great nation, when the portable tent should give way to the city that had foundations (Hebrews 11:10; Hebrews 11:13-16; comp. Genesis 24:7; Genesis 28:4; Genesis 49:4; Genesis 50:24). Hence, from time to time, as opportunity offered, we see the wandering life freely and willingly laid aside. Lot settled in Sodom (Genesis 13:10-12); Abraham in Egypt went direct to Pharaoh’s court (Genesis 12:14); at Hebron he settled and became a prince of God in the midst of the Hittites (Genesis 23:6); Isaac not only lived near the Philistines, but occupied a house opposite the palace (Genesis 26:8), and practised agriculture (Genesis 26:12); and Joseph’s dream of the sheaves points out that this was also continued in the time of Jacob (Genesis 37:7).

2. The Family was the center of the Patriarchal commonwealth. Its head was the source of authority and jurisdiction; he possessed the power of life and death (Genesis 38:24); he united in himself the functions of chief and priest; he offered the burnt-offering; he had his armed retainers (Genesis 14:14; Genesis 48:22; Genesis 34:25; Genesis 33:1); his intercourse with his wives (for polygamy was not forbidden) was free and unrestrained; the wife’s consent was asked before wedlock (Genesis 24:57-58); love hallowed the relations of Abraham with Sarah, of Isaac with Rebekah, of Jacob with Leah and Rachel; woman, indeed, did not occupy the position since conceded to her, but her position was far from degraded, and the sanctity of the marriage-bond was defended by severe laws, which made death the punishment for adultery (Genesis 38:24). Slavery, it is true, existed, but in the tents of Abraham the slave was ever treated with consideration, and not excluded from, but made a partaker of religious privileges (Genesis 17:13). The fidelity and attachment of Eliezer the steward of Abraham’s house, the mourning for Deborah, Rebekah’s nurse (Genesis 35:8), are pleasing proofs of the peace that reigned in the Patriarchal household.

3. Civilization. The life of the Patriarchs was chiefly that of the shepherd, and their wealth consisted in their flocks and their herds. But besides practising agriculture they were not unacquainted with money and the precious metals. Abraham paid for the field of Machpelah with coin (Genesis 23:9-20), and the sons of Jacob took money with them into Egypt (Genesis 42:25; Genesis 42:35); while the gold ring and armlets presented to Rebekah by Eliezer (Genesis 24:22), the bracelet and signet ring of Judah (Genesis 38:18), the ear-rings of Rachel (Genesis 35:4), the many-coloured coat of Joseph, indicate an acquaintance with the luxuries of life.

4. Religion. While other nations were rapidly learning to deify the powers of nature, the Patriarchs believed not only in a God above and beyond nature, but in a God Personal, Omnipotent, and Holy. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was. no mere abstraction, no mere law. He could and did reveal Himself by angelic appearances, by visions, by dreams; He could console, strengthen, encourage; He could punish, rebuke, and on repentance forgive. Abraham, the Friend of God (James 2:23), intercedes with Him in behalf of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 18:23-33); Isaac is warned by Him against going down into Egypt (Genesis 26:2); Jacob is consoled by Him at Bethel when setting out into the land of exile (Genesis 28:13-15), and wrestles with Him by the fords of Jabbok till the break of day (Genesis 32:24); Joseph believes in His invisible but ever-present help in prison and in a strange land, and ascribes to Him all his wisdom in the interpretation of dreams (Genesis 41:16). The Divine Promise of a great future Abraham believed under circumstances of greatest trial, and his faith was counted to him for righteousness (Romans 4:3). Moreover, the God of the Patriarchs was not a mere national or household God. His sphere of operation was not restricted to the Patriarchs and their families; He is the God of all the earth (Genesis 24:3), the God of Righteousness and Holiness. He punishes the people of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19:24-25); He plagues Pharaoh’s house (Genesis 12:17); He is the God of the priest-king Melchizedek (Genesis 14:18), and of the Philistine Abimelech (Genesis 20:3); He protects not only Isaac the child of promise, but the outcast Ishmael the child of the bond-woman (Genesis 21:13); He is with Joseph in prison, but He sends dreams to Pharaoh, and through Joseph He saves Egypt from famine (Genesis 50:20).

5. The Religious Worship of the Patriarchs was in keeping with the simplicity of their creed. The head of the family was also the priest of the family. Whenever Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob, reached any new spot in their pilgrimage, they invariably erected an altar, generally of stone and on a high situation (Genesis 22:9; Genesis 26:25; Genesis 35:7); there they called on the name of Jehovah, there they presented their burnt sacrifice, there they offered up their prayers. Their history also proves the existence of offering covenant-sacrifices, and celebrating covenant-feasts (Genesis 15:9-18); the making and paying of vows (Gen. 28:23); the erection of memorial pillars, and the consecration of them by pouring upon them oil and wine (Genesis 28:18); the rite of circumcision (Genesis 17:10-14); and the paying of tithes (Genesis 14:20).

6. The Character of the Patriarchs is never represented as perfect; their faults are freely exposed; theirs is no ideal history. If we compare the four most eminent amongst them, we seem to trace in (i) Abraham, the faith that can remove mountains in its power and in its fulness, revealing itself in unfaltering trust and unquestioning obedience under the most trying circumstances conceivable; in (ii) Isaac, the faith that can possess itself in patience, and discharge the ordinary duties of life in quietness and waiting; in (iii) Jacob, the violent contest of faith with the flesh, the higher with the lower nature, till by hard discipline the latter is purified, and the Sup-planter becomes the Prince, the Prevailer with God; in (iv) Joseph, the fidelity and perseverance of faith, revealed not only in the patient endurance of the most grievous trials, but in energetic action, and at length crowned with victory. He unites in himself the noble trust and resolution of Abraham, with the quiet perseverance of Isaac, and the careful prudence of Jacob. He is moreover an eminent historic type of Christ, in (1) his persecution and sale by his brethren, (2) his resisting temptation, (3) his humiliation and exaltation, and (4) his dispensing to a famine-stricken people the bread of life, and (5) in the fulness of his forgiving love.

ADDENDA [Volume 3] LANGE: ON THE ANGEL OF JEHOVAH

(CDHCG, 389-390, verbatim)

Between Abram’s connection with Hagar and the next manifestation of Jehovah there are full thirteen years. But then his faith is strengthened again, and Jehovah appears to him (Genesis 17:1). The most prominent and important theophany in the life of Abram is the appearance of the three men (ch. 17). But this appearance wears its prevailing angelic form, because it is a collective appearance for Abram and Lot, and at the same time refers to the judgement upon Sodom. Hence the two angels are related to their central point as the sun-images to the sun itself, and this central point for Abram is Jehovah himself in his manifestation, but not a commissioned Angel of the Lord. Thus also this Angel visits Sarah (Genesis 21:1; compare Genesis 18:10). But the Angel appears in the history of Hagar a second time (Genesis 21:17), and this time as the Angel of God (Maleach Elohim), not as the Maleach Jehovah, for the question is not now about a return to Abram’s house, but about the independent settlement with Ishmael in the wilderness. The person who tempts Abram (Genesis 22:1) is ElohimGod as he manifests himself to the nations and their general ideas or notions, and the revelation is effected purely through the word. Now, also, in the most critical moment for Abram, the Angel of the Lord comes forward, calling down to him from heaven since there was need of a prompt message of relief. In the rest of the narrative this Angel of the Lord identifies himself throughout with Jehovah (Genesis 22:12; Genesis 22:16). To Isaac also Jehovah appears (Genesis 26:2), and the second time in the night (Genesis 26:24). He appears to Jacob in the night in a dream (Genesis 28:12-13). Thus also he appears to him as the Angel of God in a dream (Genesis 31:11), but throughout identified with Jehovah (Genesis 31:13). Jehovah commands him to return home through the word (31:3). Laban receives the word of God in a dream (Genesis 31:24). The greatest event of revelation in the life of Jacob is the grand theophany, in the night, through the vision, but the man who wrestles with him calls himself God and man (men) at the same time. According to the theory of a created angel, Jacob is not a wrestler with God (Israel), but merely a wrestler with the Angel. It is a more purely external circumstance which God uses to warn Jacob through the word to remove from Shechem (Genesis 35:1). In the second-’ peculiar manifestation of God to Jacob after his return from Mesopotamia (Genesis 35:9), we have a clear and distinct reflection of the first (Genesis 32:24). In the night-visions of Joseph, which already appear in the life of Isaac, and occur more frequently with Jacob, the form of revelation during the patriarchal period comes less distinctly into view. But then it enters again, and with new energy, in the life of Moses. The Angel of Jehovah (Exodus 3:2) is connected with the earlier revelation, and here also is identified with Jehovah and Elohim (Exodus 3:4). But he assumes a more definite form and title, as the Angel of his face, since with the Mosaic system the rejection of any deifying of the creature comes into greater prominence, and since it is impossible that the face of God should be esteemed a creature.

The reasons which are urged for the old ecclesiastical view of the Angel of the Lord, are recapitulated by Kurtz in the following order: 1. The Maleach Jehovah identifies himself with Jehovah. 2. Those to whom he appears recognize, name, and worship him as the true God. 3. He receives sacrifice and worship without any protest. 4. The biblical writers constantly speak of him as Jehovah. We add the reasons. 1. The theory of our opponents opens a wide door in the Old Testament for the deifying of the creature, which the Old Testament everywhere condemned; and the Romish worship of angels finds in it a complete justification. 2. The Socinians also gain an important argument for their rejection of the Trinity, if, instead of self-revelation of God, and of the self-distinction included in it in the Old Testament, there is merely a pure revelation through angels. As the fully developed doctrine of the Trinity cannot be found in the Old Testament, so no one can remove from the Old Testament the beginnings of that doctrine, the self-distinction of God, without removing the very substructure on which the New Testament doctrine of the Trinity rests, and without obscuring the Old Testament theology in its very centre and glory. 3. It would break the band of the organic unity between the Old and New Testaments if it could be proved that the central point in the Old Testament revelation is a creature-angel, and that the New Testament revelation passes at one bound from this form to that of the God-man. The theory of the creature-angel in its continuation through a colossal adoration of angels, points downwards to the Rabbinic and Mohammedan doctrine of angels which has established itself in opposition to the New Testament Christology, and is bound together with that exaggerated doctrine of angels in more recent times, which ever corresponds with a veiled and obscure Christology. On the other hand, it removes from the New Testament Christology its Old Testament foundation and preparation which consists in this, that the interchange between God and men is in full operation, and must therefore prefigure itself in the images of the future God-man. 4. The doctrine of angels itself loses its very heart, its justification and interpretation, if we take away from it the symbolic angel-form, which rules it, as its royal centre, i.e. that angelic form which, as a real manifestation of God, as a typical manifestation of Christ, as a manifestation of angels, has the nature and force of a symbol. But with the obliteration of the symbolic element, all the remaining symbolic and angelic images, the cherubim and seraphim, will disappear, and with the key of biblical psychology in its representation of the development of the life of the soul, to an organ of revelation, we shall lose the key to the exposition of the Old Testament itself. 5. Augustin was consistent when, with his interpretation of the Angel of Jehovah as a creature-angel, he decidedly rejects the interpretation which regards the sons of God (ch. 6)as angel-beings; for the assumption of angels who, as such, venture to identify themselves with Jehovah, and notwithstanding they are in peril, abandon themselves to lustful pleasures and a magical transformation of their nature, combines two groundless and intolerable phantoms. We hold, therefore, that Old Testament theology, in its very heart and centre, is in serious danger from these two great prejudices, as the New Testament from the two great prejudices of a mere mechanical structure of the Gospels, and of the unapostolic and yet more than apostolic brothers of the Lord. (See the defence of the old ecclesiastical view in the Commentary by Keil, also with a reference to Kahnis, de Angelo Domini diatribe, 1858. The assertion of the opposite view held by Delitzsch in his Commentary, meets here its refutation).

6. The aspect of all theophanies as visions. It is a general supposition, that divine revelation is partly through visions, or through inward miraculous sights and sounds. We must, however, bring out distinctly the fundamental position, that every theophany is at the same time vision, and every vision a theophany; but that in the one case the objective theophany and in the other the subjective vision, is the prevailing feature. The subjective vision appears in the most definite form in dream-visions, of which Adam’s sleep, and Abram’s night-horror (chs. 2 and 15.), are the first striking portents. It develops itself with great power in the lives of Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, and is of still greater importance in the lives of Samuel and Solomon, as also in the night-visions of Zechariah. We find them in the New Testament in the life of Joseph of Nazareth and in the history of Paul. It needs no proof to show that the manifestations of God or angels in dreams, are not outward manifestations to the natural senses. In the elements of the subjective dream-vision, veils itself, however, the existing divine manifestation. But what the dream introduces in the night-life, the seeing in imagesthat the ecstasy does in the day or ordinary waking life (see Lange: Apostolic Age). The ecstasy, as the removing of the mind into the condition of unconsciousness, or of a different consciousness, is the potential basis of the vision, the vision is the activity or effect of the ecstasy. But since the visions have historical permanence and results, it is evident that they are the intuitions of actual objective manifestations of God. Mere hallucinations of the mind lead into the house of error, spiritual visions build the historical house of God. But in this aspect we may distinguish peculiar dream-visions, night-visions of a higher form and power, momentary day-visions, apocalyptic groups or circles of visions, linked together in prophetic contemplation, and that habitual clear-sightedness as to visions which is the condition of inspiration. But that theophanies which are ever at the same time Angelophanies and Christophanies, and indeed as theophanies of the voice of God, or of the voice from heaven, of the simple appearance of angels, of their more enlarged and complete manifestations of the developed heavenly scenethat these are always conditioned through a disposition of fitness for visions, is clear from numerous passages in the Old and New Testaments (2 Kings 6:17, Daniel 10:7; John 12:28-29; John 20:10-12; Acts 9:8; Acts 12:7-12; Acts 22:9-14).

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THE ABRAHAMIC PROMISE

(by H. Christopher, The Remedial System, pp. 146-150)

The promise that God would bless the whole world through him [Abraham] had reference to Christ, the son of Abraham, through whom God would fulfill his promise of blessing the whole world through the offspring of Abraham. Whilst it was the first and chief promise made to Abraham, it was the last in fulfillment. Nearly two thousand years intervened. It was ratified and covenanted by the blood of Christ, and looked to the possession of the heavenly Canaan, and to a circumcision that cut off the heart from all that is worldly and sensual, and to a seal that became the pledge of the purchased possession, and its settlement in the heavenly Canaan, by the resurrection from the dead, when the spiritual people of God cross the Jordan of death, and take possession of the land of promise, for which even Abraham looked, when he sought a city whose maker and builder is God. This promise and its blessings have no connection with the others made to Abraham. They differ as widely as flesh and spirit, and as earth and heaven. They connect or coalesce no where. The first were but preparatory and necessary to the last. When the last appeared, the first had served their chief, if not all their, purpose. The first had chief reference to man’s body, while the last has chief reference to man’s spirit. And as the spirit of man is superimposed, as it were, upon the body, and is capable of a separate and independent existence, so was the last promise superimposed upon the first, and is capable of existing, and does exist, independently of it. Hence, the promises and the covenants by which they were ratified, connect with each other only as the flesh connects with the spirit. Between them lies an impassable gulf. There is no possible passage from the first to the last. The Jew has no rights and privileges under Christ by virtue of his being the son of Abraham according to the flesh; for the promise was; In Isaac shall thy seed be called, and he was the child of promise and of faith. The Christian is the child of promise and of faith, and hence is reckoned through Isaac as a special creation of God, and is, therefore, himself a new creation. The last creation supersedes all former ones, and by this supersession abrogates them. The adoption of the children of Abraham as the special and peculiar people of God, set aside the adoption by creation, and during the time of their adoption, the natural adoption was set aside, and the rest of mankind ignored, and treated as an uncovenanted people. So when the Christian adoption came in, the Jewish was set aside, and all the rest of mankind, not embraced in the new adoption, were ignored and treated as uncovenanted. Hence, under Christianity there is neither Jew nor Greek; neither circumcision nor uncircumcision; but all the families, nations, and races of mankind are one in Christ, in perfect fulfillment of the promise: In thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed.

All this is necessarily true. The Remedial System is developed by differentiations which mark the boundaries of the development. The patriarch had no privileges, special and peculiar, after the calling of Abraham. By that call God isolated a part from the whole, and made this part his special care. By the new creation through Christ another isolation was made, which placed Jew and Greek on the same plane before God, and abrogated all special and peculiar rights or privileges claimed by the Jews. This is necessarily true from another consideration. The claim of the Jew rested on an explicit covenant. That covenant recognized him as the chosen of God, through a means wholly different from that by which he had recognized the patriarch, and does now recognize the Christian. This consideration or means was his birth. He was the son of Abraham according to the flesh, and entitled, consequently, only to the rights and privileges guaranteed by the covenant ordained to grant and secure these. He could claim only under the stipulated grants of his covenant. Under other and different covenants, and made with other people, he could, of course, have no claim or right whatever. His circumcision effected all it was designed to effect, and meant more than the Jew was willing to accept. It cut him off from all the rest of the world, and also from all other covenants of God, but according to the flesh. His circumcision bound him down to the provisions and obligations of that covenant, and confined him within its prescribed limits. What claim, therefore can a Jew have to the grants and blessings of a covenant that has no special reference to him whatever, and that was not made with him as a Jew? The European had as well claim equal rights with the American under the constitution of the United States. The Jew was the chosen of God only according to the flesh, and entitled only to blessings of his covenant. He is not the chosen of God according to the spirit, or the seed of Isaac according to the promise, and hence he can have no right with those who are.

There are four things necessary to make a nation the peculiar and chosen people of God, and all these obtained in the case of the descendants of Abraham according to the flesh. These things are, 1. A creation. This we have in the birth of Isaac. His conception was a miracle, and hence a creation. 2. A seal. This we have in circumcision. 3. A purchase. This we have in the deliverance of this people from Egypt. And 4. A covenant. And this we have in the covenant made before Mt. Sinai. All these are peculiar and consistent, and perfectly harmonious with all that God has promised, or has done for, the Jews. They were all equally necessary, and they follow each other as necessary results one of the other. The seal came to ratify the creation, the purchase, in demonstration of the fulfillment of the promise, and the covenant, in order that the people might also pledge themselves by covenant. By this the people became cemented and organized into a nation. As such they needed laws and institutions for their government and welfare as a people; and as the people of God, religious institutions for the various purposes which God had in view with that people. It will be observed that this covenant made with Abraham’s descendants arose under that which covenanted them as the peculiar people of God, and was, consequently, entirely Jewish. The covenant of Mt. Sinai was made with that people, and the institutions subsequently given, were given to that people, and to no other. The Jewish institution, in all its entirety, was as verily circumcised as were the people for whose benefit it was ordained. It was as completely isolated from all other religions and peoples, as were that people. Hence, it had no connection with any other, nor relation, except that of opposition. The covenant stipulated and embraced no more than did the promise under which it was made. It was a ratification, or acceptance on their part, of the stipulations of the promise. It was the covenant by which God renewed his promise to be their God, and by it the people accepted the offer, and covenanted to be the people of God. This covenant bound both parties to their pledgeGod to be their God, and them to be his obedient people. It did not, and could not stipulate and grant more than did the promise; hence, all these were temporal in their nature. This completed all that God had to provide for that people. Henceforth there was naught for either party to do, but to carry out the provisions of the covenant which formulated the promise. But this covenant was not only temporary as respects the rights, privileges, and blessings which it secured to that people; but it was also temporary in its duration. The people broke that covenant: and a covenant broken on one side, is broken on both. It was faulty in that it only contemplated and provided for man’s temporal wants. Indeed, this was the fault of the whole Jewish fabric, from the inception to the close. This was foreseen; and not only foreseen, but the whole structure was but a means to an end; a measure to give time for the preparation and institution of a better. The promise of God under which the whole Jewish structure arose, was not the first and chief promise that God made to Abraham, nor his chief purpose in calling him. This chief and greatest promise was that through him he would bless the whole human family. This promise the apostle interprets as having reference to Christ, and consequently, it was sooner or later, to take precedence of all others. It could not be annulled by any subsequent promise, unless that promise annulled, at the same time, all former ones. But this the subsequent promises did not do, as is affirmed by the people. The promise which had reference to Christ, preceded the ratification of that concerning the land several years, and antedated the covenant of circumcision twenty-four years. The covenant at Mt. Sinai followed the latter four hundred and six thereafter. So that nothing which transpired under the later promises could annul the first. The first and chief promise which contemplated spiritual blessings and a spiritual offspring through Isaac, was not ratified, fulfilled, or covenanted, for nearly two thousand years. All that has grown out of this promise has no connection with what arose under the others. It differs from them in every respect. It differed from them in the beginning. It came into the world through a different line. There were two lines of descendants in Isaac, as two promises were fulfilled in his descendants. The one line was the seed of Abraham according to the flesh, and the other the seed according to the spirit, the latter of which is reckoned the true line under the covenant of the first promise. This excludes the children according to the flesh from all rights and privileges pertaining to the children according to the spirit. As respects, therefore, their nature, rights, and privileges, the Jewish and Christian institutions differ radically and entirely; to that degree as to exclude the one wholly from the other. The creation, the circumcision or seal, the purchase, and the covenant, that made the descendants of Abraham according to the flesh the people of God, have no place nor value under the Christian institution. The latter has its own creation, seal, purchase, and covenant, all of which are spiritual and eternal, and these give the Christian no rights or privileges under the former. Hence, as respects institutions differing so completely and widely, there can be no community of rights and privileges; nor can the one flow out of the other so as to establish any genetic connection between them. As the spiritual and the eternal necessarily supersede the fleshly and temporal, so does the Jewish institution, in whole and in part, give way to the Christian. Under the latter arises a people of God as distinct from the former as spirit is from flesh. The Christian is a new creation, and all that pertains to his creation is new. Before it the Jew and Gentile stand on the same ground. Both must become the subjects of this new creation before they can be regarded as belonging to the people of God. All the claim which the Jew once preferred, goes for naught under the operation of the new creation. A new birth is just as essential for the Jew as for the Gentile. Hence, the Jew’s creation, seal, purchase, and covenant are all naught when he stands before the Christian’S. His birth of the flesh avails nothing, and neither does his circumcision, Nothing is now acceptable to God but the new creation in Christ. These things being true, all that is Jewish has passed away. The Jews are no longer the people of God. Their whole religious service has perished; and what purpose God has now with that people remains to be seen. That he has no further purpose with them in regard to the fulfillment of his promise of blessing the world through them by Christ, is evident from the fact that Christianity has superseded Judaism, and that the whole religious service of that people perished with the total destruction of their temple. Christ is the end of the law, and of all that pertained to it. It was but a pedagogue to lead the Jews to Christ; so that when he came all that was Jewish was set aside, and the pedagogue was dismissed. All now become the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus, in whom there is neither Jew nor Greek; neither bond nor free; neither male nor female; but all are one in Christ Jesus. And all who are Christ’s by virtue of the new creation, the spiritual seal, the eternal purchase, and the everlasting covenant, are the seed of Abraham, and heirs according to the promise: In thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed. (N. B. After hunting several years for a copy of Christopher’s book, I found it in the Dallas Christian College LibraryC. C.)

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THE EXCELLENCE OF FAITH

(Read Romans 5:1-11).

In the study of First Principles the term which first engages our attention is faith. We shall find that it occupies a prominent place in connection not only with conversion, but also with every phase of Christian activity and growth.

Faith is one of the most far-reaching words in the vocabulary of inspiration. Without faith none of the blessings of the spiritual realm would be available to man. Contrariwise, on the ground of faith, such blessings as eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived (1 Corinthians 2:9), are within his power to appropriate and enjoy.

Faith is an oft-recurring word in the New Testament. Jesus had much to say about it, and the word is used repeatedly in the Epistles. Paul states expressly that we are justified by faith (Romans 5 :).

The excellence of faith is indicated in scripture by the following representations:

1. Faith is superior to things and circumstances of this material world.

When given full sway in the human heart it rises above the circumstances of life and controls them. The power of faith is described in such scriptures as Matthew 17:20, Mark 9:23; Mark 11:23, Luke 17:6. Christians of this materialistic age, in bondage as they are to the tyranny of things, are inclined to look on these sayings of the Master with more or less skepticism. The tragedy is that we have never really learned to walk by faith. We cannot testify that these sayings are true for the simple reason that we have never learned to stand on God’s promises. True, we claim to do so, and we sing Standing on the Promises, but always with mental reservations. It is only through the exercise of implicit faith that we can throw off the fetters of anxiety and fear which enslave us to this present evil world. We are willing to obey the Lord in confession and baptism, but we certainly fall far short of His teaching in regard to such everyday matters as fear, worry, forgiveness, humility, and the like. (See Matthew 5:3-12; Matthew 5:21-26; Matthew 5:38-42; Matthew 6:25-33; Matthew 7:1-5; Matthew 7:7-12, etc. Cf. 1 John 4:18) He might well say to us as to His disciples of old, O ye of little faith!

2. Faith is the ground of our justification.

Being therefore justified by faithnot by faith alone, or mere intellectual assent (the theologians have added the word alone)we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Not by faith alone, because faith apart from works (i.e., works of faith) is dead (James 2:26). The faith that is unto the saving of the soul (Hebrews 10:39) expresses itself in works of obedience, sacrifice and service (Romans 12:1-2). To walk by faith is to live by the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-25). God so loved us that He gave His only begotten Son as a propitiation for our sins (John 3:16), but we must appropriate this matchless Gift by faith. By true faith in Him we have access into this grace wherein we stand (Romans 5:2). For by grace ye have been saved through faith, and that (i.e., that salvation) not of yourselves, it is the gift of God (Ephesians 2:8).

3. Faith is the motivating principle of all Christian worship and service.

True worship is (1) communion of the human spirit with the Divine Spirit, (2) on the terms of the truth as revealed in scripture (John 4:24). This can be realized only through faith. Repentance is faith choosing; the confession is faith speaking; baptism is faith obeying; the Lord’s Supper is faith remembering; liberality is faith acknowledging God’s ownership; prayer is faith communing; meditation is faith pondering; and. the whole Christian life is faith serving. Therefore we are justified by faith. From the day of conversion to that of the putting, on of immortality, the actuating principle in the life of every true Christian is faith.

4. Implicit faith, along with obedience, is a necessary, condition to the answer of prayer (John 14:12-15; John 15:5-10, etc.).

(1) Acts 12:1-17. We read here that many of the early disciples were gathered together in the house of Mary, the mother of John Mark, praying for Peter’s deliverance from prison. Yet they were amazed when their prayer was answered and Peter stood in their midst. Most of our praying is of this kind; it has little conviction back of it. (Matthew 21:22).

(2) The prayer of faith, i.e., the petition offered in harmony with the teaching of God’s word, will not go unanswered.

Unanswered yet? The prayer your lips have pleaded

In agony of heart these many years?

Does faith begin to fail? is hope departing?

And thing you all in vain those falling tears?

Say not the Father hath not heard your prayer,

You shall have your desire, sometime, somewhere.

Unanswered yet? Tho-’ when you first presented

This one petition at the Father’s throne,

It seemed you could not wait the time of asking

So urgent was your heart to make it known.

Tho-’ years have passed since then, do not despair;

The Lord will answer you, sometime, somewhere.

Unanswered yet? Nay, do not say -ungranted-';

Perhaps your part is not yet wholly done;

The work began when first your prayer was uttered,

And God will finish what He has begun;

If you will keep the incense burning there,

His glory you shall see, sometime, somewhere.

Unanswered yet? Faith cannot be unanswered;

Her feet are firmly planted on the Rock;

Amid the wildest storms she stands undaunted,

Nor quails before the loudest thunder-shock.

She knows Omnipotence has heard her prayer, And cries, -It shall be done, sometime, somewhere!-’ And cries, -It shall be done, sometime, somewhere!-'

5. The blessings and rewards of the gospel are all received and realized through faith.

Among these are: (1) salvation from the guilt of sin (Mark 16:16, Acts 2:38; Acts 10:43; Acts 16:31; Acts 26:18); (2) spiritual life (John 20:31; John 6:40, John 3:16; John 3:36; 1 John 5:12); (3) spiritual light (John 1:9; John 8:12; John 12:36); (4) heavenly adoption (Galatians 3:26); (5) the indwelling Spirit (John 7:39, Ephesians 1:13, Galatians 3:14); (6) justification (Romans 5:1, Galatians 2:16): (7) true righteousness (Romans 1:16-17; Romans 10:6; Romans 3:22); (8) true worship (John 4:24, Ephesians 3:12); (9) providential oversight (1 Peter 1:5); (10) eternal rest (Hebrews 4:3). In fact the inheritance of all the promises of God is to be realized through faith (Hebrews 6:12).

Conclusion: No wonder then that faith is represented to be the foundation which supports the entire pyramid of Christian virtues that true disciples build, one stone upon the other, and upon which they climb heavenward (2 Peter 1:5-7). True Christians walk by faith, not by sight (2 Corinthians 5:7).

Faith, hope and love, according to Paul, constitute the abiding trinity of spiritual virtues (1 Corinthians 13:13). Of these three, love is greatest; because, in the home over there, faith will have given way to spiritual knowledge, and hope to fruition, leaving only love to consummate the blissful intercourse of the redeemed with their heavenly Father (Revelation 21:1-5).

THE NATURE OF FAITH

(Read Hebrews, ch. 11, esp. Hebrews 11:1.)

The eleventh chapter of Hebrews has been called Israel’s Roll of Honor. It is the great faith chapter of the Bible. It is an inspired discourse on the subject of faith. The discourse begins properly with the last three verses of ch. 10, in which the writer speaks of a faith that is unto the saving of the soul. The subject-matter which follows, in ch. 11, is an analysis of that kind of faith, what it is, whence it is obtained, and how it operates unto salvation, as exemplified in the lives of many illustrious believers of olden times. The writer proves to be an excellent sermonizer, as we might expect in view of his having been inspired by the Spirit of God. He states his text in v. 1, and then proceeds to develop it with appropriate illustrations drawn from Old Testament history. His concluding exhortation follows, in ch. 12, Genesis 12:1-2. We shall attempt here to evaluate the teaching of this great chapter on the nature (i.e., the original and essential characteristics) of faith.

Let me repeat that the kind of faith under consideration here is the faith that works unto the saving of the soul. By some this has been called saving faith. Not that faith of itself will save any one, because it will not; but that the right kind of faith will motivate the believer to such intelligent and sincere cooperation with God, on God’s terms and according to His plan, that He may consistently save the one who so believes. It is God who pardons and saves, but always through Jesus Christ (John 14:6).

What is faith? Considering the excellence of faith, it is exceedingly important that we know what faith is. I am profoundly thankful that the Holy Spirit has not left us in darkness regarding this essential matter. Nor has he left it to our finite minds to formulate a definition. We are not compelled to go either to philosophy or to theology for a definition of faithwe have it in clear, unmistakable terms, in the Christian Scriptures.

What, then, are the essential characteristics of faith? This question is fully answered in the words of our text, as follows:

1. Faith is assurance. Assurance is defined as confidence inspired or expressed, that which produces certainty. It connotes positiveness, certainty, even boldness.

2. Faith is assurance of things hoped for. That is, faith is the foundation of hope.

(1) Authorized Version: the substance of things hoped for. The word substance means in our language the stuff, material, or matter of which anything is composed. It is used here, however, in its derivative sense. It is derived from the Latin prefix, sub (under) and the Latin participle stans (standing). Substance, then is that which stands under. Faith is that which stands under hope. Cf. Living Oracles: faith is the confidence of things hoped for. Moffatt: faith means we are confident of what we hope for. Weymouth: faith is a well-grounded assurance of that for which we hope. Goodspeed: faith means the assurance of what we hope for.

(2) Faith is the foundation of hope. This is true in every department of human activity. It is true in the business world. I visited a friend on one occasion to solicit a contribution from him for a worthy cause. Having heard my case, his reply was: I believe in your proposition, and I am sorry that I am not in a position to help just at this time. But I will do something later. I have invested a considerable sum of money in an oil well in Texas, and I am expecting returns from this investment within a few months. If you will come back about a year from this date, I will give you a substantial donation. I thanked him, and departed. About a year later I called at his office a second time, and as soon as I entered he looked at me and exclaimed: I know what you have come for, but I can-’t do anything for you. What is the trouble? I asked, didn-’t the oil well turn out satisfactorily? And in extreme disgust he said: I wish I had the money back that I sank in that hole in the ground. The first time I called he was extremely hopeful, because he believed in the enterprise in which he had invested; the second time I found him with hopes blasted, because he had lost all faith in it. Where there is no faith, there is no hope.

(3) This is also true in the social realm. In the course of time a young couple will fall in love, marry, and establish a home. The success of their undertaking will depend largely on their faith in each other. On this foundation of faith they will erect a structure of dreams and plans and hopes. But let the confidence of one in the other be destroyed and this structure will fall to the ground. Both marriage and home are erected on a foundation of faith.

(4) So, in the realm of spirit, as elsewhere, hope rests upon faith. Every act of worship and service we perform is motivated by faith. Faith underlies the pyramid of Christian virtues (2 Peter 1:5-7). And all our aspirations and hopes respecting the home over there, the inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away (1 Peter 1:4) rest on faith. In everything faith is the foundation of hope.

(5) Illustrations from the chapter (Hebrews 11). (a) Abel’s hope that his offering would be acceptable to God rested on faith, Hebrews 11:4. (1 John 3:12) (b) Enoch’s walk with God was a walk of faith, Hebrews 11:5. (c) Faith was the foundation of Noah’s hope of deliverance from impending judgment, Hebrews 11:7. (d) Abraham’s hope of attaining the far country which he was to receive for an inheritance was founded on faith, Hebrews 11:8. Also, his hope of receiving Isaac back from the dead was inspired by faith, from whence he did also in a figure receive him back, Hebrews 11:17-19. (e) Sarah’s expectation of a son, the child of promise, rested on faith, Hebrews 11:11. (f) Joseph’s hope that the children of Israel would ultimately take possession of the land of promise rested upon his faith, Hebrews 11:22. (g) The aspirations, hopes and plans of Moses for his people, and his matchless efforts in their behalf, were all inspired by his faith, Hebrews 11:24-29. In every example cited, faith is presented as the foundation of hope.

3. Faith is a conviction … A conviction is defined as a strong belief, something firmly believed. The faith which operates unto the saving of the soul is something more than a passive intellectual assent. It is a conviction. It must be a conviction, one that takes hold of the soul and determines the course of one’s life. In the light of this definition, it is obvious that faith is precisely the thing that is lacking in the modern church.

4. Faith is a conviction of things not seen, i.e., a conviction with respect to things not seen.

(1) Authorized Version: the evidence of things not seen. Moffatt: Faith means. we are convicted of what we do not see. Weymouth: a conviction of the reality of things which we do not see. Goodspeed: our conviction about things we cannot see.

(2) Note that faith is a conviction with respect to things not seen. I have never seen Paris, but I have a conviction that there is a city by that name and that it is the capital of France. My conviction is the result of satisfactory evidence. Things which are seen are matters of observation and knowledge, but things that are not seen belong to the realm of faith. God who is a Spirit (John 4:24) cannot be seen, and is therefore to be apprehended only by faith. Angels, spirit, resurrection, immortality, heaven, etc., all these realities of the unseen world are matters of faith. Faith pertains not to the things that are illusive and transitory, but to the things which are abiding. For the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal (2 Corinthians 4:18).

(3) We have never seen God, but we believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of them that seek after Him (Hebrews 11:6). We were not present to see the worlds created, but our conviction is that they were framed by the word of God (Hebrews 11:3). We have never seen Christ, our Elder Brother, but we believe in Him as the One who is abundantly able to save us from sin and mortality. We have never had a glimpse of heaven, but we believe that the Spirit of Him who raised up Jesus from the dead dwelleth in us, He that raised up Christ Jesus from the dead shall give life also to our mortal bodies through His Spirit that dwelleth in us (Romans 8:11). Therefore we are exhorted to live by faith, to walk by faith and to die in the faith.

(4) Illustrations from the chapter (Hebrews 11). (a) Abel brought his offering to the altar with the conviction that the God whom he had never seen, but in whom he believed, would accept it, Hebrews 11:4. (b) In Noah’s heart there was an overwhelming conviction that judgment would come upon the antediluvian world because of its wickedness. Although summer and winter, and seedtime and harvest, continued to come and go as usual for one hundred and twenty years, he never faltered. Through all the trying experiences of this period of grace he retained his conviction. Because that during all these intervening years there was no evidence in nature of the impending catastrophe, it was a conviction with respect to things not seen, Hebrews 11:7. (c) Abraham left home and kindred and friends, and started on a strange journey to a land both unknown to him and unseen by him. He had no idea how far he would have to travel in order to reach it. All that moved him was a conviction with respect to the far country and a conviction that God would give it to him for an inheritance. Hebrews 11:8-12. (d) These fathers of Israel, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, all died in the faith, having never received the literal fulfilment of the promises. So far as we know they all died without possessing a single acre of the land of promise save the few square feet they had purchased for a burial ground. It seems that as they continued in their pilgrimage their faith became clearer, and they began to look beyond the literal to the spiritual fulfilment of the promise, in the city which hath foundations whose builder and maker is God, Hebrews 11:13-16. (e) Joseph’s conviction with respect to the exodus of his people from Egypt pertained to an event far in the future, an event not seen, Hebrews 11:22. (f) Moses, the man who saw an undying flame, chose to share ill treatment with the people of God, above the temporary enjoyment of the pleasures of sin, because he endured as seeing him who is invisible (Hebrews 11:23-29). In all these cases, faith was a conviction with respect to things not seen.

(5) As in the various cases cited from Old Testament history, so it is with respect to faith in the present dispensation and under the new covenant: (a) our faith must be something more than mere assent; (b) it must be genuine conviction in order to work unto the saving of the soul; (c) it must be conviction with respect to things not seen, viz., God, the Son of God, the Spirit of God, the future life, heaven, etc.; (d) this faith undergirds all our spiritual blessings, aspirations and hopes (1 Corinthians 2:6-10).

Conclusion: 1. This inspired definition of faith is perfect and complete. Nothing can be taken from it without weakening its import. Nothing can be added to it that would give it greater force.

2. Christian faith takes in all those convictions with respect to God, the Son of God, the Word of God, the Spirit of God, immortality, heaven, and the like; all of which are eternal realities above and beyond the realm of time and space. Like Moses, we endure as seeing him who is invisible, looking unto Jesus the author and perfecter of our faith (Hebrews 12:2). Like Abraham, we realize that we are pilgrims and strangers upon this earth, that our present dwelling places are but the tabernacles of a night-time; and, like him, we anticipate a more glorious fulfilment of the promises than would be possible in this world of places and things (1 Corinthians 2:9-10). Our ultimate goal is that heavenly country towards which he made his pilgrimage. In the words of Emily Dickinson:

I never saw a moor, I never saw the sea, Yet know I how the heather looks, And what a wave must be. I never spoke with God, Nor visited in heaven; Yet certain am I of the spot As if the chart were given.

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THE SOURCE OF FAITH

(Read Romans 10:1-17).

Having ascertained the essential nature of faith (1) the assurance of things hoped for, and (2) a conviction with respect to things not seen, we shall now turn our attention to the source of faith. Whence is the faith obtained that is unto the saving of the soul? We may find the answer to this important question by turning again to the cases cited in the eleventh chapter of Hebrews:

1. Abel, Hebrews 11:4. Whence did Abel obtain his conviction that the offering of a sacrifice of blood would be pleasing to God and would bring him God’s blessing? Evidently from the word of God. It seems obvious that God laid down the law of sacrifice as soon as man fell, in order to establish the principle that apart from shedding of blood there is no remission (Hebrews 9:22). Abel, in bringing an offering in which blood was shed, obeyed the law; Cain, in bringing the fruit of the ground, disobeyed it (1 John 3:12). This explains why Abel’s offering was accepted and Cain’s rejected.

That this institution was of divine origin is evident from several considerations: I. We learn from Hebrews 11:4, that Abel offered his sacrifice in faith. But in Romans 10:17, we are told that -faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.-’ And hence it follows that Abel could not have offered in faith without a command from God. II. It could not have been a human invention, because Reason can perceive no connection between the means and the end. It is evidently a positive and not a moral or natural institution. III. Its universality is another proof of its divine origin. Mr. Faber says that -throughout the whole world there is a notion prevalent that the gods can be appeased only by bloody sacrifices. There is no heathen people,-’ he adds, -that can specify a time when they were without sacrifice. All have had it from a time which is not reached by their genuine records. Tradition alone can be brought forward to account for its origin.-’ IV. The distinction between clean and unclean beasts even in the time of Noah (Genesis 7:2) proves also the divine origin of sacrifice. This is a distinction which is altogether positive, and which has no foundation in either reason or philosophy (Milligan, SR, 67).

2. Enoch, Hebrews 11:5.Enoch’s walk of faith was evidently inspired and directed by the word of God (Genesis 5:24).

3. Noah, Hebrews 11:7. How did Noah obtain his conviction that an overwhelming deluge would come upon the antediluvian world? How did he obtain the conviction that in the building of the ark a means of deliverance would be provided him and his family? Evidently from the word of God. God told him the flood would come in due time. God told him to build the ark and how to build it. God gave him the plans for it. God promised him deliverance through the instrumentality of the ark. And Noah believed God. His conviction was inspired not by any manifestation in nature, but solely by the word of God. See Genesis 6:13-22; Genesis 7:1-5; Genesis 8:15-17.

4. Abraham, Hebrews 11:8-19. Whence did Abraham obtain his conviction regarding the land to which he journeyed? Whence did he obtain his belief that this land would be given him for an inheritance? From the word of God. See Genesis 12:1-4; Genesis 13:14-18, etc. It was God who told him about the far country and promised it to him for an inheritance. Whence did Abraham and Sarah obtain their conviction regarding the birth of the child of promise? From the word of God (Genesis 17:15-21). Whence did Abraham obtain his conviction that God would not allow Isaac to suffer an untimely end (Hebrews 11:19)? From the word of God. Had not Isaac been miraculously conceived and born? Were not the details of the Abrahamic promise to be worked out through him? (Genesis 12:3; Genesis 13:16; Genesis 17:19, Hebrews 11:18). Cf. Genesis 15:6, Romans 4:3, Galatians 3:6, James 2:23.

5. Joseph, Hebrews 11:22. Whence did Joseph obtain his conviction that his people would leave Egypt and repossess Canaan? Evidently from God’s promise to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (Genesis 12:1-4; Genesis 13:14-18; Genesis 17:15-21; Genesis 26:2-5; Genesis 28:12-17).

6. Moses, Hebrews 11:22-29. From whom did Moses receive his commission to lead his people out of bondage? From whom did he receive the Law ordained through angels by the hand of a mediator (Galatians 3:19)? From God Himself. See Exodus 3:1 to Exodus 4:17, Exodus 20:1-26, Deuteronomy 5:1-33, etc. Who was his constant Guide and Protector through all those terrible marches in the wilderness? Who rained manna from heaven upon the starving people? Who guided them by means of a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night? Moses constantly endured, as seeing him who is invisible.

7. Joshua, Hebrews 11:29. Whence did Joshua obtain his confidence that the walls of Jericho would fall? From Jehovah’s word. He went to God for a war program, in his extremity, and God supplied it (Joshua 6:1-20).

8. Rahab, Hebrews 11:30. Whence did Rahab obtain her belief that she should give aid and succor to the men of Joshua’s army? Evidently from her knowledge of God’s promises and judgments (John 2:9-21; John 6:22-25, James 2:25).

9. The creation, Hebrews 11:3. Whence do we obtain our belief that our physical universe was the materialization of God’s word? Our conviction that what is seen hath not been made out of things which appear (i.e., that this universe was not fashioned out of pre-existing materials, as the evolutionists and materialists contend)? From the word of God. (See Psalms 33:6; Psalms 33:9; Psalms 148:5, etc. Note that the expression, God said, is found ten consecutive times in Genesis 1. Cf. also John 1:1-3, Hebrews 1:1-3, 2 Peter 3:5-8, etc.).

10. Other great heroes and heroines of faith, Hebrews 11:32-39. All received their inspiration to deeds of heroism from the attractions and impulsions of God’s word. So, then, belief cometh of hearing the divine word, as our text says. Believers in all ages endure as seeing Him who is invisible.

Conclusion: So much for the examples from Old Testament history. But what about the faith that operates unto the salvation of the soul, in the present dispensation, under the new covenant?

1. From what source do we obtain our belief that God is, and that He is a rewarder of them that seek after Him (Hebrews 11:6)? From the testimony about Him as revealed and recorded in Scripture. From the complete and perfect revelation of Him afforded us in the person and work of Jesus Christ, whom to know aright is eternal life. John 15:9-11, 1 Corinthians 2:6-16, Hebrews 1:1-3, 1 Peter 1:3-12, etc.

2. From what source do we obtain our conviction that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God? From the testimony presented in the Scriptures, particularly that of the gospel records. This is our only source of accurate information about Him, See John 17:20, John 20:30-31, Acts 15:7, Acts 17:11-12, etc. Why should me reject the testimony of these competent eye-witnesses, these men who walked and talked and supped with Him, and listen to the quibblings of half-baked professors removed from Him by a span of twenty centuries?

3. Whence do we obtain our convictions respecting the future life and its rewards and retributions? From the testimony of Scripture? From the great and exceeding precious promises of God.

4. Romans 10:17. Hear the conclusion of the whole matter. Faith does not come by feeling, nor by a direct operation of the Spirit, nor in answer to prayer, but faith does come by hearing the word of God (Romans 10:6-8, 1 Thessalonians 2:13).

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THE PILGRIMAGE OF FAITH

(Hebrews 11:1-19, esp. Hebrews 11:13)

One of the most illustrious characters of ancient times to whom our attention is called by the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, is Abraham, the father of the Hebrew people.

Abraham’s life and walk were so eminently motivated by faith, that his name has gone down in sacred history as the Father of the Faithful, and as the Friend of God (Romans 4:17, Galatians 3:29, Isaiah 41:8, 2 Chronicles 20:7, James 2:23).

1. Note, in the first place, that Abraham’s whole life was a pilgrimage of faith.

(1) It was by faith that he first went out from his native home, Ur of the Chaldees. As faith comes from hearing the word of God (Romans 10:17), so he went out in response to God’s command (cf. Genesis 12:1-3). He did not go out in consequence of any urge within himself, but solely in obedience to God. By faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed to go out unto a place which he was to receive for an inheritance (Hebrews 11:8).

(2)* By faith he made his initial pilgrimage from Ur of Chaldea to the land of promise.* As faith is a conviction with respect to things not seen (Hebrews 11:1), he therefore went out not knowing whither he went (Hebrews 11:8). Commenting on this verse, Milligan says: Here we have given the fact that Abraham received a call from God; that by his call he was required to leave his home and kindred in Ur of Chaldea, and go out into a strange land; that this land, though promised to his posterity, was wholly unknown to him at the time; and that he nevertheless obeyed God, and went out of his own country, not knowing whither he went (Milligan, NTCH, in loco.)

(3) By faith he became a sojourner in the land of promise, as in a land not his own, etc. It would seem from this that Abraham never regarded Canaan as his home. He knew of course, by faith, that when the Canaanites should have filled up the cup of their iniquity to the full, in the fourth generation, the land would be given to his posterity for an everlasting possession, as indeed it was in the time of Joshua (Genesis 15:12-21). But until that time neither he nor his seed, he realized, had any rights or privileges there beyond what might have been accorded other strangers under like circumstances. (Cf. Acts 7:5). Hence Abraham died without owning a foot of the land other than the cave of Machpelah, which he purchased from Ephron the Hittite for a burying-ground (Genesis 23:3-20); and hence, also, neither he, nor Isaac, nor Jacob, ever established a permanent residence in the country. They were satisfied to live in movable tents, feeling assured that according to the promise, they were to fall heir to a better inheritance than any that is to be found on this earth.

(4) By faith he looked beyond the literal to the spiritual fulfilment of the promise. For he looked for the city which hath the foundations, etc. (Hebrews 11:9-10). From this and other like passages we are constrained to think that God had given the patriarchs information with regard to the heavenly country, far beyond what is now recorded in Genesis or any other part of the Old Testament. What we find there at present was written for our instruction, as well as for the benefit of the ancients (Romans 15:4). But much may have been said to them which would in no way benefit us; and which was, therefore, excluded from the Canon by Moses, Ezra and other inspired writers. The origin of sacrifice, for instance, is nowhere expressly mentioned in the Old Testament; nor is there anything said in it respecting the origin of the Patriarchal priesthood. Information, clear, full, and explicit, on all such matters, was of course needed by the ancients; but for us the more general instructions of the Bible are quite sufficient. And so, also, we think it was with respect to the heavenly country. The Patriarchs seem to have received revelations concerning it which have never been transmitted to us; for it is obvious that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, lived in constant expectation of entering it at the close of their earthly pilgrimage. They were satisfied to live here as strangers and pilgrims, knowing that they had in heaven a city having permanent foundations whose Architect and Framer is God. This city is manifestly the heavenly Jerusalem (Galatians 4:28, Hebrews 12:22; Hebrews 13:14), which for the present is located in heaven, but which will hereafter descend to the earth after the latter shall have been renovated by fire (Revelation 21). Then will be fulfilled in its full and proper sense the promise made to Abraham, that he and his seed should be the heirs of the world (Romans 4:13) (Milligan, ibid.).

In the land of fadeless day,

Lies -the city four-square-';

It shall never pass away,

And there is -no night there.-'

God shall -wipe away all tears,-'

There’s no death, no pain nor fears,

And they count not time by years,

For there is -no night there.-'

(5) By faith he anticipated the birth of the child of promise (Hebrews 11:11-12, Galatians 4:23, Genesis 17:15-21; Genesis 18:9-15; Genesis 21:1-7). The miraculous conception and birth of Isaac, typical in respect to its supernaturalness of that of Jesus, were direct fulfilments of the promise of Jehovah which Abraham believed. In this respect Abraham’s faith was even greater than Sarah’S, who, on being told, at ninety years of age and long after she had passed the age of child-bearing, that she should give birth to a son, received the announcement at first with considerable incredulity (Genesis 18:9-15).

(6) By faith he offered up Isaac on Mount Moriah, accounting that God is able to raise up, even from the dead; from whence he did also in a figure receive him back (Hebrews 11:17-19). Abraham’s faith was such that he knew that the promise of God (Genesis 17:21; Genesis 21:12) could not and would not fail, and as he could not anticipate that God would interfere, as He did, so as to prevent the immolation of his son, there was really left for him no alternative other than simply to conclude that God would restore Isaac to life. This conviction seems to be implied in the remark which he made to his servants, -Abide ye here with the ass, and I and the lad will go yonder and worship, and come again.-’ The word rendered come again (we will return) is in the plural number, and seems to indicate a belief on the part of Abraham, that God would immediately raise Isaac up again from the dead (Milligan, ibid.) The account of this, the severest trial and consequently the supreme manifestation of Abraham’s faith, is related in Genesis 22:1-14).

(7) Having walked in faith, he likewise died in faith, not having received the promises but having seen them and greeted them from afar, etc. What were the promises? (a) That Abraham should have a, numerous offspring (Genesis 13:16; Genesis 15:3-5; Genesis 17:2-4; Genesis 22:16); (b) that God would be a God to him and to his seed after him (Genesis 17:1-8); (c) that He would give to him and his seed an everlasting inheritance (Genesis 12:7; Genesis 13:15; Genesis 15:18-21; Genesis 17:8); (d) that through him and his seed, all the nations of the earth should be blessed (Genesis 2:3; Genesis 22:18). With respect to these four details, Abraham looked beyond their literal to their spiritual fulfilment. To each of these God attached a double significance.. They each consisted, so to speak, of two elements, one of which had reference to the carnal side of the covenant, and the other to the spiritual side; one to the type, and the other to the antitype. Thus Abraham was made the honored father of two families: to each of which an inheritance was promised, and through each of which the world was to be blessed (Milligan, ibid.). Abraham, it would seem, understood all this, understood by faith that the spiritual side of the promise would be realized through his seed, the Messiah, and consequently rejoiced to see his day, and he saw it, and was glad (John 8:56). (Cf. Galatians 4:21-31; Galatians 3:6-13, etc.) Hence, he died in faith, knowing that the promise in its various details would be worked out according to God’s eternal purpose and plan. Hence, too, by his constant life and walk of faith, he admitted that he did not seek a home on this earth, that here he considered himself merely a stranger and sojourner, that he did not expect to enter into possession of his true home until he should have reached the end of his pilgrimage and been received into a better country than this, i.e., heaven itself. Wherefore God approved and rewarded the faith of Abraham, and of Isaac and Jacob as well, by preparing for their inhabitation, and for all the redeemed of all ages, a city whose foundations had, even in their day, been laid prospectively in the blood of Jesus Christ (cf. Hebrews 12:22-24).

2. Note, in the second place, that Abraham’s pilgrimage of faith was designed to be typical of the believer’s journey.

(1) A voyage to a distant landsuch is the life of every Christian believer.

Our life is like the hurrying on the eve Before we start on some long journey bound, When fit preparing to the last we leave, Then run to every room the dwelling round, And sigh that nothing needed can be found; Yet go we must, and soon as day shall break; We snatch an hour’s repose; when loud the sound For our departure calls; we rise and take A quick and sad farewell, and go ere well awake.

(2) Here we walk by faith, and not by sight, if we are true Christians. Though in the world, we are not of the world. The worldly spirit deals with things present, but the spirit of faith anticipates the more glorious things to come. The worldly spirit is neither far-reaching nor far-sighted. Its range is bounded by the horizon of time and sense. It has no wings with which to soar into realms invisible. It is of the earth, earthly. Whence comes the manna? why gushes the water from the rock? whither guides the pillar of cloud and fire?these are questions it never asks. It knows not how to soar, how to anticipate and trust and wait, how to endure as seeing Him who is invisible, how to repose under the shadow of His wings, unmindful of the dangers of the wilderness and unalarmed by foes. But the heavenly-minded man walks by faiththat faith which is the substance of things hoped for, and a conviction with respect to things not seen. And, among all the great verities which possess his soul there is none greater, none nobler, none surer, than his conviction with respect to the saints-’ everlasting home. All the circumstances of his present journey, all the remembrances, all his reasonings, all his aspirations, point to a Better Land. By faith he sings:

There is a land of pure delight,

Where saints immortal reign,

Infinite day excludes the night,

And pleasures banish pain.

There everlasting spring abides

And never-withering flowers;

Death, like a narrow sea, divides

This heavenly land from ours.

(3) We realize that as far as this present life is concerned we are but strangers and sojourners on the earth. We dwell in tents, as did Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; in the tabernacles of a night-time. We are here today, and gone tomorrow. There is nothing that we possess here that we can really call our own. All that we shall have in the end is a few square feet of earth in which our mortal remains will be laid away to mingle with the dust. This is not sentimentaityit is plain fact. We can-’t take anything material with us into the next world, for the simple reason that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God. No matter how diligently we may toil and strive to accumulate houses and lands and worldly goods, of what value will these things be when we reach the end of the road? We are pilgrims, nothing more, walking by faith in the direction of the heavenly country which we expect to reach beyond the swelling of the Jordan, the country that will truly be, Home, Sweet Home. The true Christian philosophy is expressed by Phoebe Carey in these lines:

One sweetly solemn thought

Comes to me o-’er and o-’er:

I am nearer my home today

Than I have ever been before.

Nearer my Father’s house

Where the many mansions be;

Nearer the great white throne,

Nearer the crystal sea.

Nearer the bound of life,

Where we lay our burdens down;

Nearer leaving the cross,

Nearer gaining the crown.

(4) Observation teaches us that much in this life is inequality and injustice. As far as this world alone is concerned, honesty is not always the best policy, Judas fares about as well as John, and Nero quaffs more of the wine of living than Paul. The voice of experience speaks to us that if this life is all, it is scarcely worth the living. In the words of Robert Browning:

Truly there needs be another life to come! If this be all And another life await us not for one, I say, -Tis a poor cheat, a stupid bungle, A wretched failure, I for one protest Against, and I hurl it back with scorn.

(5) Life as we live it here is largely illusion. (See F. W. Robertson, Sermons, The Illusiveness of Life). Our senses deceive us. They deceive us with respect to distance, shape, and color. That which, afar off, seems to be oval, turns out to be circular when modified by the perspective of distance; that which appears to be a speck, becomes a vast body, on nearer approach. Stand in the middle of a railroad track, and look in either direction, and the rails appear to converge; but they do not actually do so. Look at what we call the horizon and it seems that the earth and sky meet, but they do not actually, meet. The beautiful berry turns out to be bitter and poisonous; that which apparently moves is in reality at rest; that which seems to be stationary is in perpetual motion; the earth moves, but the sun, which appears to be moving, stands still. All experience here is but a correction of life’s illusionsa modification or reversal of the judgment of the senses. Our natural anticipations deceive us. Every human life starts out bright with hopes that will never be realized. These hopes may be different in nature: finer spirits may look on life as an arena for good deeds, while the more selfish regard it as a place only for personal enjoyment; but the results are usually the same. Regardless of the nature of these hopes, the majority will fail of fruition. It would seem almost a satire on life to compare the youth in the outset of his career, flushed and sanguine, with the aspect of the same man when he is nearly done, worn, sobered, covered with the dust of life, confessing that its days have been few and evil. Where is the land flowing with milk and honey? Not on this earth. With our affections it is even worse. Man’s affections are but tabernacles of Canaan, the tents of a nighttime, never the same, always changing. Where are the charms of character, the perfection and purity and truthfulness which seemed so resplendent in our friend? Association has rendered them sordid. They were only our conceptions and they proved false; hence we outgrow friendships. Life as we live it here is an unenjoyable Canaan with nothing real or substantial about it. Our expectations, resting on divine revelation, deceive us. For example, the attitude of the church with respect to the second coming of Christ. The apostles expected Him to return while they were yet here, and the early churches were vitalized by this hope of seeing the great and notable day of the Lord. John, in penning the last words of the New Testament, expressed this hope, Come, Lord Jesus. The church, throughout the centuries of the Christian era, has revived and revitalized this hope many times; in fact it has never died away. And even today, if it should turn out that we who are alive shall remain unto the coming of the Lord, we would consider ourselves fortunate indeed. However, He has not come. He will comebut not as yet. The promise, This Jesus shall so come in like manner as ye beheld him going into heaven, remains unfulfilled. What is the meaning of all this illusiveness of earthly life? Faith replies that it is not delusion, but illusion; that the non-fulfilment of the promises literally, is a pledge of their spiritual fulfilment later; that God, by their very non-realization, lures us onward and upward to nobler things. Suppose, for instance, that the spiritual side of the Abrahamic promise had been revealed to ancient Israel at first; suppose they had been informed at the outset that God’s rest is inward, that the land of promise is to be found only in the Jerusalem which is above; not material, but immaterial; not visible, but invisible. That rude, gross people, yearning after the flesh-pots of Egypt, willing to go back into slavery so only they might have enough to eat and drinkwould they have quitted Egypt on such terms? Would they have taken one step on that pilgrimage which was to find its meaning in the discipline of the ages? Nothey had to be lured on by something visible, something tangible. So we are lured on through life as upon a journey. Could man see the route before hima flat, straight road, unbroken by tree or eminence, with the sun’s heat burning down upon it, stretching out in dreamy monotonyhe could scarcely find either the inclination or the energy with which to begin his journey. It is the very uncertainty of that which is not seen, that which lies just around the bend, that keeps expectation alive. The view we think we may get from yonder summit, the landscape that may be glimpsed as the road winds around yonder knoll, hopes like these beguile the weary traveler on. So our heavenly Father leads us on, educating us day by day, and hour by hour, to walk in faith, ever holding up the seen as an incentive to the unseen. So He deals with us, luring us on by means of life’s unsatisfactory and illusive rewards, ever schooling us in the art of waiting, of enduring as seeing Him who is invisible. Canaan first; then the hope of a Redeemer; and finally the Better Land. It was in this manner that the ancient saints interpreted this mystery of the illusiveness of life. They did not regard life as a dream, nor as a bubble, nor as a delusion. Though they no doubt felt as keenly as any moralist could feel; the brokenness of its promises, yet by faith they pressed on, confessing that they were pilgrims and strangers here, that they had no continuing city, never mournfully moralizing about it, but admitting it cheerfully and even rejoicing that it was so. They felt that all was right; they knew that the promise had a deeper than material significance; so they looked for the city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God. They even died in faith, not having received the promises, not expecting to receive them here, but hereafter. Now observe the glorious result that comes from the indestructible power of believing and continuing on, in spite of apparent failure. The primitive Christians, for instance, believed in their day that the millennium was at hand. They had heard the apostolic warning, brief and clear, to watch. Now suppose, instead of this, they had been able to look into the future and see all the dreary pages of church history unfolded, with its heresies, its apostasy and divisions; suppose they could have known that even after two thousand years the world would scarcely know the alphabet of the Christian religion; knowing all these things, what would have become of their gigantic and heroic efforts, their sacrifices, their persecutions and their martyrdoms? With such knowledge of the future, do you suppose there ever would have been what we consider the heroism, the sacrifice, the passionate zeal of primitive Christianity? It is in this way that God leads His children on, on to realization and achievement through the illusiveness of the past; as a father educates his child, holding up the seen, all the while nurturing the thought of the unseen. Thus we shall continue to the endto that day when the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of our God and His Christ. Thus the non-fulfilment of God’s promises becomes to the man of faith an earnest of their deeper and nobler fulfilment.

(6) Finally, as in Abraham’s case, heaven is the goal of our pilgrimage. We expect to find illusion here, and we expect to find reality hereafter. We know that things here are seen and temporal, and we know, too, that the things we shall enjoy hereafter, the things that are now unseen, will be eternal. Interpreted, then, in the light of faith, life’s illusions are not disappointing; in fact nothing is disappointment if spiritually discerned. Wherefore God is not ashamed to be called our God; for he hath prepared for us a city (Hebrews 11:16).

There’s a land that is fairer than day,

And by faith we can see it afar,

For the Father waits over the way,

To prepare us a dwelling-place there.

Just recently Dr. F. B. Meyer, one of England’s greatest preachers, entered into rest. Writing to a friend just three days before his death, this is what he said: Dear Friend: I have just been told, to my surprise, that my days on earth are numbered. It may be that before you receive this letter, I shall have passed within the Palace of the King. Do not trouble to write. I will meet you in the morning. Yours, with much love, F. B. Meyer. I will meet you in the morningwithin the palace of the King. This is Christian faith. This is conviction. Death isn-’t the end, it is the beginning, the beginning of greater growth, greater progress, greater service, and greater joy. As Louise Chandler Moulton has written:

At the end of Love, at the end of Life, At the end of Hope, at the end of Strife, At the end of all that we cling to so The sun is settingmust we go?

At dawn of Love, at Dawn of Life, At dawn of Peace that follows Strife, At dawn of all we long for so The sun is rising*let us go!

Conclusion:* Wherefore God is not ashamed of them, to be called their God; for he hath prepared for them a city. This is the promise! And God keeps His promises!

How beautiful to be with God,

When earth is fading like a dream,

And from this mist-encircled shore

To launch upon the unknown stream!

No doubt, no fear, no anxious care,

But, comforted by staff and rod,

In the faith-brightened hour of death,

How beautiful to be with God.

Beyond the partings and the pains,

Beyond the sighing and the tears,

Oh, beautiful to be with God

Through all the endless, blessed years

To see His face, to hear His voice,

To know Him better day by day,

And love Him as the flowers love light,

And serve Him as immortals may.

My sinner friend, will you not turn now, and start upon your pilgrimage of faith?

Genesis 19:1-3

PART THIRTY-TWO THE STORY OF ABRAHAM: LOT’S LAST DAYS

Genesis 19:1-38

1. Lot’s Hospitality (Genesis 19:1-3)

1 And the two angels came to Sodom at even; and Lot sat in the gate of Sodom: and Lot saw them, and rose up to meet them; and he bowed himself with his face to the earth; 2 and he said, Behold now, my lords, turn aside, I pray you, into your servant’s house, and tarry all night, and wash your feet, and ye shall rise up early, and go on your way. And they said, Nay; but we will abide in the street all night. 3 And he urged them greatly; and they turned in unto him, and entered into his house; and he made them a feast, and did bake unleavened bread, and they did eat.

While Abraham had been pleading with God, the other two heavenly Visitants had entered the doomed city. Note, the two angels came. Speiser (ABG, 138): This identification is meant for the reader, who knows that Yahweh stayed behind with Abraham (Genesis 18:22) in order to tell him of the melancholy mission. The author was equally direct in introducing the other visit (Genesis 18:1). But Lot must discover the truth for himself, as Abraham did earlier. It was in the light of the miracle (Genesis 19:11) that the men (Genesis 19:5; Genesis 19:8; Genesis 19:10; cf. Genesis 18:22) were now clearly revealed as angels. It is at this point that the text becomes more specific. By thus viewing the action through the eyes of the actors, the spectator also is caught up in the unfolding drama, in spite of his advance knowledge. Note that the angels arrived at Sodom at even, that is, in the evening. Now the southern tip of what is now the Dead Sea is some forty miles from Hebron. Normal traveling time for that distance in the patriarchal age would have been about two days; supposing these visitors had left their sumptuous meal at Abraham’s tent toward mid-afternoon, they must have had superhuman powers to have made the journey in such a short time. Note the following suggestions, from Jewish sources (SC, 93), in which they are treated as angels: It would surely not have taken them so long to go from Hebron to Sodom; but they were merciful angels, and they waited until Abraham finished his pleading, in the hope they would not have to destroy the place.. Similarly, they came there immediately after they left Abraham, but did not enter the city until even, hoping that Abraham’s prayers would be efficacious. (The first of these suggestions is from the medieval commentator Rashi (d. 1105), the second from Sforno, who died at Bologna in 1550). (We must remember that angels are represented in Scripture as having superhuman knowledge, but not omniscience).

Lot sat in the gate of Sodom. The gate was the usual resort of all, and especially of the elders, of whatever city. There legal issues were adjudicated, transactions completed, bargains made, everyday affairs discussed. The gate was the focal point of all communal activities in an urban center like Sodom. Lot arose to meet his visitors, and bowed himself with his face to the earth (the manner in which courtiers and clients address their superiors in the Amarna letters; in the corresponding case of Abraham (Genesis 18:2), the term for face is significantly missing, ABG, 138).

Lot’s hospitality was, in the main, according to the usual ritual, but with significant overtones. (1) He urged them to turn aside, etc. Having gone out to meet them, he invited them to come to his house (in contrast to Abraham’s tent, Genesis 18:1; Genesis 18:6; Genesis 18:9-10), suggesting that they turn aside to get there, that is, take a roundabout way. At the same time he invited them to tarry all night at his house, adding, and wash your feet, and ye shall rise up early, and go on your way. Customarily, this order would have been reversed, that is, the washing of feet should have been the first act of the, ritual. But, according to Rashi, Lot feared that if they washed their feet first, and would then be discovered, the Sodomites would accuse him of having harboured them already for a few days. He therefore asked them to spend the night there without washing their feet, to make it appear that they had only just arrived (SC, 93). When the celestial visitors modestly declined Lot’s invitation, stating their preference to abide in the street all night (for the purpose, it seems, of evaluating realistically the abhorrent vices of the Sodomites), Lot is said to have urged them greatly: evidently he pressured them as courteously as possible not to do this, because he knew well the lust and violence to which they would be subjected (undoubtedly a point in his favor). (To pass the night in the street was not an unusual thing. The climate permitted such a course; wrapped in their cloaks, travelers frequently spent the night sleeping in the street, especially in the broad place, the enlarged area just within the city gate which served as the market place and the concourse for all types of people). In response to Lot’s urgency the angels turned in unto him, and entered into his house: that is, they took a circuitous path to get there. Safely within the house, Lot proceeded with true. Oriental hospitality to bake unleavened bread and make a feast, and they did eat. The same excellent courtesy which we have noted in Abraham still characterizes the nephew.

We may well ask, Why was Lot in the gate of Sodom in the first place? Whitelaw (PCG, 252):In what capacity Lot was sitting in the gate is not narrated. That he was on the outlook for travelers on whom to practice the hospitality he had learned from his uncle (Poole, Willet, Calvin, Lange) is perhaps to form too high an ideal of his piety (Kalisch); while the explanation that he had been promoted to the dignity of one of the city judges, though not perhaps justified as an inference from Genesis 19:9, is not at all unlikely, considering his relationship to Abraham. Jamieson (CECG, 160), concerning the gate: In eastern cities it is the market, and is often devoted to other business transactions (Ruth, ch. 4), the administration of justice, and the enjoyment of social intercourse and amusement; especially it is a favorite lounge in the evenings, the arched roof affording a pleasant shade. Or, was Lot’s presence at the gate of Sodom a further proof of his moral and spiritual degeneracy? As Leupold puts it (EG, 555-556): Lot’s presence here will hardly be accounted for on the assumption that he was on the lookout for guests in order to afford his hospitality an opportunity to welcome chance strangers. Strangers cannot have been so common in those days. Rather, Lot’s presence in the gate constitutes a reproach to the otherwise good and -righteous-’ man (2 Peter 2:8). After having first moved into the Plain of Sodom (Genesis 13:11), he presently chose Sodom itself as his dwelling place (Genesis 13:12); and now finally he has arrived at the point where the activities, the bustle and stir, are looked upon with a more or less tolerant interest. This much cannot be denied in the reference to Lot, that when the approach of the strangers is noticed by him, he promptly advances to them with a gracious invitation. He is not ignorant of the danger that threatens chance visitors in such a town. He arises to meet them and bows with the customary respectful oriental salutation.. With anxiety for their welfarefor he knows what men in the open must faceand, perhaps, consciously at no small risk to himself, he makes his invitation as attractive as possible. (It should be recalled here that, according to Scripture, God does not look with favor on the concentration of population. His command was, at the first, be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it, Genesis 1:28. Replenish here means to stock the whole earth with progeny. But the rebellious race took the opposite course: they concentrated on a plain in Shinar and presumed to build a city and a towera tower whose top would reach unto heavenmaking it necessary for God to confound their speech and thus scatter them abroad: Genesis 11:1-9. Concentration of population invariably breeds vice, crime, violence, and strife of every kind.)

Review Questions

See Genesis 19:30-38.

Genesis 19:4-11

2. The Violence of the Sodomites (Genesis 19:4-11)

4 But before they lay down, the men of the city, even the men of Sodom, compassed the house round, both young and old, all the people from every quarter; 5 and they called unto Lot, and said unto him, Where are the men that came in to thee this night? bring them out unto us, that we may know them. 6 And Lot went out unto them to the door, and shut the door after him. 7 And he said, I pray you, my brethren, do not so wickedly. 8 Be-hold now, I have two daughters that have not known man; let me, I pray you, bring them out unto you, and do ye to them as is good in your eyes: only unto these men do nothing, forasmuch as they are come under the shadow of my roof. 9 And they said, Stand back. And they said, This One fellow came in to sojourn, and he will needs be a judge: now will we deal worse with thee, than with them. And they pressed sore upon the man, even Lot, and drew near to break the door. 10 But the men put forth their hand, and brought Lot into the house to them, and shut to the door. 11 And they smote the men that Were at the door of the house with blindness, both small and great, so that they wearied themselves to find the door.

Before Lot and the members of his household and his celestial visitors lay down, that is, could retire for the night, the men of Sodom surrounded the house, both young and old, all of them from every quarter, i.e., from one end of the city to the other, there not being even one righteous man to protest (SC, 94), The mob cried out to Lot to bring his visitors out to them that we may know them. i.e., vent our lust upon them (Rashi, et al). This demand was, of course, the basest violation of the sacred rite of hospitality, and the most shameless proclamation of their sin (COTP, 233). (The verb know, as used here, is used in the same sense as in Judges 19:22-26, namely, as having reference to such perversions of the sex function as homosexuality (including Lesbianism), pederasty, bestiality, etc., practices everywhere prevalent among the Canaanites (Leviticus 18:3; Leviticus 18:22-23; Leviticus 20:13; Leviticus 20:15), and according to the Apostle Paul, Romans 1:24-27, the curse of heathenism generally. It will be recalled that the Cult of Fertility, worship of the Sun-father and the Earth-Mother, which characterized the entire ancient pagan world, featured ritual prostitution, phallic worship, etc., and sanctioned all forms of individual sex perversion as well). It was at this point that Lot committed the egregious error of offering as a substitute his two virgin daughters to be used as the attackers might want to use them to satisfy their unnatural lust. But the immediate response was even more threatening. This fellow (Lot), they cried out, who is only a sojourner in our city, has been trying to play the role of a judge all this while (undoubtedly this means that he had been wont to reprove the people for their iniquitous ways), so now let us be rid of him. In exasperation they threaten to deal with him severely, that is, not just to abuse him sexually as they sought to abuse his guests, but actually to kill him. To the heavenly visitors all this was the final proof that Sodom was fit only for destruction; and so they pulled Lot back into the house, closed the door, and smote the men outside with blindness. What is involved here is not the common affliction, not just -total blindness,-’ but a sudden stroke. a blinding flash emanating from angelswho thereby abandon their human disguisewhich would induce immediate, if temporary, loss of sight, much like the desert or snow blindness (ABG, 39). Thus, as has often been the case, human violence was frustrated by divine intervention.

3. Lot’s Degeneracy

This has already been pointed out (1) as beginning in his move to the Plain of Sodom (Genesis 13:11) being motivated by the prospect of material prosperity and ease, (2) as continuing in his choice of the city itself as a dwelling-place, and thus (at least tacitly) accepting the activities of his urban environment with a more or less tolerant interest, (3) is now accentuated by his willingness to allow his two virgin daughters to be victims in a sexual orgy by the lustful male Sodomites (Genesis 19:8). About all that can be said in his favor is that he did adhere closely to the prescribed cult of hospitality and did try in his own weak way to protect his guests from the unnatural vice with which the Sodomites threatened them. Butdid fidelity to the law of hospitality justify his willingness to make scapegoats of his daughters? For example, note this comment: At that period the honour of a woman was of less account, Genesis 12:10 f. than the sacred duty of hospitality (JB, 35). Cf. Skinner (ICCG, 307):-’ The unnatural vice which derives its name from the incident was viewed in Israel as the lowest depth of moral corruption (cf. Leviticus 18:22 ff; Leviticus 20:13; Leviticus 20:23; Ezekiel 16:50, Judges 19:22). Lot’s readiness to sacrifice the honor of his daughters, though abhorrent to Hebrew morality (cf. Judges 19:25; Judges 19:30), shows him a courageous champion of the obligations of hospitality in a situation of extreme embarrassment, and is recorded-’ to his credit. The over-all consensus is, however, that Lot’s action in the offer to sacrifice his daughters on the altar of human male lust was, whatever mitigating circumstances might be offered in his defense, morally without excuse. Thus Delitzsch (COPT, 233): In his anxiety, Lot was willing to sacrifice to the sanctity of hospitality his duty as a father, which ought to have been still more sacred, and committed the sin of seeking to avert sin by sin. Even if he expected that his daughters would suffer no harm, as they were betrothed to Sodomites (Genesis 19:14), the offer was a grievous violation of his paternal duty. While the narrative reveals Lot’s hospitality, it also reveals his wickedness (SC, 94). Murphy (MG, 322): How familiar Lot had become with vice, when any necessity whatever could induce him to offer his daughters to the lust of these Sodomites! We may suppose it was spoken rashly, in the heat of the moment, and with the expectation that he would not be taken at his word. So it turned out. (This fact surely points up the infamy of the men of Sodom: they would not be satisfied with what females could offer; they had to have males to serve their purposes.) Leupold (EG, 559-560): The kindest interpretation of Lot’s willingness to sacrifice his daughters to the depraved lusts of these evildoers stresses that it was done with the intent of guarding his guests. To that certainly must be added the fact that under the circumstances Lot was laboring under a certain confusion. But Delitzsch’s summary still covers the truth, when he describes Lot’s mistakes as being an attempt to avoid sin by sin. In days of old, when an exaggerated emphasis on hospitality prevailed, we might have understood how such a sacrifice could be made by a father. But in our day we cannot but feel the strongest aversion to so unpaternal an attitude. Luther’s attempts to vindicate Lot’s character are quite unconvincing: for Lot could hardly have anticipated with a certain shrewdness that the Sodomites were so bent on this particular form of vileness as to refuse any substitutes. In fact, their refusal to accept Lot’s substitute argues for an intensity of evil purpose that surpasses all comprehension. Jamieson (CECG, 160): The offer made by Lot was so extreme as plainly shows that he had been thrown into a state of the most perturbed and agitated feeling, between fear of the popular violence and solicitude for the safety of the strangers that were under his roof. The incident (IB, 626-627)* is* recorded to Lot’s credit as one who was concerned at all costs to fulfill the sacred obligation of a host to protect his guests. At the same time, such treatment of the daughters would have been abhorrent to Hebrew morality. Again, (ibid): Compared with the general population of Sodom Lot was a decent person. The writer of Second Peter (Genesis 2:6-8) could even think of him as -just Lot, vexed with the filthy conversation of the wicked.-’ The moments came when, as in the vile events described in this chapter, he was more than vexed. He tried to resist the extreme outrage which the lustful gang in Sodom were about to perpetrate upon the men who had harborage in his house. He would go to great length to fulfill the obligation of hospitalityan obligation which in his world and time was one of the supreme laws of honor. But he had got himself into a place where there could be no decent way out of the crisis that had caught him. All he could think of was the desperate and shameful alternative of sacrificing his own daughters. Even this would not avail. The gang that assaulted his house wanted the men who were his guests therewanted them for sodomy, the vileness to which the city of Sodom gave its name. In the day when Lot made what he thought was his smart decision to select the neighborhood of Sodom, in the choice Abraham offered him, he did not foresee that the place would prove so evil. But because he did not care enough to consider that, he took the chance and reaped the consequences. Like many another man since, he learned that early choices which seem clever when they smother conscience must pay their heavy reckoning. There is no guarantee of limited ability for a wrong act.(italics mine-C.C.)

There are three summarizations of Lot’s acts and their motivations which are worthy of being presented here to bring to a close this phase of our subject. The first is by Whitelaw (PCG, 253): The usual apologiesthat in sacrificing his daughters to the Sodomites instead of giving up his guests to their unnatural lust, Lot (1) selected the lesser of two sins (Ambrose); (2) thereby protected his guests and discharged the duties of hospitality incumbent on him (Chrysostom); (3) believed his daughters would not be desired by the Sodomites, either because of their well-known betrothal (Rosenmuller), or because of the unnatural lust of the Sodomites (Lange); (4) acted -rough mental perturbation-’ (Augustine)are insufficient to excuse the wickedness of one who in attempting to prevent one sin was himself guilty of another (Delitzsch), who in seeking to be a faithful friend forgot to be an affectionate father (Kalisch), and who, though bound to defend his guests at the risk of his own life, was not at liberty to purchase their safety by the sacrifice of his daughters (-Speaker’s Commentary-’).

A second excellent summarization is that of Speiser (ABG, 143): Lot is dutiful in his hospitality. His manner with the visitors, however, appears servile (-with his face to the ground,-’ Genesis 19:1), as contrasted with the simple dignity of Abraham (Genesis 18:2), and both his invitation and subsequent preparations lack his uncle’s spontaneity. But true to the unwritten code, Lot will stop at nothing in order to protect his guests. Presently, the identity of the visitors is revealed in a flash of supernatural light (Genesis 19:11). The angels-’ intercession serves to bring out the latent weaknesses in Lot’s character. He is undecided, flustered, ineffectual. His own sons-in-law refuse to take him seriously (14). He hesitates to turn his back on his possessions, and has to be led to safety by the hand (16), like a childan ironic sidelight on a man who a moment earlier tried to protect his celestial guests (von Rad). Lot’s irresoluteness makes him incoherent (20). Small wonder that his deliverance is finally achieved without a moment to spare. Had the sun risen an instant sooner, Lot might have shared the fate of his wife; for God’s mysterious workings must not be looked at by man. In addition to all this, Lot’s degeneracy is further underscored, in his declining years, by intoxication and incest (Genesis 19:30-38). Though neither of these were of his own making, they surely do point up his failure as a father, by proving that he allowed his offspring to suffer the contaminations of the environment in which he had placed them by his own choice and had allowed them to grow up, to become promised to men of Sodom, and so to become infected by the moral rot with which the Cities of the Plain fairly stank. It is significantis it not?that after this last-recorded disgraceful incident, the name of Lot disappears completely from sacred history, not even his death being recorded. Here is an eternal picture of the corrosive possibilities of a bad environment. Those who accustom themselves to the ways of an evil society may themselves at last be evil. What is happening now to people who make no effective protest against the wrongs they live with every day? (IBG, 624). As Alexander Pope has put it so succinctly:

Vice is a monster of so frightful mien, As to be hated needs but to be seen; Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face, We first endure, then pity, then embrace.

A final summation here is of special interest, even though it takes the form of a contrast: Lot and Abraham both were righteous men (Genesis 15:6, 2 Peter 2:7; 2 Peter 2:9), and both enjoyed similar backgrounds and advantages. Abraham, however, -looked -forward to the city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God (Hebrews 11:10). Lot, on the contrary, looked toward the city without heavenly foundations, choosing for the present time without concern for eternity (Genesis 13:5-18). Lot’s misfortune should be a warning for all (HSB, 31).

4. The Iniquity of Sodom and Gomorrah

The iniquity of the Cities of the Plain included certain corollary practices, such as (1) lack of social justice (Isaiah 1:9-17), (2) reveling in the indulgence of all kinds of vice openly (Isaiah 3:4-12: note tendency in our day to assume that there is a certain virtue in unblushing openness in the practice of vicea sophisticated kind of hypocrisy; (3) priestly (ecclesiastical) heresy and moral corruption (Jeremiah 23:14-15); complete disregard of the poor, in an affluent society: poverty in the midst of plenty (Ezekiel 16:49); preoccupation with things of the secular world (Luke 17:26-32); obsession with sex (Jude 1:7: note the phrase, gone after strange flesh, that is, a departure from the order of nature in the corruptions practised). (In our day the ancient Cult of Fertility has been superseded by the by-products of libidinal psychology).

It was the city’s sexual depravity, however, that provided the basic reason for its utter destruction. On this fact the consensus is practically universal. E.g., The sin of Sodom was unnatural vice (IB, 627), as is evident from the fact that Lot knew all too well what remaining in the street all night would have meant to his visitors. The unnatural vice that takes its name from this incident was an abomination to the Israelites, Leviticus 18:22, and was punished with death Leviticus 20:13; but it was rife among their neighbors, Leviticus 20:23; cf. Judges 19:22 ff (Job 35). The unnatural vice alluded to here was, undoubtedly homosexuality, in all likelihood accompanied by all forms of sex perversion. (It should be noted that bestiality is also specifically mentioned in the Scripture references: cf. Leviticus 18:22-23; Leviticus 20:13-16.) Lesbianism (female homosexuality) was probably common also: the name derives from the island of Lesbos where Sappho the Greek poetess, maintained the first finishing school in history for young women, which achieved the reputation of having been a disseminator of this vice among the women of Lesbos and the surrounding Greek states.)

Young men and women of our time need to be warned against these unnatural practices. In this category belong the solitary sex acts (voluntary in origin and involving sex satisfaction through some method of erotic stimulation of the sex organs). These are unnatural in that they involve the abuse of the sex function; they are harmful in that they tend to become habitual and hence gradually to weaken the will. In this category we put the following: masturbation, commonly called self-abuse, sometimes erroneously called onanism (cf. Genesis 38:8-10). (Onan’s act was an offense against the theocratic family, not an act indulged for erotic pleasure). The act, however, if it becomes habitual with young boys, certainly tends to vitiate the will; if persistently practised, undoubtedly it contributes to impotence in later life. Bestiality, coition of a human being with a brute; necrophilia, erotic satisfaction obtained by physical sexual contact with a corpse (a practice prevalent in ancient Egypt especially, where mummification of corpses of the nobility, both male and female, was common); fetishism, an act in which the person obtains sexual gratification onanistically with the aid of a symbol, usually a symbol of the loved object; transvestism, putting on the clothing of the opposite sex for purposes of erotic satisfaction; scoptophilia*,* the avid viewing of the external sex organs or of actual sex acts for the purpose of obtaining sex excitation; voyeurism, defined as pathological indulgence in looking at some form of nudity as a source of gratification in place of the normal sex act. Under this heading we must also include obscenity, pornography, lasciviousness (Galatians 5:19), lewdness, exhibitionism (indecent exposure), etc.

Homosexual activity, even though it involves another person, belongs in the category of solitary sex acts because the erotic pleasure is confined to the one who plays the role of the active agent in the perversion. Homosexuality may stem from a glandular dysfunction; generally, however, it seems to be psychological in origin, that is, a habit formed in adolescence which results in such a weakening of the will that the victim, in adulthood, lacks the mental and physical strength to cast it off. In the end, its effect, like that of alcoholism, is often pathological; obviously, it is not a natural use of the sex function. Many eminent authorities speak of it as a cogenital anomaly rather than a disease. Usually the homosexual possesses characteristic psychic and physical traits of the opposite sex. Pederasty is carnal copulation of an adult as the active partner with a boy as the passive partner. Sodomy, basically, is defined (WNCD) as carnal copulation with a member of the same sex or with an animal, or unnatural copulation with a member of the opposite sex. As a matter of fact, however, the term has come to be used in many legal codes for all kinds of sex perversion. History proves that in cultures in which homosexuality has become a practice woman has never been accorded any particularly honorable status; moreover, that the spread of the perversion throughout the population, as in the days of the so-called Enlightenment in Athens and in those of the Empire in Rome, is an unfailing mark of national decadence. The morale of a people depends upon the national morality; and the national standard of morality depends very largely on the nation’s sex morality. Socrates, in Athens, had his belovedhis name was Alcibiades. Plato winked at the practice. Pericles, the great Athenian statesman, on the other hand, despised it. And Aristotle deplored it, criticizing Plato for his seeming tolerance of the perversion. It is amazing to discover how many eminent persons in the field of literature in particular have been enslaved by it, and one might well say, haunted by the enslavement. (See Paul’s list of the vices of the pagan world, Romans 1:18-32). Parentshave a* s*olemn obligation in our day to instruct their children about these unnatural uses of the sex function; moreover, this instruction should begin even before the child reaches adolescence. Let it never be overlooked, as Dr. Will Durant has stated so pointedly, that the control of the sex impulse is the first principle of civilization,to be blunt, the first step out of the barnyard.

Any act of sex perversion is a selfish prostitution of the sex function: it gives pleasure only to the one who performs the act, and physical pleasure only. In the true conjugal union, however, one that is sanctified by mutual love, the participants enjoy the planned sharing of the bliss, one with the other; indeed this bliss is enhanced by the fact that each participant is thinking in terms of what is being contributed to the enjoyment of the other: the satisfaction thus becomes spiritual and not exclusively physical. There is a vast difference here, difference which evinces the sanctity of the conjugal union and the superiority of monogamy as a selective institution. Let us remember that love is a permanent and fixed attitude which puts the interest of the one loved above the interests of the lover: the reversal of this sacrificial quality is the fallacy which permeates Fletcher’s so-called situationist ethics, which in essence is the advocacy of sheer, selfishness. The physiological sex union of husband and wife in the conjugal relation has by divine ordination a twofold purpose: it is procreative, i.e., it guarantees the preservation of the race, and it is unitive in that it enhances the intimacy of the conjugal relation. Obviously, because homosexuality thwarts these ends of marriage, it is unnatural. On the basis of the Principle of Universalization, namely, that the moral validity of a human act is to be realistically tested by considering what the consequences would be if every human being did it under the same or similar circumstances, indubitably homosexuality would destroy the race in short order. Hence the Divine pronouncements recorded in Genesis 1:26-31; Genesis 2:18; Genesis 2:21-25. It simply is not good for the man to be alone: under such conditions his potentialities could never be realized and the race would die aborning. Moreover, in every case of addiction to the practice, it could serve only to debase the intimacy of the marriage relation and so to vitiate the very character and design of the conjugal union. Sexual coition without love is simply that of the brute. On the other hand, coition sanctified by love, is treated in Scripture as an allegory of the mystical relationship between Christ and His Bride, the Church. (Cf. the entire Song of Solomon; also Ephesians 5:22-33, 2 Corinthians 11:2; Revelation 21:1-4, etc.). (Suggested reading: The Sexual Offender and His Offenses, by Benjamin Karpman, M.D., Julian Press, Inc., New York, 1954).

In view of all these facts, we are not surprised to find that sodomy is anathematized throughout both the Old and New Testaments as an abomination to God, and that the terrible judgment which descended on Sodom and Gomorrah is repeatedly cited as a warning to all people who would tolerate such iniquity. Thus the name of Sodom itself has become a byword among all peoples whose God is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. See, on sodomy, Exodus 22:19, Judges 19:22 ff; Leviticus 18:22-23; Leviticus 20:13-16; Leviticus 20:23; Romans 1:24-27; Romans 9:29; 1 Corinthians 6:9, 1 Timothy 1:10; on sodomites, Deuteronomy 23:17-18; 1 Kings 14:23-24; 1 Kings 15:12; 1 Kings 22:46; 2 Kings 23:7; on the divine judgment visited on the Cities of the Plain, Deuteronomy 29:23; Deuteronomy 32:32; Isaiah 1:9-10; Isaiah 3:9; Isaiah 13:19; Jeremiah 20:15; Jeremiah 49:17-18; Jeremiah 23:13-15; Jeremiah 50:40; Ezekiel 16:46-51, Ezek. 53:58; Lamentations 4:6; Amos 4:11, Hosea 11:8, Zephaniah 2:9; Matthew 10:15; Matthew 11:23-24; Luke 10:12; Luke 17:28-30; 2 Peter 2:6; Judges 7, Revelation 11:8.

Review Questions

See Genesis 19:30-38.

Genesis 19:12-17

5. Lot’s Deliverance (Genesis 19:12-17)

12 And the men said unto Lot, Hast thou here any besides? son-in-law, and thy sons, and thy daughters, and whomsoever thou hast in the city, bring them out of the place: 13 for we will destroy this place, because the cry of them is waxed great before Jehovah; and Jehovah hath sent us to destroy it. 14 And Lot went out, and spake unto his sons-in-law, who married his daughters, and said, Up, get you out of this place; for Jehovah will destroy the city. But he seemed unto his ions-on-law as one that mocked. 15 And when the morning arose, then the angels hastened Lot, saying, Arise, take thy Wife, and thy two daughters that are here, lest thou be consumed in the iniquity of the city. 16 But he lingered; and the men laid hold upon, his hand, and upon the hand of his wife, and upon the hand of his two daughters, Jehovah being merciful unto him: and they brought him forth, and set him without the city. 17 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.

As the night wore on, filled with clamor, no doubt, and violence, the heavenly visitors vehemently assured Lot that the city faced certain destruction and warned him to gather together with all speed every member of his family if he would save them, from the impending catastrophe. Lot did as he was advised, but his warning was lost on his sons-in-law, whose thinking was so debased that they did not take him seriously; indeed they seemed to get the idea that he was making sport of them (cf. Judges 16:25). Note Genesis 19:12, son-in-law, and thy sons, and thy daughters, and whomsoever thou hast in the city. Cf. Genesis 19:14, sons-in-law who married his daughters. Various suggestions have been made to clarify these relationships: (1) that he had no sons, only daughters, and the reference in Genesis 19:12 is to the sons of his married daughters; (2) that Genesis 19:12 had reference to sons-in-law whom Lot regarded as sons. How can this be clarified in the light of Gen 19:14, sons-in-law, who married his daughters, marginal rendering, were to marry, hence only prospective sons-in-law? Rashi holds that there were two sets of sons-in-law; Ibn Ezra also explains that other sons-in-law are intended, namely, married to daughters who had died, as supported by the phrase, thy two daughters that are here which implies that there were others who were no longer here, i.e., no longer alive. (See SC, 95). Speiser points up the ambiguity of this phrase, two daughters that are here, meaning, literally, within reach, present, at hand, which, he says could mean either pledged but still at home, or unattached altogether (EG, 140). (KD, COPT, 234): Genesis 19:15 refers not to the daughters who were still in the father’s house, as distinguished from those who were married, but his wife and two daughters who were to be found with him in the house, in distinction from the bridegrooms, who also belonged to him, but were not yet living with him, and who had received his summons in scorn, because in their carnal security they did not believe in any judgment of God (Luke 17:28-29). If Lot had married daughters, he would undoubtedly have called upon them to escape along with their husbands, his sons-in-law. There need be no significant dilemma here: as stated (SIBG, 242): either Lot’s virgin-daughters had been only betrothed to them [his sons-in-law, Genesis 19:14], or Lot had other daughters who perished in the flames. Lange (CDHCG, 438): We may add that there is no intimation that Lot had warned married daughters to rise up. The consensus seems to be that the two virgin daughters (Genesis 19:8) who were with Lot in his house, and who later escaped, were about to be married to men of Sodom.

Lot’s Reluctance. When the morning arose, that is, just before the sunrise, the angels hastened Lot, etc. Why the haste? So that Sodom’s destruction might take place at sunrise,the sun being their chief deity; thus its impotence to save its worshipers would be demonstrated (SC, 95). But Lot lingered: Still tied to his possessions! Lange, ibid., 438): It is clear in every way that Lot, from his spiritless, half-hearted nature, which made it difficult to part from his location and possessions, was rescued with the greatest difficulty. Lot, like Ephraim (Hosea 7:8, Ephraim being the name commonly given to the northern kingdom of Israel) was a cake not turned. That is, he had never truly forsaken the world, the flesh, and the devil. Like many church members in our day, hesomewhat reluctantly, to be surekept one face turned toward the God of Abraham, but he lived much of his life with his real face always turned in the direction of the allurements of this present evil world (2 Timothy 4:10); he had just enough religion probably to make him uncomfortable, but not enough to make him genuinely happy. Hence, when the day dawned, his heavenly visitors broke off any further delay by laying hold of him, and his wife, and his two daughters, and literally dragging them out of the doomed city, bidding them flee to the neighboring mountains of Moab for safety. Jehovah being merciful unto him: Does this mean that the angels sought to speed him while God was still merciful? Or does it mean that he was delivered, not on the ground of his own merit, but solely through God’s mercy? A third view: Although he was to be saved for Abraham’s sake, through his, lingering he might have forfeited this privilege but for God’s mercy (SC, 95). This completes the work of the two angels in saving Lot: now the divine judgment is ready to be executed.

Review Questions

See Genesis 19:30-38.

Genesis 19:18-22

6. The Flight to Zoar (Genesis 19:18-22)

18 And Lot said unto them, Oh, not so, my lord: 19 behold now, thy servant hath found favor in thy sight, and thou hast magnified thy lovingkindness, which thou hast showed unto me in saving my life; and I cannot escape to the mountain, lest evil overtake me, and I die: 20 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. 21 And he said unto him, See, I have accepted thee concerning this thing also, that I will not overthrow the city of which thou hast spoken. 22 Haste thee, escape thither; for I cannot do anything till thou be come thither. Therefore the name of the city was called Zoar.

Note in Genesis 19:17, Lot’s mode of address, my Lord, marginal rendering, O Lord. Does this mean that Yehwe Himself has arrived on the scene (cf. again, Genesis 18:1; Genesis 18:3, also 22, where Jehovah is represented as remaining behind to converse with Abraham, after the two angels had gone on their way, etc.), or that He has been present all along in the person of the Angel of Yahweh? (Read Lange on The Angel of Jehovah, infra.) Whitelaw (PCG, 255): Adonai, which should rather be translated Lord; whence it would almost seem as if Lot knew that his interlocutor was Jehovah. Keil admits that Lot recognised a manifestation of God in the angels, and Lange speaks of a miraculous report of the voice of God coming to him along with the miraculous vision of the angels. That the historian uses -them-’ instead of -him-’ only proves that at the time Jehovah was accompanied by the angels, as he had previously been at Mamre (Genesis 18:1). Concerning the address, my Lord, the Rabbis construe this as God (SC, 96).

It seems that even now Lot could not tear himself away altogether from his worldly environment. This reluctance, coupled with fear that those who had been his fellow-citizens might hunt him down and kill him, caused him to plead that one of the five cities might be preserved as his dwelling-place, because it was a little one; Whence this city, previously known as Bela, (was called Zoar tiny place, little). (Cf. Genesis 13:10; Genesis 14:2-8). This petition, though evidently a singular display of moral obtuseness and indolent selfishness, was granted and Lot and his daughters entered Zoar at sunrise. Lot bases his plea on the favor that has been bestowed on him. He reinforces it by a plea of physical inability to reach the mountains. He claims the evil from which God is delivering him will overtake him neverthelessnot a very commendable attitude. Finally, he makes the smallness of. the place that he has in mind a plea for sparing it, in case he flees thither. It almost taxes the reader’s patience to bear with this long-winded plea at a moment of such extreme danger. Lot appreciated but little what was being done for him (EG, 566). (Cf. also Genesis 36:32-33; Genesis 46:21; Numbers 26:38-40; 1 Chronicles 1:43-44; 1 Chronicles 5:8; 1 Chronicles 7:6-7; 1 Chronicles 8:1; 1 Chronicles 8:3). This town, Bela, or Zoar, which was well known in Old Testament times, lay to the southeast of the Dead Sea (Genesis 13:10, Deuteronomy 34:3, Isaiah 15:5, Jeremiah 48:34). During the Roman hegemony anperhaps anotherearthquake occurred and the town was flooded, but it was rebuilt farther up from the shore and inhabited until the Middle Ages.

Review Questions

See Genesis 19:30-38.

Genesis 19:23-29

7. The Divine Judgment Executed (Genesis 19:23-29)

23 The sun was risen upon the earth when Lot came unto Zoar. 24 Then Jehovah rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from Jehovah out of heaven; 25 and he overthrew those cities, and all the Plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground. 26 But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt. 27 And Abraham gat up early in the morning to the place where he had stood before Jehovah: 28 and he looked toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and toward all the land of the -Plain, and beheld, and, lo, the smoke of the land went up as the smoke of a furnace. 29 And it came to pass, when God destroyed the cities of the Plain, that God remembered Abraham, and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow, when he overthrew the cities in which Lot dwelt.

(1) At sunrise Jehovah rained upon Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from Jehovah out of heaven, etc. Fire from Jehovah: probably for emphasis to make it clear that this was a judgment from the Lord and not a natural phenomenon. (SIBG, 243, comment on Genesis 19:17): The Angel Jehovah has now come up from Abraham, and charged Lot and his companions to depart with the utmost haste, and without the smallest regret, from that rich country abounding with sensual indulgence (Luke 9:62;Philippians 3:13-14; Matthew 24:16-18). The Divine command was, Escape for thy life, that is, it is enough that you save your life; do not try to save your wealth also.

(2) Obviously, from correlation of various Scriptures, the cities destroyed were not only Sodom and Gomorrah, but also Admah and Zeboiim (cf. Amos 4:11, Isaiah 1:9-10; Genesis 14, Deuteronomy 29:23, Hosea 11:8), Bela, or Zoar, of the five cities of the Jordan circle being exempted, in response to Lot’s appeal, Genesis 19:21-22. Note Genesis 19:22: the catastrophes wrought by God are always under His control: this one is not unleashed until Lot has safely reached Zoar; by that time the sun has fully risen.

(3) The nature of the catastrophe has been a matter of much speculation. The means causing the destruction are said to have been brimstone and fire (sulphur and fire) poured out so plentifully on the doomed cities that God is said to have rained them down out of heaven. Was this divinely-sent infliction burning pitch, or lightning which ignited the bituminous soil, or a volcanic eruption which overwhelmed the whole area? Whitelaw (PCG, 256): Whatever it was, it was clearly miraculous in its nature, and designed as a solemn punitive infliction on the cities of the plain. The account has been properly designated that of one of the most horrifying events in all history, and is presented as such throughout both the Old and New Testaments. The lesson is inescapable, namely, that when a city, or nation, becomes given over wholly to iniquity, that city or nation forfeits its right to exist, because its very existence inevitably spreads this moral pollution to all neighboring peoples and -even those of the regions beyond. There is no limit to the infection of concentrated vice. Therefore, there is but one step for Absolute Justice to take, that is, to destroy utterly. History proves that repeatedly, in the account of man’s sojourn on earth, the destruction of a nation, or at least of a nation’s power, has become a moral necessity. (Cf. Ezekiel 21:27, Jeremiah 18:5-10, Exodus 17:14-15, Deuteronomy 25:17-19, 1 Samuel 15, Revelation 19:11-16, etc.). Lange (CDHCG, 438): The decisive execution of the judgment proceeds from the manifestation of Jehovah upon the earth, in company with the two angels, but the source of the decree of judgment lies in Jehovah in heaven.

Some authorities hold that an earthquake caused the catastrophic destruction of these doomed cities. E.g., The text enables us to locate the catastrophe (an earthquake) in the southern part of the Dead Sea. The subsidence of the southern half of the Dead Sea bed is known to be recent as geologists reckon, and the whole district is geologically unstable (JB, 37). Others think that an earthquake may have accompanied the burning, and others suggest a volcanic eruption may have been used to effect the divine judgment. Still others would have it that the area in question was submerged beneath the waters of the Dead Sea (cf. Genesis 14:3). However, the Genesis account says nothing about the drowning of lands or cities (although the idea is found in writings of Hellenistic-Roman times). The expression brimstone and fire does suggest volcanic phenomena, such as swallowed up the Roman Pompeii. But geologists tell us that the most recent volcanic activity in that area took place ages before Abraham’s time (Kraeling, BA, 72). Again, the language of Gen 19:29 certainly does suggest, at first glance, an earthquake; however, the narrative itself attributes the cataclysm to some kind of igneous agency. Sulphur and fire, writes Speiser, should be sulphurous fire, adding, the context points plainly to hendiadys (ABG, 141). Writes Leupold (EG, 568): Nothing points directly to a volcanic eruption; nor do lava remains happen to be found in the immediate vicinity. Nor does the expression -overthrow-’ necessarily point to an earthquake. The -fire-’ which rained down from heaven may have been lightning. The -sulphur-’ may have been miraculously wrought and so have rained down together with the lightnings, although there is the other possibility that a huge explosion of highly inflammable materials, including sulphur, deposited in the ground (cf. -bitumen pits-’ of Genesis 14:10) may have cast these materials, especially the sulphur, high into the air so that they rained upon these cities, causing a vast conflagration. Besides, it seems quite likely that after, these combustible materials once took fire, the very site of the cities was, literally burnt away to quite a depth, and so the waters of the northern part of the Dead Sea filled in the burnt-out area. For it is a well-known fact that the southern end of the Dead Sea hardly exceeds a depth of twelve feet and usually runs much less, i.e., three or four feet. In fact, at certain points it is by no means difficult towade across the lake. On the other hand, the northern portion reaches a maximum depth of 1300 feet. To assume, then, that the entire lake is the result of this -overthrow,-’ as some have, hardly seems reasonable or in conformity with the Biblical account. A conflagration that would have burnt out the ground to a depth of 1,300 feet cannot be conceived. An earthquake, causing so deep and so broad a fissure in the earth’s crust, would at least have called for the use of the term -earthquake-’ in this connection, for, apparently, in violence it would have surpassed all earthquakes of which man has a record. Equally difficult would be the assumption that the Jordan once flowed through this delightful valley of the Pentapolis and poured its water into the Elanitic Gulf. Again, with reference to the word overthrow, Genesis 19:29: Only that which stands up can be -overthrown.-’ Consequently the verb connotes something of the idea of proud men and institutions being brought low by the Lord who -throws down the mighty from their seats-’ and lays iniquity prostrate. (Cf. Deuteronomy 29:23, Isaiah 13:19; Jeremiah 49:18; Jeremiah 50:40; Amos 4:11).

It has been rightly said that an air of mystery hovers over the location of the cities of the plain. Tradition had it for centuries that they were immediately north of the Dead Sea, a notion arising no doubt from the vague identification of the Vale of Siddim with the Salt Sea. (Genesis 14:3). (See Part 27 supra).However, the names of Sodom and Zoar continued, even down to Roman times, to be associated with the area south of the Dead Sea. The archaeologists, G. Ernest Wright, assumes, with W. F. Albright, that the destroyed cities were buried beneath the shallow waters of the southern tip of the Dead. Sea. Recently E. G. Kraeling has questioned this identification;. He writes (BA, 70-71): Recent writers of the highest competence have been willing to assume that Sodom and Gomorrah lay by the Dead Sea shore and that they were submerged by the rise of the waters. However, the land suitable for agriculture was precious in a country like Palestine, and was reserved for that purpose. One must therefore look for the sites of Sodom, Gomorrah, and Zoar on higher ground and back from the lake. Their destruction would have been due to other agencies than the waters of the Dead Sea. The names of the cities are certainly not invented. Sodom and Zoar, furthermore, still occur as names of inhabited places south of the Dead Sea area in the fourth century A.D., and the former name clings to Jebel Sudum, as local natives called it, or Jebel Usdum, as it has become known since Robinson to this day. These Christian towns may not have stood on the identical sites of the ancient ones, but presumably were close enough to them to preserve the old names. All indications point to their having lain near the southern end of the Dead Sea.. If one looks at the area on the south end of the Dead Sea, one notes first of all that on the west side there is no suitable location for any habitations, because the brooks that enter in here near the Jebel Usdum are salty. Far different, however, is the situation on the eastern side of the south end of the Dead Sea. Kraeling goes on to show why this region may well have been the original site of the doomed cities, concluding that only further exploration and some excavation can shed light on the old cities of this neighborhood. Cornfeld writes (AtD, 68) that at the southern end of the Dead Sea there is the deepest rift valley in the world, which lies 1290 feet below sea level. He goes on to say that earthquakes or some other destructive agents seem to have wiped out a civilization that had existed near the Dead Sea and east of the Jordan from the Stone Age (4000 B.C.E.) down to the Bronze Age (around the 20th century): This, he says, is the area which included the -five cities of the Plain,-’ or -the circle of the vale of Siddim.-’. It is thought by those who favor the geological theory, that these cities were situated south and east of the Dead Sea, most of them being now covered by the water. We know also that nomadic peoples settled down in villages and towns before the 20th century B.C.E., just at the time when the dark age was settling over Palestine, due, apparently, to Amorite invasions, and that these sites were abandoned about the 20th century B.C.E., as were Other towns and villages in southern Transjordanfor some mysterious reason, the people returning to nomadic pursuits. Note also this comment in similar vein (BWDBA, 543): The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and the other cities of the valley may have been the result of lightning igniting the petroleum Seepages and the gas which was plentiful in the region. About five miles from the. shore of the Dead Sea at an elevation of five hundred feet, southeast of the Lisan peninsula is -Bab ed-Dra,-’ which served as a religious shrine for inhabitants of the area. Pottery indicates that the site was frequented from ca. 2300 B.C. to ca 1900 B.C. This seems to indicate that Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed ca. 1900 B.C., during the lifetime of Abraham. From near Hebron, Abraham looked in the direction of Sodom and Gomorrah and he saw that the smoke of the land went up like the smoke of a furnace.-’ To sum up here, we may indeed have in this narrative a picture of an event that was both natural and. supernatural (miraculous): God may have used natural, means, of bringing about the catastrophe which fell on these doomed cities; it can hardly be denied, however, that the timingand the design of the event lay outside the realm of the natural. (We use the word natural here in its proper sense, i.e., as simply the name we give to observed phenomena).

Lot’s Wife. The Divine command had been clear and the urgency of it unmistakable: –Escape for thy life; look not behind thee, etc. We cannot, of course determine whether the woman was motivated by longing, pity, or curiosity (Delitzsch) when she did look back. Note that she looked back from behind him, i.e.,her husband. This seems to indicate that she was bringing up the rear and it certainly bespeaks her reluctance to leave behind her the flesh-pots of Sodom. (Cf. Exodus 16:1-3). Evidently her heart was in the city. She appreciated but little what the delivering angels had done for her. Almost escaped, she allowed her vigilance to relax. -So she became a warning example to all who do not make a clear-cut break with the life of wickedness, as Jesus-’ remarkable warning designates her (Luke 17:32). God’s punishment overtook her on the spot, apparently through the agents already operative in the destruction-’ (EG, 571). It is most interesting to note here that Lot’s wife is the only womanof the many who appear in Biblical storywhom we are exhorted to remember,, and that by our Lord Himself. (Cf. Matthew 26:13).

The woman became a pillar of salt. At the time, Lot and his daughters could not have seen this: they did. have sense enough (and some faith, it seems) to have realized that looking back would have meant their destruction. We see no reason for assuming that Lot’s wife was instantaneously transformed into a pillar of salt: a more probable interpretation would be that she was overcome by the sulphurous vapors and afterward became encrusted with salt. It would be most unreasonable for us in this twentieth century to assume that this tragicone might say, mummifiedfigure could have survived the elements for any great length of time, much less for a time-span of four millenniums. It is a matter of common sense to hold that attempts at identification, either past or present, must be fruitless. (Cf. the apocryphal book of Wisdom-[Genesis 10:7, a pillar of salt. a memorial of the unbelieving soul]). We would agree, however, with Leupold (EG, 572), that in the days shortly after the catastrophe the salt-encrusted, crudely pillar-like remains of the unhappy woman were to be seen.

Abraham’s Last View of the evidences of the-’ catastrophe is portrayed in a few poignant sentences. Very early in the morning he returned to the spot whither he had accompanied his celestial Visitors the day before (Genesis 18:22), and from which, in the vicinity of Hebron, he could look to the east, across the Jordan plain, to the hill country and mountainous region beyond (later the home of the Moabites). What was his purpose?. No doubt to satisfy himself as to whether ten righteous men had been found in Sodom and the city spared; in general, to see what actually had happened. And what was the sight that greeted him? It was total destruction: only the smoke of the land of the plain where once these thriving cities flourished went up as the smoke of a furnace.-’-’ Whitelaw (PCG, 257): Thus the appalling catastrophe proclaimed its reality to Abraham; to subsequent ages it stamped a witness of its severity (1) upon the region itself, in the black and desolate aspect it has ever since possessed; (2) upon the page of inspiration, being by subsequent Scripture writers constantly referred to as a standing warning against incurring the Almighty’s wrath. and (3) upon the course of ancient tradition, which it powerfully affected. (See esp. Tacitus, Histories, Genesis 19:7; for traditional references to the event, see Diodorus Siculus, Strabo, Pliny, Ovid, etc.). Jamieson (CECG, 164): From the height which overlooks Hebron, where the patriarch stood, the observer at the present day has an extensive view spread out before him towards the Dead Sea. A cloud of smoke rising from the plain would be visible to a person at Hebron now, and could have been, therefore, to Abraham as he looked toward Sodom on the morning of its destruction. What an awesome spectacle this was that was spread out before the eyes of Abraham on that fateful morning!

Skinner (ICCG, 310): Abraham’s morning visit to the spot where he had parted from his heavenly guests forms an impressive close to the narrative. an effective contrast to Genesis 18:16. Speiser (ABG, 143): As Abraham peered anxiously at the scene of the disaster, from the distant heights of Hebron, he had his answer to the question he had posed the night before. A pall of dense vapors was all that could be seen. All life was extinguished. The author is much too fine an artist to spell out the viewer’s thoughts, and the close of the narrative is all the more eloquent for this omission. This is a characteristic of the Bible throughout: in so many instances it tends to speak more forcefully by what it omits than by what it tells us. The most impressive example of this is in the Lord’s narrative of the Forgiving Father (Luke 15:11-32).

It is charged by the critics that the Genesis story of Lot’s wife’s inglorious end is just another version of an ancient folk tale. Alleged similarity of the Greek legend of Orpheus and Eurydice is cited as a corresponding example. According to this legend, after his return from the Argonautic expedition, Orpheus lived in Thrace, where he married Eurydice. His wife having died as a result of the bite of a serpent, Orpheus followed her into Hades, where his sweet music alleviated temporarily the torments of the damned, and enabled him to win her back. His prayer was granted, however, on one condition, namely, that he should not look back at his wife until they had arrived in the upper world. At the very last moment the anxiety of love overcame the poet and he looked around to make sure that his wife was following him, only to see her snatched back into the infernal regions. The mythological tale of Niobe is another example of the case in point. As the alleged wife of the king of Thebes, Niobe, filled with pride over the number of her children, deemed herself superior to Leto, who had given birth to only two (Apollo and Artemis, by Zeus). Apollo and Artemis, indignant as such presumption, slew all her children with their arrows, and Niobe herself was metamorphosed by Zeus into a stone which during the summer always shed tears. We can only affirm here that to find any parallels, in motivation especially, between these fantastic tales and the fate of Lot’s wife, must require the activity of a profane mentality. The awesome manifestation of Divine judgment (though tempered with mercy where possible) on a population given over wholly to iniquity, one in which Lot’s wife perished because of her unwillingness to break with her environment, cannot reasonably be put in the same category with these folk tales which reflect only human passion, pride, jealousy and revenge. Leupold (EG, 565): Because the command not to look around is met with in heathen legends. that fact does not yet make every command of that sort in Israelitish history a part of a legendary account. We ourselves may on occasion bid another to look around without being on our part involved in some legendary transaction.

Recapitulation, Genesis 19:29. The interesting fact in this statement is the change in the name of God from Jehovah to Elohim. The total destruction of the hotbeds of iniquitythe Cities of the Plainwas a display of Divine Powers which causes men to fear the Sovereign of the universe; therefore Elohim and not Yahweh. (Cf. Genesis 28:17, Hebrews 10:31; Hebrews 12:29, etc.). The destruction of the cities of the plain was not at this moment viewed by the writer as an event related to the Abrahamic covenant and intercession, but as a sublime vindication of Divine (Absolute) Justice. Nor should the fact be overlooked that in this transaction God remembered Abraham, that is, Lot was not delivered simply for his own sake, but primarily for Abraham’s sake. The blessings that go forth from one true-hearted servant of God are incalculable, Cf. James 5:16-18.

The Import of the Account of the Catastrophe that befell the Cities of the Plain is clearly indicated by the repeated references to it throughout both the Old and New Testaments, as a warning against incurring the wrath of the Almighty (Deuteronomy 29:22-23; Isaiah 13:19; Jeremiah 49:18; Jeremiah 50:40; Lamentations 4:6; Amos 4:11; Luke 17:32; 2 Peter 2:6, Jude 1:7). Cf. J. A. Motyer (NBD, 1003): The story of Sodom does not merely warn, but provides a theologically documented account of divine judgment implemented by -natural-’ disaster. The history is faith’s guarantee that the Judge of all the earth does right (Genesis 18:25). Being personally persuaded of its justice and necessity (Genesis 18:20-21), God acts; but in wrath He remembers mercy, and in judgment discrimination (Genesis 19:16; Genesis 19:29). The fate of Sodom and Gomorrah is referred to by Jesus as a warning to those who are inhospitable to the Gospel, Matthew 10:15. Sodom is a symbol for dead bodies lying in the street of a city, Revelation 11:8 (HBD, 692). The plain in which the cities stood, hitherto fruitful -as the garden of Jehovah,-’ became henceforth a scene of perfect desolation. Our Lord Himself, and the Apostles Peter and Jude, have clearly taught the lasting lesson which is involved in the judgment: that it is a type of the final destruction by fire of a world which will have reached a wickedness like that of Sodom and Gomorrah (OTH, 77). Cf. Luke 17:29, 2 Peter 2:6, 2 Thessalonians 1:7-10, 1 Corinthians 3:13; Hebrews 10:27; Hebrews 12:29; Jude 1:7; Revelation 14:10; Revelation 20:14-15; cf. Exodus 3:2; Exodus 19:18; Isaiah 66:15-16; Ezekiel 1:13 ff.; Daniel 7:9,Matthew 25:41, etc. The partial judgment upon Sodom and Gomorrah, like the universal judgment of the flood, serves as an exampleand a typeof all the divine judgments, and especially of the Last Judgment; hence in Scripture the two are closely associated (Luke 17:26-32, 2 Peter 2:4-9). The Last Judgment is the Second Death (Revelation 20:14; Revelation 21:8).

Review Questions

See Genesis 19:30-38.

Genesis 19:30-38

8. Lot’s Last End (Genesis 19:30-38)

30 And Lot went up out of Zoar, and dwelt in the mountain, and his two daughters with him; for he feared to dwell in Zoar: and he dwelt in a cave, he and his two daughters. 31 And the first-born said unto the younger, Our father is old, and there is not a man in the earth to come in unto us after the manner of all the earth: 32 come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, that we may preserve seed of our father. 33 And they made their father drink wine that night: and the first-born went in, and lay with her father: and he knew not when she lay down, nor when she arose. 34 And it came to pass on the morrow, that the first-born said unto the younger, Behold, I lay yester-night with my father: let us make him drink wine this night also; and go thou in, and lie with him, that we may preserve seed of our father. 35 And they made their father drink wine that night also: and the younger arose, and lay with him; and he knew not when she lay down, nor when she arose. 36 Thus were both the daughters of Lot with child by their father. 37 And the first-born bare a son, and called his name Moab: the same is the father of the Moabites unto this day. 3 8 And the younger, she also bare a son, and called his name Ben-ammi: the same is the father of the children of Ammon unto this day. The Flight to Zoar. Lot and his two daughters reached Zoar some time after sunrise. Evidently he did not stop there, however, but kept on going until he found a cave where he continued to dwell, for how long we do not know. Lot’s rescue is ascribed to Elohim, as the Judge of the whole earth, not to the covenant God, Jehovah, because Lot in his separation from Abraham was removed from the special providence of Jehovah. In his flight from Sodom he seems to have been driven by a paralyzing fear: just how much of the obedience of faith was involved it is impossible to say. (We must remember that fear is the opposite of faith). Evidently a kind of paralyzing terror gave way to a calculating fear which has been properly designated an unbelieving fear. At any rate he kept on until he could bury himself and his daughters in a cave. Caves are said to be numerous in these mountains of Moab. He knew, evidently, that it had been decreed that Zoar also was to be destroyed and had been spared only because he could not reach the mountain in time. Now that there was time to go on, naturally he feared that the decree would be fulfilled. Or it is possible that the inhabitants of Zoar who had been spared did not feel too hospitably inclined to this family who had once been inhabitants of the cities now lying in ruins. Lange (CDHCG, 442): The chastising hand of God is seen in the gravest form, in the fact that Lot is lost in the darkness of the mountains of Moab, as a dweller in the caves. But it may be questioned whether one is justified by this, in saying that he came to a bad end.. His not returning poor and shipwrecked can be explained upon better grounds. In any case the testimony for him, 2 Peter 2:7-8, must not be overlooked. There remains one bright point in his life, since he sustained the assaults of all Sodom on his house, in the most extreme danger of his life. To this Gosman adds (ibid., 442): It may be said, moreover, that his leaving home and property at the divine warning, and when there were yet no visible signs of the judgment, and his flight without looking back, indicate the reality and genuineness of his faith. This again raises the question: Was Lot’s flight without looking back entirely an act of faith, or was it indicative primarily of a paralyzing terror? Of course it may be that the inhabitants of Zoar, panic-stricken, had fled from the region of danger and dispersed themselves for a time in the adjacent mountains. At any rate Lot is now far from the habitations of men, with his two daughters as his only companions.

The Origins of Moab and Ammon (Genesis 19:30-38). There is great variability of opinion as to what motivated Lot’s daughters to resort to deception to cause themselves to be impregnated by their father. These, of course, were incestuous unions, severely condemned even by primitive peoples extant in our own day. It is not difficult to see how repugnant such an act was to the Israelites of a later age. At some point in this phase of Lot’s life, his daughters resolved to procure children through him, and for that purpose on two successive evenings they made him intoxicated with wine, and then lay with him through the night, one after the other, that they might conceive seed. To this accursed crime they were impelled by the desire to preserve their family, because they thought there was no man on earth to come in unto them, i.e., to marry them, -after the manner of all the earth.-’ Not that they imagined the whole human race to have perished in the destruction of the valley of Siddim, but because they were afraid that no man would link himself with them, the only survivors of a country smitten by the curse of God (BCOPT, 237). We can hardly agree with the charge that these young women took advantage of Lot’s inebriation to indulge incestuous passion for the simple reason that the text does not justify such a conclusion. Of course, even though it was not lust which impelled them to this shameful deed, their conduct was worthy of Sodom, and shows quite as much as their previous betrothal to men of Sodom, that they were deeply imbued with the sinful character of that city. In all likelihood, incest was not under any taboo in Sodom. As for Lot himself, Genesis 19:33; Genesis 19:35 do not state that he was in an unconscious state: they simply tell us that in his intoxicated condition, though not entirely unconscious, yet he lay with his daughters without clearly understanding what he was doing. It surely would be stretching the truth, however, to say that his behavior in this instance was that of a strong man. Lot’s daughters are, like Tamar, not here regarded as shameless; their ruling motive is to perpetuate the race (JB, 37). Jamieson summarizes as follows (CECG, 165): The theory is suggested that the moral sensibilities of Lot’s daughters had been blunted, or rather totally extinguished, by long and familiar association with the people of the Pentapolis, and that they had already sunk to the lowest depths of depravity, when they could in concert deliberately plan the commission of incest with their own father. But this first impression will soon be corrected or removed by the recollection that those young women, though living in the midst of a universally corrupt society, had yet maintained a virtuous character (Genesis 19:8); and therefore it must be presumed that it was through the influence of some strong, overpowering motive they were impelled to the adoption of so base an imposture. It could not be, as has been generally supposed, that they believed themselves to be the sole survivors of mankind; for they knew that the inhabitants of Zoar were still alive, and if they were now residing in a cave in the Moabite mountains, they must have seen multitudes of laborers working in the vineyards with which those heights were extensively planted. They could not be actuated, therefore, with the wish to preserve the human race, which, in their view, was all but extinct. Their object must have been very different, and most probably it was this. Cherishing some family traditions respecting the promised seed, and in expectation of which Abraham, with Lot and others, had migrated to Canaan, they brooded in despondency over the apparent loss of that hopesince their mother’s death; and believing that their father, who was descended from the eldest branch of Terah’s family, and who was an object of God’s special charge to the angels, had the best claim to be the ancestor of the distinguished progeny, they agreed together to use means for securing the much-longed-for result. This view of their conduct is strongly confirmed by the circumstance that, instead of being ashamed of their crime, or concealing the origin of their children by some artfully-contrived story, they proclaimed it to the world, and perpetuated the memory of it by the names they bestowed upon their children; the eldest calling her son Moab (meaning, from my father), and the younger designating her son Benammi (son of my people). It is evident from the text that these sexual relations of Lot’s daughters with their father occurred only this once: there is no intimation that it was a continuous affair or even repeated. That they used subterfuge (their father’s intoxication) to accomplish their purposes seems to be additional evidence that they themselves regarded what they did as repugnant, but under the circumstances as the only means possible to secure the perpetuation of the family. The whole affair apparently is a case in point of the oldand falsecliche, that the end justifies the means. We might add that Lot’s susceptibility to inebriation certainly does not add one iota of glamor to his character. We feel that Speiser’s treatment of this incident (ABG, 145) should be given here as follows (even though we cannot fully agree with it): As they are here portrayed, Lot and his two daughters had every reason to believe that they were the last people on earth. From the recesses of their cave somewhere up the side of a canyon formed by the earth’s deepest rift, they could see no proof to the contrary. The young women were concerned with the future of the race, and they were resolute enough to adopt the only desperate measure that appeared to be available. The father, moreover, was not a conscious party to the scheme. All this adds up to praise rather than blame. (Note that incest is defined and strictly forbidden in Scripture: Leviticus 18:6-18; Leviticus 20:11-12; Leviticus 20:19-21; Deuteronomy 22:30; Deuteronomy 27:20; Deuteronomy 27:22-23; Ezekiel 22:11; cf. 1 Corinthians 5:1. Cases of incest: Lot with his daughters, Genesis 19:31; Genesis 19:36; Reuben, Genesis 35:22; Genesis 49:4; Judah, Genesis 38:16, 1 Chronicles 2:4; Amnon, 2 Samuel 13:14; Absalom, 2 Samuel 16:21-22. Cf. also Genesis 20:12-13; Genesis 11:29; Exodus 6:20). Note the following significant paragraph: Grace, in conversion, seldom takes away the original character of the natural man, but merely overrules its deficiencies to humble him and warn others; and refines and elevates its excellencies; and thus, by the Spirit, mortifies the old while it quickens and establishes the new man (SIBG, 244). Finally, this comment of Skinner (ICCG, 312), who follows rather closely the so-called analytical interpretation of Genesis, Whatever truth there may be in the speculations, i.e., about the origins and character of the patriarchal stories, the religious value of the biblical narrative is not affected. Like the Deluge-story, it retains the power to touch the conscience of the world as a terrible example of divine vengeance on heinous wickedness and unnatural lust; and in this ethical purpose we have another testimony to the unique grandeur of the idea of God in ancient Israel. But let us not forget that vengeance on God’s part is not revenge, but vindication, that is, the vindication of God’s absolute justice in not permitting His purposes and laws to be violated with impunity. Penal infliction of the right kind must have for its primary end the sustaining of the majesty of law against all transgressors. This, we are told, will be the essential character of the Last Judgment (Romans 2:5, Revelation 20:11-12).

The History of Lot ends here. According to Robinson, the Arabs have a tradition that he was buried on Beni-Naim, the elevated spot where Abraham stood before the Lord interceding for Sodom and from which next morning he viewed the smoke rising from the distant destruction. Lot is never mentioned again. Separated both outwardly and inwardly from Abraham, he was of no further importance in relation to the history of salvation, so that even his death is not referred to. His descendants, however, frequently come into contact with the. Israelites; and the history of their descent is given here to facilitate a correct appreciation of their conduct toward Israel (BCOTP), 238).

9. The Moabites and Ammonites

The story of Lot, which is a kind of drama within a drama in relation to the story of Abraham, has now come to a rather inglorious end. The inspired writer never loses sight of the fact that history, in the last analysis, is made by individuals. But the individual, in turn, mirrors larger issues and events (ABG, 142). Apparently the narrative is designed to lead ultimately to the story of the Moabites and the Ammonites, two ethnic groups whose history becomes interrelated to a considerable extent with the history of Israel. (The Moabites occupied the area east of the Jordan directly opposite Bethlehem, extending from Edom on the south northward to the river Arnon. Their capital city was Ar, the site of which is unknown today (Numbers 21:15; Numbers 21:28; Isaiah 15:1). The Ammonites occupied the region east of the Jordan northward from the river Arnon to the watershed of the Jabbok, on the banks of which their capital, Rabbath-Ammon (Deuteronomy 3:11), was situated. This city lives on in our day in Amman, the capital of the Kingdom of Jordan: it was rebuilt by Ptolemy Philadelphus in the 3rd century B.C., and was named Philadelphia (cf. Revelation 3:7). The Ammonite territory was bounded on the north by Gilead, which lay almost exactly opposite Samaria, the capital of the northern kingdom of Israel, to the west of the Jordan.)

Generally speaking, the Moabites and Ammonites repeatedly were sources of annoyance, and at times of outright opposition to the Israelites. Their idolatrous practices are said to have been abominations to Jehovah. Ammon’s abomination was the worship of the god Moloch, and that of Moab was the worship of the God Chemosh (1 Kings 11:7, Numbers 21:29): these were the tribal gods around whom the customary ritual of the pagan Fertility Cult was centered, an integral phase of which usually was human sacrifice (cf. 2 Kings 3:27; Leviticus 18:21; Leviticus 20:2-4; Jeremiah 32:34-35; 2 Kings 23:10; Amos 5:26, Acts 7:43). Their idolatrous practices included also the worship of pagan gods of surrounding peoples (Judges 10:6). Both the Moabites and the Ammonites are frequently portrayed in Scripture as being a constant snare to the Children of Israel (as rejoicing in the latter’s misfortunes and taking delight in spreading their abominations of false gods among the Israelites and debasing their moral ideals through intermarriage). (Cf. Numbers 25:1-5, 1 Kings 11:1-8, 2 Kings 23:13, 1 Chronicles 8:8, Ezra 9:1-4; Nehemiah 13:1-3; Nehemiah 13:23-27). Note also the predictions of divine judgments on the Moabites and the Ammonites (Isa., chs. 15, 16; Jer., chs. 48, 49; Ezekiel 25:5; Ezekiel 25:8-11; Amos 2:1-2; Zephaniah 2:9). As for political and military maneuvers and battles, cf. Judges 3:12-30; Judges 11:17-18; Judges 11:25; Num., chs. 22-24; Joshua 24:9; Judges 11:17-18; Judges 11:29-33; 1 Samuel 14:47; 1 Samuel 22:3-4; 2 Samuel 8:2; 1 Kings 11:1-7, 2 Kings 1:1; 2 Kings 3:5-27; 2 Kings 13:20; 2 Chron., ch. 20; Micah 6:5,etc.).

There is another side to this coin, however, which cannot be ignored, as follows: (1) Yahweh did not permit the Israelites to distress the Moabites and Ammonites in passing through their territories because those lands had already been allotted to the children of Lot for a possession (Deuteronomy 2:2; Deuteronomy 2:9; Deuteronomy 2:19). (2) Moses died in the land of Moab, where from the summit of Pisgah he was given a view of the Land of Promise, from Dan and Gilead on the North to the valley of Jericho even unto Zoar, on the South; and the children of Israel wept for Moses in the plains of Moab thirty days (Deuteronomy 34:1-8). (3) The book of Ruth indicates free travel and friendly relations between Judah and Moab. (4) The king of Moab brought aid to David against Saul and provided shelter for David’s parents in a time of crisis (1 Samuel 22:3-4). (5) The Moabites and Ammonites are represented as having been used by Jehovah as instruments for the punishing of Judah (2 Kings 24:1-4).

In view of these scriptures, to speak of the account of the origins of the Moabites and the Ammonites (Genesis 19:30-38) as a fiction of Israelite animosity, a gibe at Israel’s foes, etc., as the critics have done, is absurd. Leupold (EG, 576): Again and again critics label this whole story the outgrowth of a mean prejudice on the part of Israel against these two neighboring nations, a hostile fabrication and an attempt to heap disgrace on them. Yet passages like Deuteronomy 2:9 surely indicate that Israel always maintained a friendly spirit toward these brother nations, especially toward the Moabites. David’s history also may serve as an antidote against such slanders. We have here an objective account of an actual historical occurrence. Similarly K-D (BCOTP, 238); This account was neither the invention of national hatred to the Moabites and Ammonites, nor was it placed here as a brand upon these tribes. These discoveries of a criticism imbued with hostility to the Bible are overthrown by the fact, that, according to Deuteronomy 2:9; Deuteronomy 2:19, Israel was ordered not to touch the territory of each of these tribes because of their descent from Lot; and it was their unbrotherly conduct towards Israel alone which first prevented their reception into the congregation of the Lord (Deuteronomy 23:4-5).

It seems, of course, that the Ammonites did become inveterate enemies of the Children of Israel. But not the Moabites, apparently. This brings us, in conclusion, to the most significant phase of the question before us, which, strange to say, seems to be overlooked by commentators generally. That is the fact that the Moabites did playone might well say, an indispensable role in the development of the Messianic Line. That role was played by a Moabite maiden, Ruth by name, who in the course of human events (providentially directed, no doubt) married a wealthy, land-owning Bethlehemite by the name of Boaz, by whom she became the ancestress of Obed, Jesse, and David, in the order named genealogically, and hence of Messiah Himself. The canonicity of the Book of Ruth is determined by this genealogical connection with the Messianic Line. Cf. Matthew 1:5-6, Luke 3:31-32, Isaiah 9:6-7,Acts 2:29-36, Romans 1:3-4, etc., and especially the book of Ruth.

The Ammonites survived into the second century B.C. Judas Maccabaeus fought them in his day (1 Macc. Genesis 19:6). Moab disappeared as a political power when Nebuchadnezzar (605-562 B.C.) subjugated the country, but it persisted as an ethnic group. The Nabataeans (capital, Petra) held and developed Moab in the first two centuries B.C. and the first century A.D. (See any Dictionary of the Bible for information about the Moabite Stone).

See Genesis 19:37-38, the phrase, unto this day. That is, the days of Moses. They have remained Moabites unto this day, not having intermingled with strangers. Or the meaning may be: This fact is known to this day (SC, 99).Leupold suggests present-day Moabites and present-day Ammonites as a better rendering (EG, 577).

FOR MEDITATION AND SERMONIZING

The Angel of Jehovah

Concerning the significance of Gen 19:24, Yahweh rained. from Yahweh out of heaven, Whitelaw writes (PCG, 256): From the Lord, i.e., Jehovah (the Son) rained down from Jehovah (the Father), as if suggesting a distinction of persons in the Godhead (Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Athanasius, and others, Delitzsch, Lange, Wordsworth); otherwise the phrase is regarded as -an elegancy of speech-’ (Ibn Ezra), -an emphatic repetition-’ (Calvin), a more exact characterization of the storm (Clericus, Rosenmuller) as being out of heaven.

Note also the following excellent presentation by Leupold (EG, 569-570): But what construction shall we put upon the statement, -Yahweh rained. from Yahweh from the heavens-’? We consider Meek’s translation an evasion of the difficulty by alteration of the text, when he renders: -The Lord rained. from the sky.-’. However, there is much truth in the claim that the name of God or Yahweh is often used in solemn or emphatic utterances in place of the pronoun that would normally be expected. K.C. [Koenig’s Kommentar on Genesis] lists the instances of this sort that have been met with in Genesis up to this point: Genesis 1:27 a,: Genesis 1:28 a; Genesis 5:1 b; Genesis 8:21 a; Genesis 9:16 b; Genesis 11:9 b; Genesis 12:8 b; Genesis 18:17 a; Genesis 19:13 b, etc. But that would hardly apply in this case, for our passage would hardly come under the list of those -where the divine name is used instead of the pronoun.-’ For how could Moses have written: -Yahweh rained from Himself? Yet the statement is certainly meant to be emphatic, but not merely emphatic in the sense in which Keil, following Calvin’s interpretation, suggests. For both hold that the statement is worded thus to indicate that this was not rain and lightning operating according to the -wonted course of nature,-’ but that it might be stated quite emphatically that more than the ordinary causes of nature were at work. We believe that the mere expression, -God, or Yahweh, rained from heaven,-’ would have served very adequately to convey such an emphatic statement. But in this instance Yahweh was present in and with His angels, whom He had delegated to this task and who acted under specific divine mandate. He who had the day before been visibly present with them, was now invisibly with them. When his agents acted, He acted. Consequently we believe that the view which the church held on this problem from days of old is still the simplest and the best: -God the Son brought down the rain from God the Father,-’ as the Council of Sirmium worded the statement. To devaluate the statement of the text to mean less necessitates a similar process of devaluation of a number of other texts like Genesis 1:26, and only by such a process can the claim be supported that there are no indications of the doctrine of the Trinity in Genesis. We believe the combined weight of these passages, including Genesis 1:1-2, makes the conclusion inevitable that the doctrine of the Holy Trinity is in a measure revealed in the Old Testament, and especially in Genesis. Why should not so fundamental a doctrine be made manifest from the beginning? We may see more of this truth than did the Old Testament saints, but the Church has through the ages always held one and the same truth. Luther says: -This expression indicates two persons in the Godhead.-'

Lastly, we quote Lange (CDHCG, 438): The antithesis which lies in this expression, between the manifestation of Jehovah upon the earth, and the being and providence of Jehovah in heaven is opposed by Keil. [The Hebrew phrase here] is according to Calvin an emphatic repetition. This does not agree with Keil’s explanation of the Angel of the Lord. Delitzsch remarks here: There is certainly in all such passages a distinction between the historically revealed, and the concealed, or unrevealed God (comp. Hosea 1:7), and thus a support to the position of the Council of Sirmium: -the Son of God rains it down from God the Father.-’ The decisive execution of the judgment proceeds from the manifestation of Jehovah upon the earth, in company with the two angels; but the source of the decree of judgment lies in Jehovah in heaven. The moral stages of the development of the kingdom of God upon the earth, correspond with the providence of the Almighty in the heavens, and from the heavens reaching down into the depths of cosmical nature.

In relation to the foregoing, we add here the following pertinent comments by James Moffat, The Theology of the Gospels, 127-128 (Scribners, New York, 1924). Referring to John 12:39-40, Moffatt writes: In Matthew this follows a quotation from Isaiah, which is also cited in the Fourth Gospel, and for much the same purpose, to account for the obduracy of the public, who are no longer the Galileans but the Jews, and also to explain, characteristically, that Isaiah the prophet had a vision of the pre-existent Christ or Logos. These things said Isaiah because he saw his glory, and he spoke of him [Isaiah 6:1-11]. The latter conception had been already expressed in the phrase, Your father Abraham exulted to see my day [John 8:56]. The Fourth Gospel thus deepens and at the same time reverses the synoptic saying. The prophets and just men of the Old Testament had not simply longed to see the messianic day of Jesus Christ: they had seen it. The pragmatism of the Logos-idea enables the writer of the Fourth Gospel to believe that the saints and prophets of the Old Testament had more than anticipations of the end; their visions and prophecies were due to the pre-existent Christ who even then revealed His glory to their gaze. The glory of Yahweh which Isaiah saw in his vision was really the glory of the pre-existent Logos, who became incarnate in Jesus Christ.

The theology of the Fourth Gospel thus elaborates the truth that the mission of Jesus had been anticipated in the history of Israel. This is the idea of the saying in John 8:56, Your father Abraham exulted to see my day. It is the conception of Paul (e.g., Galatians 3:16 f.), who also traces a messianic significance in Genesis 17:17; and Philo, before him, had explained (De Mutat. Nominum, 29-30), commenting on the Genesis passage, that Abraham’s laughter was the joy of anticipating a happiness which was already within reach; -fear is grief before grief, and so hope is joy before joy.-’ But Philo characteristically avoids any messianic interpretation, such as the Fourth Gospel presents. For Scripture affirmations of the Pre-existence of Christ, see John 1:1-14; John 8:58; John 1:18; John 17:3-5; 1 Timothy 3:16; Galatians 4:4; Hebrews 1:1-4; Colossians 1:12-23; 2 Corinthians 5:17-20; Philippians 2:5-11; Hebrews 2:14-18; Revelation 1:12-18, etc.

Remember Lot’s Wife

Luke 17:32the words of Jesus Himself, a warning which no human being can afford to ignore.

Judging from personal experience both the ignorant and the sophisticated of this world have been inclined to worry themselves about Cain’s wife, when as a matter of practical import, that is, having to do with the origin, nature and destiny of the person, they should be concerning themselves, and that seriously, about the fate of Lot’s wife and what the example of her tragic end means for all mankind. In days gone by, every community harbored one or two old reprobates who liked to pose as preacher-killers. One of our pioneer preachers was confronted by just such a self-appointed critic on occasion, who said to him, Preacher, I would probably join church, if I could find any of you fellows who could answer a question for me. And what is the question? asked the evangelist. If you could just tell me where Cain got his wife, I might give more serious though to joining church. The evangelist thought for a moment and then replied: Old man, until you quit thinking about other men’s wives, you won-’t be fit to join church. Besides, there is nothing in Scripture about -joining-’ church. You don-’t -join-’ church; you believe, repent, and obey Christ, and He adds you to His church. But you-’re not ready for that until you repent. The Lord Himself has warned us about the futility of casting pearls before swine (Matthew 7:6). (The key to the problem of Cain’s wife is made very clear in Genesis 5:5).

The only woman in the entire Bible whom we are admonished to remember is Lot’s wife, and the admonition is from the Lord Himself. From her inglorious end we derive the following truths:

1. The manner in which an entire family can be corrupted by an evil environment. 2. The difficulty of saving a good person from an evil end (1 Peter 4:18). What manner of woman Lot’s wife was we do not know. But this truth surely applies in some measure to Lot and his two daughters. 3. The danger of looking back, when as a matter of fact God can use only those who look to the future (Luke 9:62; Hebrews 5:12; Hebrews 6:1). 4. The possibility of being nearly saved, yet wholly lost (Mark 12:34). 5. The inevitability of divine judgment on the disobedient (Hebrews 5:9; Hebrews 10:26-27; Romans 2:5-11, Galatians 6:7, etc.).

Our text is directly related by our Lord to the account of His Second Coming. When that occurs, He tells us, it will be the concern of His saints to escape for their lives, as Lot and his family were told to do. They are not to look back lest they be tempted to go back. They are not to be reluctant to leave an environment marked for destruction (cf. 2 Peter 3:10; 2 Peter 3:13). Hence Luke 17:33, Whosoever shall seek to gain his life shall lose it, but whosoever shall lose his life shall preserve it.

M. Henry (CWB, 36): With what a gracious violence Lot was brought out of Sodom, Genesis 19:16. It seems he did not make as much haste as the case required. It might have been fatal to him if the angels had not laid hold of his hand, and brought him forth, and saved him with fear (Jude 1:23). The salvation of the most righteous men must be attributed to God’s mercy, not to their own merit. We are saved by grace. With what a gracious vehemence he was urged to make the best of his way, when he was brought forth (Genesis 19:17). He must not hanker after Sodom: Look not behind thee. He must not loiter by the way: Stay not in all the plain. He must not take up short of the place of refuge appointed him: Escape to the mountain. Such as these are the commands given to those who through grace are delivered out of a sinful state. (1) Return not to sin and Satan, for that is looking back to Sodom. (2) Rest not in self and the world, for that is staying in the plain. And (3) Reach towards Christ and heaven, for that is escaping to the mountain, short of which we must not take up.

Let us, then, seek to pursue a path of holy separation from the world. Let us, while standing outside its entire range, be found cherishing the hope of the Master’s return. May its well-watered plains have no charms for our hearts. May its honors, its distinctions, and its riches be all surveyed by us in the light of the coming glory of Christ. May we be enabled, like the holy patriarch Abraham, to get up into the presence of the Lord, and, from that elevated ground, look forth upon the scene of widespread ruin and desolationto see it all, by faith’s anticipative glance, a smoking ruin. Such will it be. -The earth also, and the things that are therein, shall be burned up (NBG, 209). (Cf. Hebrews 12:29; Hebrews 10:27-31).

REVIEW QUESTIONS ON PART THIRTY-TWO

What was the first proof that Lot’s visitors were not just human beings?

What activities took place at the gate of these Canaanite cities?

What did Yahweh do when the angels went on to Sodom?

How account for Lot’s sitting in the gate of Sodom?

What were the details of Lot’s ritual of hospitality?

Why probably did Lot suggest delaying the washing of his Guests-’ feet until the next-morning?

Why did Lot pressure his visitors not to abide in the street all night?

Does the Bible indicate that God favors the concentration of population? Cite Scripture evidence to support your answer.

How could Lot’s presence at the gate have been evidence of his degeneracy?

What occurred at Lot’s house that night?

What does the verb know (Genesis 19:5) signify?

What offer did Lot make to the mob in an attempt to satisfy their demands?

What light does this proposal throw on Lot’s character? Do you consider that there was any justification for his action? Explain your answer.

How was Lot rescued from the mob?

List the steps in Lot’s progressive degeneracy.

What did he do that might be cited in his favor?

How does Delitzsch evaluate his actions morally?

What is the evidence that Lot had become familiar with vice?

How can it be said that Lot’s action was an attempt to avoid sin by sin?

What is the Apostle Peter’s testimony concerning Lot?

Summarize Whitelaw’s analysis of Lot’s character.

Summarize Speiser’s treatment of Lot’s character.

How does Lot’s action point up the influence of an environment?

Define homosexuality, lesbianism, bestiality, pederasty, sodomy.

What were the besetting sins of the Cities of the Plain?

Explain how homosexuality, pederasty, bestiality, etc., are unnatural acts.

What does the term sodomy, generally speaking, include?

What are the two functions of the conjugal relation that are thwarted by homosexuality?

Explain how any form of sex perversion is an act of utter selfishness.

How does the true conjugal union differ from acts of sex perversion?

What is the prime fallacy of all so-called situationist ethics?

Of what is the true conjugal relation scripturally declared to be an allegory?

What is the over-all teaching of the Scriptures about sodomy?

What attitude did Lot’s sons-in-law take in response to his warning? What does their attitude indicate about them and about Lot?

How correlate Genesis 19:8, Genesis 19:12, and Genesis 19:14 of chapter 19?

Why did Lot linger in Sodom in spite of his visitors-’ warning?

What light does this cast on his character?

What did his visitors have to do to get him out of Sodom ?

In what sense is it said that God was merciful to him?

What members of Lot’s family got out of Sodom?

To what small city did God permit Lot to go? What were his excuses for wanting to go there?

What was the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah?

What are the theories as to the nature of this catastrophe?

What is the great moral lesson for man to learn from it?

When and why does moral necessity demand penal infliction by Absolute Justice?

What are the reasons for rejecting the view that the catastrophe produced the entire Dead Sea as it is known today?

What is the traditional theory as to the location of the Cities of the Plain? Why is this theory now generally rejected?

What is Kraeling’s view of their location, and why?

What does Cornfeld have to say about this problem?

Explain how the natural and the supernatural could have been combined in producing the catastrophe.

What was the fate of Lot’s wife? What is the most plausible explanation of what happened to her?

What, in all probability, motivated her reluctance to escape for her life?

What was the sight that greeted Abraham when he looked out on the evidences of the disaster?

In what three ways did the catastrophe witness, in subsequent times, to its severity?

It is stated that in many instances the Bible speaks more forcefully by what it omits than by what it tells us. Give examples.

To what does God’s destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah point forward to, ultimately?

In what respects is the story of Lot’s wife far superior to all folk tales of the kind?

Why the change in the name of the Deity to Elohim, in Genesis 19:29.

In what sense did God remember Abraham?

For what probable reasons did Lot and his daughters resort to dwelling in a cave?

What should we think of Lot from the fact that he did not even look back to see what was happening?

For what reasons may we suppose that Lot’s daughters sought to produce seed by their father?

Can we charge their act to incestuous passion? Explain?

How is incest treated in Scripture?

What is always the chief end of penal infliction of any kind?

Distinguish between vindication and vengeance.

Where does the history of Lot end, and why does it end where it does?

Who were the sons of Lot’s daughters by their father? What areas in Palestine did their tribes occupy?

What practices of the Moabites and the Ammonites were abominations to Jehovah?

What does Old Testament history indicate about the subsequent relations between the Israelites on the one hand, and the Moabites and Ammonites on the other?

What evidence do we have that certain friendly relations existed between the two groups?

What reasons have we for rejecting as absurd the critical notion that this account of the origins of Moab and Ammon, in Genesis, was a jibe at Israel’s foes?

What is the chief importance of the story of the Moabites, i.e., in relation to the Messianic Line and to the Old Testament canon?

Summarize the comments of Whitelaw, Leupold, and Moffatt, on Genesis 19:24.

Who has commanded us to remember Lot’s wife? What lessons are we to derive from the story of her tragic end?