Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!spool.mu.edu!mips!dimacs.rutgers.edu!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: tblake@bingsuns.cc.binghamton.edu (Tom Blake) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Lot, his wife and their daughters( Was Re: I AM DISGUSTED!) Message-ID: Date: 3 Jun 91 04:10:53 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: SUNY Binghamton Lines: 94 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu In article , jclark@sdcc6.ucsd.edu (John Clark) writes: |>In article tblake@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu (Thomas Blake, That's Me!) writes: |>+ |>+I really don't think that Genesis means to imply that Lot's wife sinned |>+by looking back, and that as a result she was turned into a pillar of salt. |> |>There are a number of cases in the Bible wherein a person is struck |>dead for various infractions. As to the 'sinfulness' of these |>people, one can assume that the Diety would not strike non-sinners dead. Why can one assume that? God can cause a man to be born blind in order that the grace of God might be shown. God can send his son (who was without sin) to die a violent, painful death on a cross to serve his purposes. Why can't a just non-sinner be struck dead? (Were Job's family all sinners?) Genesis 19:12-17 12 The two men said to Lot, "If you have anyone else here - sons, daughters, sons-in-law, or any other relatives living in the city - get them out of here, 13 because we are going to destroy this place. The Lord has heard the terrible accusations against these people and has send us to destroy Sodom." 14 Then Lot went to the men that his daughters were going to marry, and said, "Hurry up and get out of here; the Lord is going to destroy this place." But they thought he was joking. 15 At dawn the angels tried to make Lot hurry, "Quick!" they said, "Take your wife and your two daughters and get out, so that you will not lose your lives when the city is destroyed." 16 Lot hesitated. The Lord, however had pity on him; so the men took him, his wife, and his two daughters by the hand and led them out of the city. 17 Then one of the angels said, "Run for your lives! Don't look back and don't stop in the valley. Run to the hills, so that you won't be killed. (TEV) So, basically it seems that if Lot or his family had stayed in Sodom, they would have been killed. (Period) This was not a selective death like the death of the first-born in Egypt. The cities in the valley were reduced to smoking ruins. The devestation was so great, that Lot's daughters apparantly thought the three of them were the only ones left alive in the whole world! The message to me seems quite clear. Get out of town, get as far away as you can, and get shelter, 'cause this whole place is going sky high! |>+son-in-laws had to hurry out of town. Lot's wife turned to look back, |>+and in that moment of hesitation, she was lost. |> |>As for the details of the 'looking back' the Bible is silent on |>motive, duration, position. Well, I think we can draw some conclusions from what it does say though... Gensis 19:23-25 23 The sun was rising when Lot reached Zoar. 24 Suddenly the Lord rained burning sulfur on the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah 25 and destroyed them and the whole valley, along with all the people there and everything that grew on the land. 26 But Lot's wife looked back and was turned into a pillar of salt. (TEV) Okay, so the Lord was going to destroy the valley, whether or not Lot made it to safety. Just as he makes it to shelter, the valley is destroyed, completely and utterly. But his wife, (who "looked back"), was killed instantaneously. Sounds to me like a race against the clock. Lot and his daughters won, Lot's wife lost, and the only explanation of why she lost was that she "looked back". To go along with my nuclear device analogy, imagine this. Maybe, Lot's wife made it to Zoar. Maybe she made the mistake of looking out the gate when the city was destroyed. (With the flash from a nuclear device, this could be a fatal mistake.) Jesus seems to make it quite clear in the Gospels, (I can't find the citation, sorry, perhaps one of you with your fancy on-line bibles can help me), that sometimes people are just killed. Not, because they were bad, just because things happened to work out that way. (I'm thinking of his explaining about the people who were killed in the collapse of a tower... Chuck, can you help me out on this one?) Tom Blake SUNY-Binghamton [You're thinking of Luke 13:1 ff, but it's not clear that Jesus was saying their death was random. While Jesus says that they weren't worse sinners than anyone else, he uses their death (as well as another case) as a warning. The obvious meaning is that they died because of their sins, and if you don't repent you'll get yours too. The Anchor Bible commentary manages to defuse this warning: repent now, because a similar catastrophe might happen to you, and if you hadn't repented by then you'd be in trouble. The obvious interpretation raises so many problems that I'm sympathetic with this reading, but I'm not sure it's what the passage really meant. --clh]