In yesterday's passage a mob gathered outside Lot's house and demanded that he release his two guests to them so they can sexually assault them. As we pick up today, Lot goes outside to try to reason with them and talk them out of it.
"Lot went outside to meet them and said, 'No, my friends. Don't do this wicked thing.'" (Genesis 19:6-7) He tries to defuse the situation by reminding these men that they are his fellow citizens. I am sure Lot actually was friends with some of the people of Sodom. If he wasn't, I don't see how he could have lived and worked among them for years or how he could have become an elected official who sat in the gateway to the city. But I think he is careful to call them "friends" when he makes his appeal to them because he is trying to get through to any common decency they may still possess. No reasonable or decent people come as a mob to the house of a friend and insist he allow you to have sexual access to his guests.
Lot makes an offer to these men that is disturbing on many levels. We are going to take a few minutes to discuss why Lot may have said what he said. "Look, I have two daughters who have never slept with a man. Let me bring them out to you, and you can do what you like with them. But don't do anything to these men, for they have come under the protection of my roof.'" (Genesis 19:8)
As we read this we naturally think, "What did he say?!" Is Lot truly offering his two daughters to this gang knowing they will be sexually assaulted by every man there and likely killed in the process? I've consulted a lot of commentaries about this and done a fair amount of internet searches to try to determine what on earth Lot was thinking.
Some scholars state that in the culture of that day the duty to protect guests in the home far outweighed a person's duty to protect his own family. If the household faced danger, the host was supposed to protect his guests first, even if it cost him his own life or if it cost the lives of his family members. While I can understand the obligation to provide protection to anyone invited to stay in the home, it seems to go against human nature to be willing to sacrifice your loved ones to protect strangers. If I were Lot, and if it were a choice between these two strangers and my two daughters, I'd have thrown the two strangers into the street.
Which brings me to the second theory I found in my research, which is that in those days the lives of men were valued much more than the lives of women, Lot makes a choice that seems logical to him in the era in which he lived. In his day the woman's primary role in life was to bear children and keep the household running. It was believed that men contributed far more to society than women and, since women were usually more plentiful in number than men, women were considered more replaceable. Women had no legal rights of their own. They could not even testify at a trial even if they were the sole witnesses to a crime because the testimony of women was considered worthless.
A third theory is that Lot knows or suspects that his two visitors are not men but angels. If this is the case, then it's somewhat easier to understand that he would feel more obligation to messengers from God than to his own family. On the other hand, if he knows these men are angels, we might expect him to assume they are able to protect themselves. But then, Lot has no experience with angels. He isn't living close to the Lord and we can be pretty certain he's never received an angelic visitation before. He is not in a position to know what angels can or can't do. We have no idea how long it's been since he even talked to the Lord in prayer. I know the Apostle Peter says in the New Testament that Lot was "righteous", but I tend to think this is a case of a person who is saved by the skin of his teeth. Lot does believe in God, but he's like a person who comes to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and then basically does nothing for the kingdom of God. He's like a person who is saved but who never gives a testimony, who rarely if ever attends church, who probably doesn't read the Bible or pray very often, and who doesn't look very different from unbelievers. Lot has drifted far enough away from the Lord to have blended into the society of the city of Sodom. No one gives him a second glance on the street. He's been accepted well enough to hold a public office. As the saying goes, he has one foot in the church and one foot in the world.
And the fourth theory is that Lot makes the offer of his daughters in order to buy time. He knows these men have no interest in his daughters. It's not that the men have no interest in women at all. Most of them are probably married or have had sexual relations with women, so it's not that they are only interested in other men. It's that they have already participated in every sexual experience they can think of and are only interested in something that seems new and exotic, like the two visitors at Lot's house. Their minds are fixated on having these two visitors and nothing else is going to satisfy them. So it could be that Lot makes the offer of his daughters to give himself time to think or to give his visitors and his family time to arm themselves against the mob.
For the first time, the citizens of Sodom treat Lot like an outsider. He is standing between them and what they want. Instead of maintaining the "live and let live" attitude he had in the past, he's telling them no. "'Get out of our way,' they replied. 'This fellow came here as a foreigner, and now he wants to play the judge! We'll treat you worse than them.' They kept bringing pressure on Lot and moved forward to break down the door." (Genesis 19:9) He's playing the judge because he is a judge. That's why he was sitting in the gateway of the city at the beginning of Chapter 19, because this is where judges heard disputes and legal cases in those days. Nobody in Sodom minded that a foreigner was a judge in their city until now. They didn't care what he said or thought until now because he never opposed them before this day. So they are saying in reply to him, "Move out of our way or we'll abuse you even worse than we are going to abuse your guests! Who do you think you are, anyway? You weren't even born here. What right do you have to call us wicked? You aren't qualified to be our judge!"
That's what unbelievers say to believers when we call a sin a sin, isn't it? They say, "You aren't qualified to be our judge!" And in a sense, what they say is true. We don't have the authority to sentence or condemn them for their sin; only God can do that. But we do have sense enough to recognize sin as sin. We do have an obligation to live in such a way that it sets a godly example for everyone around us. We do have a duty to go privately in a loving attitude to a friend or family member and say, "I'm concerned about you. You're hurting yourself with these things. I love you and I'm worried about the path you're on. How can I help you?"
Lot has apparently never done any of these things. His life has not been a testimony of his faith or an example of godly living. He has not led anyone to faith in the Lord during his time in Sodom. He's blended in with the crowd until now, so naturally his fellow citizens are offended and outraged when all of a sudden he tells them they're sinners. They are sinners, but Lot has lost any opportunity he ever had to have his opinion valued by these men. He hasn't lived in front of them in the way a believer ought to live, so understandably they don't take his words to heart when he tells them that what they want to do is wicked. Instead their reaction is, "Who do you think you are? You aren't the judge of us!" This is why we who are believers have to be so careful about our conduct in this world. No one is going to take anything we say about the Lord to heart if we don't appear to be living close to Him ourselves. Instead, if we voice our concerns, their reaction is going to be, "Who do you think you are? What do you know about godly living? You don't look any different than the rest of us."
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