(Reading: Genesis 18-19)

The Book of Genesis, which has been focusing on Abraham and his relationship with God, takes a detour to discuss the fate of Lot and, with it, of Sodom and Gomorrah. As our times show some tendency to downplay those events, let’s take the detour.

Lot is Abraham’s nephew. He accompanied his uncle to this Promised Land: as we noted, when we speak of Abraham we are speaking of an extended family and clan. But, after settling down, everybody realized the sheep herds were bigger than the clan and that separate spaces might be mutually beneficial. So, Lot goes off to live on his own and — long story short — he winds up in Sodom.

Now Genesis describes as fertile the region where Sodom was supposed to have stood, what is today in the barren desert region of the brackish Dead Sea. Sodom and Gomorrah are described as prosperous cities. 

And sinful ones.

Long before Ninevah became the destination of Jonah’s conversion mission, when the nasty Assyro-Babylonians (and they were nasty) conquered the northern Kingdom of Israel, Sodom and Gomorrah were the epitome of morally-corrupt-to-the-core places. 

Genesis presents God as discussing Sodom’s fate with Abraham. The discussion takes place immediately after the Three Visitors come to Abraham’s tent and promise that, within a year, Abraham and Sarah will have a son. Once again, as was in the case of Noah, God brands the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah as “great” and “so grievous.” 

It’s then that Abraham bargains with God and God demonstrates his mercy. As was the case of Noah, God differentiates between the righteous and the wicked and Abraham seizes upon that. Will the Lord destroy the city if there are 50 good people there? No. Forty-five? Forty? Thirty? Twenty? With each reduced number, God promises to spare the city until Abraham finally reaches 10. God says he will spare the city if at least 10 good people are there. Abraham, aware of God’s justice as well as his mercy, does not barter further downward.

Noah’s ark contained eight people; the “less-than-10” are insufficient to spare evildoers what they justly deserve. I have also often wondered if Abraham’s “10” has anything to do with the Jewish concept of minyan. To have a valid Jewish liturgy, a minyan — 10 post-bar mitzvah men — must be present. Without that number, God cannot be properly worshiped liturgically (which is what impairs so many post-Holocaust European Jewish communities). I cannot verify this hypothesis because I am not a biblical familiar with the dating of Genesis 19 nor when the concept of minyan arose in Israel, but I offer the thought for consideration by better scholars than me. 

Having pressed God’s mercy to its likely intersection with his justice, Abraham falls back and the Lord moves on to Sodom and Gomorrah. 

Genesis 19 begins with “two angels” appearing on the street in Sodom before Lot. In keeping with both hospitality and consciousness of his environment, Lot invited them into his house. They demurred, ostensibly not wanting to impose and saying they would spend the night outdoors on the town square. Lot convinced them not to do that, took them into his house, fed them, and prepared to retire for the night.

Genesis 19:4-5 reports that a mob of men, “young and old” from across the city encircled Lot’s house. They demanded Lot send “the men” (הָאֲנָשִׁ֛ים, verse 5) out so they could sodomize them. Lot brands their planned deed “wicked.”

We need to stop here for a moment because some contemporary theologians try to rewrite the obvious meaning of the biblical text as understood in the Christian tradition in order to sanitize homosexual behavior. They try to reinterpret the “wicked” deed the Sodomites contemplate as either inhospitality or rape. Neither is convincing.

Yes, inhospitality in the ancient Near East was a great sin because, in that world, one’s survival often depended on it. And rape is clearly … rape. But neither alone nor even both together explain what happened in Sodom.

For one, Lot offers his daughters in place of the “male” visitors. One may think this barbaric but two things need to be borne in mind against the cultural context of the time. First, if the sin is just “inhospitality,” was it okay, less “unnatural” to do what the mob intended — commit a sexual act — to female residents rather than male visitors? In other words, was raping Lot’s daughters better than his “men” visitors? But, if rape is also wrong, then the crowd’s intentions towards Lot’s daughters are also morally corrupt. In any event, the Sodomites showed no interest in the daughters. They intended to seize the visitors by force until they were struck blind.

There are lots of common ways to be inhospitable — cheating the stranger, supplying subpar goods, not having room in the inn — but Bethlehem didn’t get incinerated. Sexually molesting the guest, however, seems uniquely perverse, something likely to earn you a particular reputation that even God might want to see if their “sin was so grievous” (Genesis 18:20). And if the Abrahamic world accepted that “male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27) and not the need to overcome the “dreaded gender binary,” it seems clear how homosexual sex got called “sodomy.”

No, despite all the modern “exegesis” attempting to deny what the text and tradition have said, it is clear that male sodomites intend to commit sexual acts with the male “visitors” of Lot’s house, are not dissuaded from their plans, and are punished both temporarily (the blindness that stops them from breaking and entering Lot’s home) and permanently (the rain of fire and brimstone that destroys the city). Scripture needs to be read in the light of the Church’s tradition, which identified sodomy alongside defrauding the labor of his wages, abusing the widow and orphan, and murder as four great “sins crying to heaven for vengeance.”

John Martin’s 1852 oil painting, “The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah,” depicts the heaven-sent punishment that descends on the two cities. The conflagration is total and comprehensive: the ruins of the city are in a sea of fire. Lest anybody think the inferno is the result of Mrs. Murphy’s cow and its unfortunate relationship with a lantern, the bolt of lightning defining the right side border of the destruction makes clear its divine origin. (Martin was known, according to sources, for his apocalyptic scenes.)

Four people (60% below Abraham’s minimum) escape the divine wrath. They appear in white, indicative of their innocence. Their white figures also stand in contrast to the burning and barren landscape. Lot’s wife, disobedient to the angels’ command not to look back at the city’s destruction, stands apart, transformed into a pillar of salt. If one should not look on the face of God and live, still less should one gaze upon the work of his righteous hand when commanded to put it out of one’s sight. Lot and his two daughters have already moved on, fleeing the “wrath that is to come.” 

Our modern world, nurtured on a flabby concept of a divinity that indulges sinfulness, may find the account of Sodom and Gomorrah upsetting. Yes, God is merciful: we see that in Abraham’s discussion with the Lord. But God is also just, and holds man to account for the moral law, which is not necessarily tailored to the Zeitgeist. That’s why the detour into the fate of the cities of the plain is salutary for our times.