Lot (/lɒt/;Hebrew:לוֹטLōṭ, lit. "veil" or "covering";[1]Greek:ΛώτLṓt;Arabic:لُوطLūṭ;Syriac: ܠܘܛLōṭ) was a man mentioned in the biblicalBook of Genesis, chapters 11–14 and 19. Notable events in his life recorded in Genesis include his journey with his uncleAbraham; his flight from the destruction ofSodom and Gomorrah, during whichhis wife became a pillar of salt.[2] He is regarded as the parental ancestor ofAmmonites andMoabites, the enemies ofIsraelites.
As a part of thecovenant of the pieces, God told Abram to leave his country and his kindred. Abram's nephew Lot joined him on his journey and they went into the land of Canaan, settling in the hills of Bethel.[4]
Due to famine, Abram and Lot journeyed intoEgypt, but Abram pretended that his wife Sarai was his sister. Hearing of her beauty, the Pharaoh took Sarai for his own, for which God afflicted him with great plagues. When the Pharaoh confronted Abram, Abram admitted that Sarai had been his wife all along, and so the Pharaoh forced them out of Egypt.[5]
When Abram and Lot returned to the hills of Bethel with their many livestock, their respective herdsmen began to bicker. Abram suggested they part ways and let Lot decide where he would like to settle. Lot saw that the plains of the Jordan were well watered "like the gardens of the Lord, like the land of Egypt," and so settled among the cities of the plain, going as far as Sodom. Likewise, Abram went to dwell inHebron, staying in the land of Canaan.[6]
The five kingdoms of the plain had becomevassal states of an alliance of four eastern kingdoms under the leadership ofChedorlaomer, king ofElam. They served this king for twelve years, but "in the thirteenth year they rebelled." The following year Chedorlaomer's four armies returned and at theBattle of Siddim the kings ofSodom andGomorrah fell in defeat. Chedorlaomer despoiled the cities and took captives as he departed, including Lot, who dwelt in Sodom.[7]
When Abram heard what had happened to Lot, he led a force of three hundred and eighteen of his trained men and caught up to the armies of the four kings inDan. Abram divided his forces and pursued them toHobah. Abram brought back Lot and all of his people and their belongings.[8]
Later, after God had changed Abram's name to Abraham and Sarai's name toSarah as part of thecovenant of the pieces, God appeared to Abraham in the form of three angels. God promised Abraham that Sarah would bear a son, and he would become a great and mighty nation.[9] God then tells Abraham his plan,
"And the Lord said: 'Verily, the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and, verily, their sin is exceeding grievous. I will go down now and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it, which is come unto Me; and if not, I will know."
As the angels continued to walk toward Sodom, Abraham pled to God on behalf of the people of Sodom, where Lot dwelt. God assured him that the city would not be destroyed if fifty righteous people were found there. He continued inquiring, reducing the minimum number for sparing the town to forty-five, forty, thirty, twenty, and finally, ten.[10]
And the two angels came to Sodom in the evening; and Lot sat in the gate of Sodom; and Lot saw them, and rose up to meet them; and he fell down on his face to the earth; 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 broad place all night.' 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.
After supper, that night before bedtime, the men of the city, young and old, gathered around Lot's house demanding that he bring out his two guests that they may rape them. Lot went out, closing the door behind him, and begged them to refrain from so wicked a deed, offering them instead his virgin daughters to do with as they pleased. The men of Sodom accused Lot of acting as a judge and threatened to do worse to him than they would have done to the ‘men’.[11]
The angels drew Lot back in to his house and struck the mob with blindness. The angels then said that God had sent them to destroy the place, telling Lot, "whomsoever thou hast in the city; bring them out of the place". Lot went to the houses of his sons-in-law and warned them to leave the city, but they would not come, imagining that he spoke only in jest.[12]
Lot lingered in the morning so the angels forced him and his family out of the city, telling them to flee for the hills andnot look back. Fearful that the hills would not afford them sufficient protection from the impending destruction, Lot instead asked the angels if he and his might hide in the safety of a neighboring village. An angel agreed and the village was thenceforth known as Zoar. When God rained fire and brimstone upon Sodom and Gomorrah, Lot's wife looked back at the burning cities of the plain and was turned into a pillar of salt in recompense for her folly.[13]
The sun was risen upon the earth when Lot came unto Zoar. Then the LORD caused to rain upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the LORD out of heaven; and He overthrow those cities, and all the Plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground. But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt. And Abraham got up early in the morning to the place where he had stood before the LORD. And he looked out 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.
Instead offire and brimstone,Josephus has only lightning as the cause of the fire that destroyed Sodom: "God then cast a thunderbolt upon the city, and set it on fire, with its inhabitants; and laid waste the country with the like burning."[14] InThe Jewish War, he likewise says that the city was "burnt by lightning".[15]
After the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Lot was afraid to stay in Zoar and so he and his two daughters resettled into the hills, living in a cave.[16] Concerned for their father having descendants, one evening, Lot's eldest daughter gets Lot drunk and has sex with him without his knowledge. The elder daughter then insisted that her younger sister also get him drunk and have sex with him, which the younger sister duly did on the following night. From these incestuous unions, the older daughter conceivedMoab (Hebrew מוֹאָב, lit., "from the father" [meh-Av]), father of the Moabites;[17] while the younger conceivedBen-Ammi (Hebrew בֶּן-עַמִּי, lit., "Son of my people"), father of the Ammonites.[18]
The story, usually calledLot and his daughters, has been the subject ofmany paintings over the centuries, and became one of the subjects in thePower of Women group of subjects, warning men against the dangers of succumbing to the temptations of women, while also providing an opportunity for an erotic depiction. The scene generally shows Lot and his daughters eating and drinking in their mountain refuge. Often the background contains a small figure of Lot's wife, and in the distance, a burning city.[19]
Along with the account ofTamar andJudah (Genesis 38:11–26), this is one instance of "sperm stealing" in the Bible, in which a woman seduces and has sex with her male relative under false pretenses in order to become pregnant. Each case involves a direct ancestor ofKing David.[20]
In theBereshith of theTorah, Lot is first mentioned at the end of the weekly reading portion,Parashat Noach. The weekly reading portions that follow, concerning all of the accounts of Lot's life, are read in theParashat Lekh Lekha andParashat Vayera. In theMidrash, a number of additional stories concerning Lot are present, not found in theTanakh, as follows:
Abraham took care of Lot after Haran was burned in a gigantic fire in whichNimrod, King ofBabylon, tried to kill Abraham.
While in Egypt, the midrash gives Lot much credit because, despite his desire for wealth, he did not informPharaoh ofSarah's secret, that she was Abraham's wife.
According to theBook of Jasher, Paltith, one of Lot's daughters, was burnt alive (in some versions, on a pyre) for giving a poor man bread.[21] Her cries went to the heavens.[22]
In the ChristianNew Testament, Lot is considered sympathetically, as a man who regretted his choice to live in Sodom, where he "vexed his righteous soul from day to day".[23]Jesus spoke of future judgment coming suddenly as in the days of Lot, and warned solemnly, "Remember Lot's wife".[24]
InIslamic tradition, Lut lived inUr and was a nephew ofIbrahim (Abraham). He migrated with Ibrahim toCanaan and was commissioned as aprophet to the cities ofSodom and Gomorrah.[26] His story is used as a reference byMuslims to demonstrateGod's disapproval of homosexuality. He was commanded by God to go to the land of Sodom and Gomorrah to preachmonotheism and to stop them from theirlustful and violent acts.Lut's messages were ignored by the inhabitants, prompting Sodom and Gomorrah's destruction. Though Lut left the city, hiswife was left behind. The angels that had visited Lot previously informed him she would linger behind, and hence she died during the destruction. In Surah At-tahrim (the Prohibition) the wife of Lot is described as a disbeliever, and it is mentioned that she betrayed Lot (66:10).[26]The Quran defines Lot as a prophet, and holds that all prophets were examples of moral and spiritual rectitude.
The presumptive incest between Lot and his daughters has raised many questions, debates, and theories as to what the real motives were, who really was at fault, and the level of bias the author of Genesis Chapter 19 had. However, such biblical scholars asJacob Milgrom,[27]Victor P. Hamilton,[28] andCalum Carmichael[29] postulate that the Levitical laws could not have been developed the way they were, without controversial issues surrounding the patriarchs of Israel, especially regarding incest. Carmichael even attributes the entire formulation of the Levitical laws to the lives of the founding fathers of the nation, including the righteous Lot (together withAbraham,Jacob,Judah,Moses, andDavid), who were outstanding figures inIsraelite tradition.
According to the scholars mentioned above, the patriarchs of Israel are the key to understanding how the priestly laws concerning incest developed. Kinship marriages amongst the patriarchs include Abraham's marriage to his half-sisterSarai;[30] the marriage of Abraham's brother, Nahor, to their nieceMilcah;[31] Isaac's marriage to Rebekah, his first cousin once removed;[32] Jacob's marriages with two sisters who are his first cousins;[33] and, in the instance of Moses's parents, a marriage between nephew and paternal aunt.[34] Therefore, the patriarchal marriages surely mattered to lawgivers and they suggest a narrative basis for the laws ofLeviticus, chapters 18 and 20.[35]
Some[who?] have argued that Lot's behavior in offering of his daughters to the men of Sodom in Genesis 19:8 constitutessexual abuse of his daughters, which created a confusion of kinship roles that was ultimately played out through the incestuous acts in Genesis 19:30–38.[36]
A number of commentators describe the actions of Lot's daughters as rape.Esther Fuchs suggests that the text presents Lot's daughters as the "initiators and perpetrators of the incestuous 'rape'."[37]
^Lowenthal, Anne W. (1988)"Lot and His Daughters as Moral Dilemma", inThe Age of Rembrandt: Studies in Seventeenth-century Dutch Painting, Volume 3 ofPapers in Art History from the Pennsylvania State University, eds. Roland E. Fleischer, Susan Scott Munshower. Penn State Press.ISBN978-0915773022
^abHasan, Masudul (1987).History of Islam, Volume 1. Islamic Publications. p. 26.Lut was a nephew of the Prophet Abraham. He migrated with Abraham fromIraq to Canaan inPalestine. He was commissioned as a prophet to the cities of Sodom and Gomarrah, situated to the east of the Dead Sea. The people of these cities were guilty of unspeakable crimes. They were addicted to homosexuality and highway robberies. Lut warned the people but they refused to listen to him. He prayed toGod to punish the people. Lot left the city with his followers at night.
^Kimuhu, Johnson M. (2008).Leviticus: The Priestly Laws and Prohibitions from the Perspective of Ancient Near East and Africa. Studies in Biblical Literature 115. Peter Lang. pp. 31–33.
^Katherine B. Low (Fall 2010). "The Sexual Abuse of Lot's Daughters: Reconceptualizing Kinship for the Sake of Our Daughters".Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion.26 (2). Indiana University Press:37–54.doi:10.2979/fsr.2010.26.2.37.S2CID143666743.
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