After these events, Lot, dreading lest, after all, a similar fate should overtake Zoar, ‘went up’ out of it into the ‘mountain,’ i.e., as in vy.!”"¥, the hill-country on the E. of the Dead Sea; and dwelt there ‘in a cave’ (19%), according to a custom which appears still to prevail in this neighbour- hood.§ ‘he only other incident in his life which is mentioned is the story which now follows (19°?) of the origin of the nations of Moab and Ammon from his incestuous intercourse with his two daughters. Naturally, this narrative is not to be understood as a record of actual fact. The story is based in part upon a popular etymology of the two names; but this does not explain it entirely. There was much rivalry and hostility between Israel and its trans-Jordanic neighbours, Moab
and Ammon; it is also, as Dillm. has remarked, a probable inference from the present narrative, that incestuous marriages, such as were viewed in
* See HGHL 506-7 ἢ,
# So also Keil, Del., Dillm., Socin (ZDPV, 1880, p. 81), Buhl (Geogr. 2711.), Blanckenhorn (Ζ DPV xix. 1596, 58 f.).
t V.2 is a summary account, from P, of what has been
described at length, in vv.)%, by J. : § Buckingham, Travels in Syria (1825), pp. 61- 87.
153 LOT
LOTS
Israel with abhorrence, were not uncommon amon. these two nations; and these feelings are τεσ ἢ in the discreditable story of their origin, which the narrator has here preserved. ‘It was the coarse humour of the people which put into words its aversion to Moab and mon by means of this narrative’ (Dillm.).
The only other mention of Lot in the OT is in the expression ‘children of Lot,’ applied to Moab in Dt 2°, and to the Ammonites in Dt 2; and to both peoples indiscriminately in Ps 83°.
Lot is in character a strong contrast to Abraham. He is selfish, weak, and worldly: he thinks of himself before his uncle, and chooses, for the sake of luxury and ease, to dwell in the midst of temp- tation. Relatively, indeed, he was ‘righteous’ (2 P 27-8); his personal character was without reproach ; and he was deemed worthy by God of a special deliverance.* His ‘righteous soul’ was, moreover, ‘ vexed (ἐβασανίζετο) from day to day’ by the ‘lawless deeds’ which he saw around him ; but he had not strength of purpose to quit his evil sur- roundings, and even betrothed his daughters to natives of the sinful city. When ultimately he left Sodom, it was with manifest reluctance, and only after his daughters had become (if we may follow the representation of the narrator) depraved by contact with vice. He brought temptations, and also troubles, upon himself,—and the man who once was rich in ‘flocks and herds and tents’ (13°) was, as the result of his own actions, stripped of his possessions, and reduced to living penu- riously in a cave. Lot is one of the many τύποι ἡμῶν in the OT; and his history is a lesson of the danger of thinking too exclusively of worldly advantage and present ease.
The historical character of Lot must be judged by the same principles as that of ΙΒΗΜΑΕΙ͂, and Jacos(vol. ii. 533f.): no doubt tribal relations and characteristics are, to a certain degree, reflected in him. Cf. Dillm. AY Theol. p. 79. On Jewish traditions about Lot, see the B’reshith Rabba (tr. Wiinsche), and the Pirké R. Eliezer, c. 25 (where his wife is called nny Edith, and one of his daughters nds Pelotith). In Fabricius, Cod. Pseudepigr. VT, i. 428-431, there is a Greek legend of a tree planted by him, which afterwards provided wood for the cross. Ireneus (iv. 81 ; 33. 9) interprets typically some of the incidents of his history. In the Qor’an, Lot is often alluded to as a preacher of nghteousness to the copie among whom he dwelt, Qor. 778-82 1172-84 158M. 2174-75 2945 26160-175 2755-59 2927-34 5433-38 ; in these passages (as well as elsewhere) the men of Sodom are called the ‘ people of Lot,’ as the Dead Sea is still called by the Arabs Bahr Lat, the ‘Sea of Lot.’
Lot’s Wife.—Gn 19 ‘But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.’ At the S.W. end of the Dead Sea is the singular formation called Jebel Usdum, ‘the mountain of Sodom,’ a range of cliffs, some 6 miles long and 600 ft. high, consisting of crystallized rock-salt—once part of the bed of the ancient Salt Sea—‘ covered with a capping of chalky limestone and gypsum. . .. It has a strangely dislocated, shattered look, and is all furrowed and worn into huge angular buttresses and ridges, from the face of which great fragments are occasionally detached by the action of the rains, and appear as “‘ pillars of salt” advanced in front of the general mass. At the foot the ground is strewed with lumps and inasses of salt.’t+ Such pillars, or pinnacles, of salt have been often noticed by travellers. Lieut. Lynch, for instance, + describes one which was about 40 ft. high, cylindrical in form, and rested ona kind of oval pedestal, some 50 ft. above the level of the sea. It is probable that some such pillar, conspicuous in antiquity, gave rise to the story. Writers of a later age often felt satisfied that they