'Lot's Wife."
isolated needle of rock, which really does bear a curious resemblance to an Arab woman with a child upon her shoulder. The Arab legend of Lot's wife differs from the Bible account only in the addition of a few frivolous details. They say that there were seven cities of the plain, and that they were all miraculously overwhelmed by the Dead Sea as a punishment for their crimes. The prophet Lot and his family alone escaped the general destruction. He was divinely warned to take all that he had and flee eastward, a strict injunction being given that they should not look behind them. Lot's wife, who had on previous occasions ridiculed her husband's prophetic office, disobeyed the command, and, turning to gaze upon the scene of the disaster, was changed into this piillar of rock" [Desert of the Exodus [Harper's], p. 396 sq.). The expression of our Lord, "Remember Lot's wife" (Luke xvii, 32), appears from the context to be solely intended as an illustration of the danger of going back or delaj'ing in the day of God's judgments. From this text, indeed, it would appear as if Lot's wife had gone back or had tarried so long behind in the desire of saving some of their property. Then, as it would seem, she was struck dead, and became a stiffened corpse, fixed for the time to the soil by saline or bituminous in- crustations. The particle of similitude must here, as in many other passages of Scripture, be understood, " like a pillar of salt." See Nagel, De cidjm iixoiis Loti (Alt- dorf, 1755) ; Distel, De salute uxoris Loihi (Altd. 1721) ; Waller, Diss, de statua sal. uxoris Loti (Lipsire, 1764) ; j Wolle, De facto etfato uxoris Loti (Lips. 1730) ; Schwoll- mann, Comm. qua de uxore Z,. in statuam sal. conversa dubitatur (Hamburg, 1749); MilomjSendschr.u.d.Salz- siiule in die L.'s Weib vervandelt vorden (Hamb. 1767) ; Clerici Diss, de statua salina, in his Comment, in Gen. ; Tieroff,Z>e statua salis (Jen. 1657) ; Midler, idem (Helm- stadt, 1764) ; Oedmann, Samml. iii, 145 ; Bauer, Ihhr. Geschichte, i, 131 ; Mali Ohserrat. sacr. i, 168 sq. ; H. v. d. Hardt, Epkein. philol. p. 67 sq. ; Jenisch, Erorter. ziceier wichtifi.Schriftstellen (Hamb. 1761); Michaelis and Ro- senmiiller on Gen. xix, 26; Gesenius, Thesanr. U eh.\^.12. Lot and his daughters meanwhile had hastened on to Zoar (q. v.), the smallest of the five cities of the plain, which had been spared on purpose to afford him a ref- uge ; but, being fearful, after what had passed, to re- main among a people so corrupted, he soon retired to a cavern in the neighboring mountains, and there abode (Gen. xix, 30). After some stay in this place, the daughters of Lot became apprehensive lest the family of their father should be lost for want of descendants, than which no greater calamity was kno^vn or appre-
LOT
522
LOUIS
heiided iia those times; and in the beUef that, after •Nvhat had passed in Sodom, there was no hope of their obtaining suitable husbands, they, by a contrivance wliicli lias in it the taint of Sodom, in which they were lirouglit up, made their father drunk with wine, and in that state seduced him into an act which, as they well knew, would in soberness have been most abhorrent to liiin. They thus became the mothers, and he the fa- ther, of two sons, named Moab and Ammon, from whom sprung the Moabites and Ammonites, so often mention- ed in the Hebrew history (Gen. xix, 31-38). With re- spect to Lot's daughters, Whiston and others are unable to see any wicked intention in them. He admits that the incest was a horrid crime, except under the un- avoidable necessity which apparently rendered it the only means of preserving the human race ; and this jus- tifying necessity he holds to have existed in their minds, as they appear to have believed that all the inhabitants of the land had been destroyed except their father and themselves. But it is incredible that they could have entertained any such belief. The city of Zoar had been spared, and thej' had been there. The wine also with which they made their father drunk must have been procured from men, as we cannot suppose they had brought it with them from Sodom. The fact woidd therefore seem to be that, after the fate of their sisters, who had married men of Sodom and perished with them, they became alive to the danger and impropriety of marrjdng with the natives of the land, and of the im- portance of preserving the family connection. The force of this consiileration was afterwards seen in Abraham's sending to the scat of his familj- in Mesopotamia for a wife to Isaac. But Lot's daughters could not go there to seek husbands; and the only branch of their own family within many hundred miles was that of Abra- ham, whose only son, Ishniael, was then a child. This, therefore, must have appeared to them the only practi- cable mode in which the house of tlieir father could be preserved. Their making their father drunk, and their solicitous concealment of what they did from him, show that they despaired of persuading him to an act which, under any circumstances, and with every possible ex- tenuation, must have been very distressing to so good a man. That he was a good man is evinced bj' his de- liverance from among the guilty, and is affirmed by an apostle (2 Pet. ii, 7); his preservation is alluded to hy our Saviour (Luke xvii, 18, etc.) ; and in Dent, ii, 9, 19, and Psa. Ixxxiii, 9, his name is honorablj' used to des- ignate the Moabites and Ammonites, his descendants. This account of the origin of the nations of Moab and Ammon has often been treated as if it were a Hebrew legend which owed its origin to the bitter hatred exist- ing from the earliest to the latest times between the " children of Lot" and the children of Israel. The hor- rible nature of the transaction — not the result of im- pulse or passion, but a plan calculated and carried out, and that not once, but twice, would prompt the wish that the legendary theory were true. But even the most destructive critics (as, for instance, Tuch) allow that tlic narrative is a continuation without a break of tliat which precedes it, while they fail to point out any marks of later date in the language of this portion ; and it cannot be questioned that tlie writer records it as a historical fact. Even if the legendary theory were ad- missible, there is no doubt of the fact that Ammon and IMoab sprang from Lot. It is affirmed in the statements of Dent, ii, 9 and 19, as well as in the later document of I'sa. xxxiii, S, which ICwald ascribes to the time when Nehemiah and his newly-returned colony were suffering from the attacks and obstructions of Tobiah the Am- monite and Sanballat the Iloronite (Ewald, Diclite?; Vsa. Ixxxiii).