19:1-2 The two angels arrived at Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting in the gateway of the city. When he saw them, he got up to meet them and bowed down with his face to the ground. "My lords," he said, "please turn aside to your servant's house. You can wash your feet and spend the night and then go on your way early in the morning." "No," they answered, "we will spend the night in the square [REB: “street”]." (NIV)
19:3 But he insisted strongly; so they turned in to him and entered his house. Then he made them a feast, and baked unleavened bread, and they ate.
Unleavened Bread
Lot, like Abraham, fixed unleavened bread. Whether this was due to unexpected guests or to instruction that God had given Abraham while Lot was still with him, we are not told.
19:4-5 Before they had lain down to sleep, the men of Sodom, both young and old, everyone without exception, surrounded the house. They called to Lot: 'Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we may have intercourse with them’ [NIV:“have sex with them”; NKJ:“know them carnally”].(REB)
19:6-8 Lot went outside to meet them and shut the door behind him and said, "No, my friends. Don't do this wicked thing. 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." (NIV)
Lot’s Life
Lot knew how to live to please God, as Peter states in 2PE 2:7-8 (NIV), "...Lot, a righteous man, who was distressed by the filthy lives of lawless men (for that righteous man, living among them day after day, was tormented in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard). " However, the influence of that society had obviously rubbed off on Lot as can be ascertained from the offer he made to the unruly mob.
19:9 "Get out of our way," they replied. And they said, "This fellow came here as an alien, 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. (NIV)
The homosexual mob grew more frenzied due to Lot’s resistance. Their reactions depict the description of those who reject not only God, but what is normal according to nature, as Paul shows in ROM 1:27, “Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due.”
19:10-11 But the men inside reached out and pulled Lot back into the house and shut the door. Then they struck the men who were at the door of the house, young and old, with blindness so that they could not find the door. (NIV)
Angelic Intervention
Angels can work miracles when allowed to by God; even Satan was allowed to strike Job with boils (JOB 2:7).
19:12-13 The two men said to Lot, "Do you have anyone else here –sons-in-law, sons or daughters, or anyone else in the city who belongs to you? Get them out of here, because we are going to destroy this place. The outcry to the LORD against its people is so great that He has sent us to destroy it." (NIV)
Impending Calamity
God allowed Lot the opportunity to try and convince his relatives to leave before the destruction came, even though they were not righteous.
19:14 So Lot went out and spoke to his sons-in-law, who had married his daughters, and said, "Get up, get out of this place; for the LORD will destroy this city!" But to his sons-in-law he seemed to be joking.
Nothing major had occurred to give any indication that calamity was coming. That sinful society had continued for many years without any sign of a day of reckoning. Jesus makes reference to this point when referring to the way society will be operating at the end of the age in LUK 17:28-29, "It was the same in the days of Lot. People were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building. But the day Lot left Sodom, fire and sulfur rained down from heaven and destroyed them all."(NIV)
19:15-16 When the morning dawned, the angels urged Lot to hurry, saying, "Arise, take your wife and your two daughters who are here, lest you be consumed in the punishment of the city." And while he lingered, the men took hold of his hand, his wife's hand, and the hands of his two daughters, the LORD being merciful to him, and they brought him out and set him outside the city.
The wickedness of Sodom was exemplified during the darkness of night with the attack of the homosexual mob. The rescue of Lot occurs at the beginning of the first light of day, picturing salvation.
19:17 As soon as they had brought them out, one of them said, "Flee for your lives! Don't look back, and don't stop anywhere in the plain! Flee to the mountains or you will be swept away!" (NIV)
There was real danger coming which would overtake them if they did not carefully use the time granted them; the same warning that Jesus gives to His endtime disciples: "When you see...abomination that causes desolation...let those...in Judea flee to the mountains...let no one...go back" (MAT 24:15-18).
19:18-20 But Lot said to them, "No, my lords, please! Your servant has found favor in your eyes, and you have shown great kindness to me in sparing my life. But I can't flee to the mountains; this disaster will overtake me, and I'll die. Look, here is a town near enough to run to, and it is small. Let me flee to it—it is very small, isn't it? Then my life will be spared." (NIV)
Fleeing Sodom
Climbing the mountains might have been so difficult that Lot did not think his family could physically make the flight in time.
19:21-22 He replied, "Very well, I will grant you this favor too, and I will not annihilate the town of which you have spoken. Hurry, flee there, for I cannot do anything until you arrive there." Hence the town came to be called Zoar. (TAN)
The town was called Bela (14:2) until this event; it was one of the five cities which fought against the Mesopotamian kings. There is no indication if the town was inhabited or if it had been razed by the kings of Mesopotamia.
19:23-25 By the time Lot reached Zoar, the sun had risen over the land. Then the LORD rained down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah—from the LORD out of the heavens. Thus He overthrew those cities and the entire plain, including all those living in the cities—and also the vegetation in the land. (NIV)
Annihilation
Sodom and Gomorrah, along with their sister cities of Admah and Zeboim, were all destroyed in like manner (DEU 29:23).
19:26 But Lot's wife looked back, and she became a pillar of salt. (NIV)
Obedience
Jesus uses Lot’s wife as an example to avoid. [LUK 17:32: “Remember Lot's wife.”] She knew what the angels told them, yet did not heed their instruction because she did not want to leave the world behind. Nothing of the way of the world of Sodom was worth saving or taking with them, just as there will be nothing of the way of the world at the end of the age worth saving. God requires those who want to be saved to show strict obedience to His instructions or face certain death.
19:27-29 Early the next morning Abraham got up and returned to the place where he had stood before the LORD. He looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah, toward all the land of the plain, and he saw dense smoke rising from the land, like smoke from a furnace. So when God destroyed the cities of the plain, He remembered Abraham, and He brought Lot out of the catastrophe that overthrew the cities where Lot had lived. (NIV)
Lot’s Rescue
Lot was rescued because of the intercession of Abraham, due to God's compassion for Abraham—not because of Lot's righteousness.
19:30 Lot and his two daughters left Zoar and settled in the mountains, for he was afraid to stay in Zoar. He and his two daughters lived in a cave. (NIV)
19:31 The elder daughter said to the younger, 'Our father is old and there is not a man in the country to come to us in the usual way. (REB)
“Not a Man in the Country”
According to Josephus, they thought all of humanity had been destroyed (Antiquities, I.XI.5). The Flood was in the 10th generation from Adam, and they were the 10th generation from the Flood. Adam had also prophesied that the earth would be destroyed by fire, leading them to their conclusion. For this conclusion to be reached, Bela was most likely deserted when Lot and his daughters arrived.
19:32-38 Let's get our father to drink wine and then lie with him and preserve our family line through our father." That night they got their father to drink wine, and the older daughter went in and lay with him. He was not aware of it when she lay down or when she got up. The next day the older daughter said to the younger, "Last night I lay with my father. Let's get him to drink wine again tonight, and you go in and lie with him so we can preserve our family line through our father." So they got their father to drink wine that night also, and the younger daughter went and lay with him. Again he was not aware of it when she lay down or when she got up. So both of Lot's daughters became pregnant by their father. The older daughter had a son, and she named him Moab; he is the father of the Moabites of today. The younger daughter also had a son, and she named him Ben-Ammi; he is the father of the Ammonites of today. (NIV)
Descendents
Later Moses in DEU 2:9,19 calls the Moabites and Ammonites the “children of Lot.”
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