And the two angels came to Sodom at even; 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.
—GENESIS 19.1-3
Their father returned to the house after nightfall with two hooded strangers. They had appeared at sunset at the gates to the city, where Lot bowed low to them and begged them to come home with him for a bath, an evening meal, and a bed for the night. At first the strangers refused: “We will spend the night on the street,” they said. But Lot begged and pleaded with them, as was his custom when he encountered strangers who might bring him some good fortune, and they finally agreed to follow him home.
“Make welcome our guests,” he commanded the women of the household, suddenly stern and imperious. “Wash their feet and make a meal for them!” And then Lot whispered to his wife the same wishful words she had heard many times before from her husband: “Who knows when an ordinary stranger on the road might turn out to be an angel sent from heaven?”
But the neighbors up and down the lane were not so welcoming. Someone had noticed the two strangers following Lot back to his house, and a knot of rowdy young men gathered outside his door. Perhaps they had been drinking, which was hardly surprising in Sodom, but wine alone did not explain their rough manners, which were common enough around town. Bored with the all-too-familiar pleasures readily available to them in Sodom, the townsfolk were aroused by the very presence of strangers: Here was fresh meat! Soon the young men were joined by other curiosity-seekers, young and old, and the crowd began to grow into a mob.
But before they lay down, the men of the city, even the men of Sodom, compassed the house round, both young and old, all the people came from every quarter. And they called unto Lot, and said unto him: “Where are the men that came in to thee this night? Bring them out unto us, that we may know them.”
—GENESIS 19:4–5
“Hey, bring them out,” someone shouted. “Bring out the strangers and let us have a look at them!”
“Yes, bring them out,” another one called in a slurred voice, “so we can bugger them!”
And the rest of the crowd took up the cry, not only the rowdy young men who always seemed to range through the streets in search of excitement but their fathers and uncles, too. To Lot’s younger daughter, who peered out from a window on the second floor while her sister cowered in bed, it seemed as if every lout and his brother had gathered outside their house.
Then she saw her father boldly step out of the house and close the door behind him. The crowd fell silent, as if in sheer amazement that Lot would actually leave the safety of his house and expose himself to their shouts, their fists—and worse.
“No, no, my friends,” he said to them in a lilting voice, seeking to ingratiate himself with them by a fatherly scolding. “Do not be so wicked!”
“We want to bugger someone!” a voice called out from somewhere in the crowd, a voice thick with liquor and dangerous with the threat of sudden violence. His words were greeted with laughter that sounded like the braying of donkeys. “Give them to us!”
What her father said in reply, the younger daughter found hard to believe even though she heard it plainly.
“Look, my friends, I have two daughters in my house,” cried Lot, raising both hands in a gesture of prayer. “Both of them virgins!”
And Lot went out unto them to the door, and shut the door after him. And he said: “I pray you, my brethren, do not so wickedly. Behold now, I have two daughters that have not known man; let me, I pray you, bring them out unto you, and do ye to them as is good in your eyes; only unto these men do nothing; forasmuch as they are come under the shadow of my roof.”
—GENESIS 19.6-8
And they said: “Stand back.” And they said: “This one fellow came in to sojourn, and he will needs play the judge; now will we deal worse with thee, than with them.” And they pressed sore upon the man, even Lot, and drew near to break the door. But the men put forth their hand, and brought Lot into the house to them, and the door they shut. And they smote the men that were at the door of the house with blindness, both small and great; so that they wearied themselves to find the door.”
—GENESIS 19:9–11
A murmur rolled through the crowd, and the younger daughter shivered.
“I beg you to let me bring them out to you,” Lot continued, “and you can do what you want with them …”
Yes, that’s right, the younger daughter later told her incredulous sister, not once but many times, that is exactly what our father said.
“… do whatever pleases you with my daughters, I beg you,” Lot repeated pleadingly, “but do not touch the strangers who have sought shelter under my roof!”
If the prospect of having their way with two young virgins was appealing to the men in the crowd, they gave no sign of it. Indeed, Lot’s offer seemed to stir them to an even hotter rage than before.
“Out of our way,” one of the men shouted at Lot. “You are a stranger, too! And now you set yourself up so high and mighty—you think you can tell us what to do? Out of our way, stranger!”
“Or,” another man took up, “we’ll bugger you instead of them!”
The crowd surged forward, and Lot’s daughter feared that her father would be crushed and dragged away. But then she saw the front door fly open, and the light from the lamps inside the house fall on the faces of the crowd. The two strangers reached out from the doorway, clapped their hands on Lot’s shoulders, and yanked him back inside the house so suddenly that he seemed to disappear.
The crowd lingered outside the house, calling out and pounding on the door, but she could tell that their bloodlust had begun to ebb. A few men drifted away, laughing and singing bawdily, and the ones who remained were content to pass around flasks from which they occasionally took a long pull. Now and then, Lot’s daughter heard the sound of shouting and cursing, but the words were directed from one man in the crowd toward another; they seemed to have forgotten about the strangers—and the young women—inside the house. Now and then, she heard a thunk and then a cry of pain—“Owww!”—as one of the men, blind drunk, bumped into a wall or a corner of the house. Before long, the stalwarts who lingered outside Lot’s house were so drunk that they could not have found the front door if they tried, and even they began to stagger off in one direction or another.
But there was still a quiet commotion in Lot’s house, and his youngest daughter positioned herself at the top of the staircase so she could hear the words that her parents were whispering to one another in such urgent tones.
“Who are these strangers?” demanded Lot’s wife, looking to the corner next to the hearth where the two figures, wrapped in their long cloaks, appeared to sleep. “And why have you brought them here to afflict us?”
“As I have told you, they are angels! They are messengers of the Lord who have come to bestow some gift upon us, which is what I have predicted many times, if you will recall,” Lot said solemnly. “I could do no less than welcome them into our home.”
“Angels, you say!” His wife laughed bitterly. “Demons, more likely. Or madmen.”
“Quiet,” Lot pleaded. “Did you not see them pluck me out of the hands of the crowd? Did you not see the light that shone when they opened the door to rescue me? Did you not see how the men in the street were struck blind? They must be angels—”
And the men said unto Lot: “Hast thou here any besides? Son-in-law, and thy sons, and thy daughters, and whomsoever thou hast in the city; bring them out of the place, for we will destroy this place, because the cry of them is waxed great before the Lord; and the Lord hath
sent us to destroy it.”
—GENESIS 19.12-13
“What I saw,” Lot’s wife hissed, “is a man who would sacrifice the virtue of his own flesh and blood in order to protect a couple of strangers!”
“Angels, that’s what they are,” he repeated. “Listen to what they told me: ‘Get out of Sodom, you and your family, because God has sent us to destroy this place! Take your wife, your children, take anyone who belongs to you—and flee!’ That is what they told me.”
“And, of course, you will do what they say even though you never do what I say, your own wife and the mother of your daughters?” his wife parried. “If, in fact, you are not simply making up another tale.”
“I swear, good wife, this is what they told me: The evildoers in Sodom are so many and so vile in the eyes of the Lord that He sent them to destroy the whole place and everyone in it, right down to the last blade of grass.”
“Husband, you are mad, too!”
Never before had Lot’s daughter seen her father so agitated, and she watched as he paced back and forth, kneading one hand in the other, stopping occasionally to sway back and forth as if in prayer. Then, suddenly, he headed for the door.
“Where are you going, madman?” her mother called. “It’s the middle of the night!”
“To fetch our married daughters and their husbands!” her father called. “So they, too, can flee!”
Lot’s youngest daughter slept where she sat, leaning against the wall at the top of the stairs, but she was wakened before dawn by the sound of her father clambering back into the house. Her mother, too, stirred and rose to approach the old man, who was no less agitated than when he had left an hour or two before.
And Lot went out, and spoke unto his sons-in-law, who married his daughters, and said: “Up, get you out of this place; for the Lord will destroy the city.” But he seemed unto his sons-in-law as one that jested.
—GENESIS 19:14
“What, then?” her mother asked, a mocking tone in her voice. “Where are our daughters and their husbands?”
“They refused to come,” he said in a dull voice. “They laughed at me, as you do.”
Lot sounded so dispirited that his wife took pity on him for a moment. “Sleep, then,” she said in a softer tone, “and we’ll talk more of this in the morning.”
“Their husbands called me a fool,” Lot complained. “‘Up, up and out of Sodom, because God is going to destroy this place,’ I told them. And they said: ‘Every night there is plenty of food and drink, plenty of singing and dancing in the streets. Everyone in Sodom is happy but you—and only you say Sodom will be destroyed.’”
She beckoned him to the bed she had made up near the stove, and he laid his head on the pillow next to her. Lot and his wife slept, and so did their daughters, as if they had forgotten about the strangers who waited out the long night somewhere in their house, neither seen nor heard.
At dawn, an unfamiliar voice awakened them all.
“Arise!” said one of the strangers, hovering over Lot. “Arise, take your wife and your daughters, and flee.”
By now, Lot’s older daughter was awake, too, and the younger one followed her down the short staircase to the room where Lot and his wife now stood before the strangers.
And when the morning arose, then the angels hastened Lot, saying: “Arise, take thy wife, and thy two daughters that are here; lest thou be swept away in the iniquity of the city.” But he lingered; and the men laid hold upon his hand, and upon the hand of his wife, and upon the hand of his two daughters; the Lord being merciful unto him. And they brought him forth, and set him without the city.
—GENESIS 19:15–16
And it came to pass, when they had brought them forth abroad, that he said: “Escape for thy life; look not behind thee, neither stay thou in all the Plain; escape to the mountain, lest thou be swept away”
—GENESIS 19:17
“What is going on here?” the older daughter demanded. “What do these men want?”
The two strangers reached out and took each member of the family by the hand. Their touch was hot, and their fingertips seemed afire with fever. A strange light burned in their eyes.
“The Lord will show his mercy to you, but only to you,” one of the men said. “The rest will be destroyed—every man, woman, and child in Sodom, everything, right down to the last blade of grass.”
Lot cast a glance in his wife’s direction as if to say I told you so! She caught his glance and scowled back.
“Come with us now,” the other stranger said, “and we will take you to safety before we begin our work.”
Lot’s wife started to speak, but the two strangers moved abruptly to the door and then into the street, where they disappeared from sight in a silver-gray fog that had settled over Sodom by night. Lot followed in haste, and suddenly he was gone, too. Now Lot’s wife seized the two young women by the hand and followed her husband through the doorway. As if in a dream, they all seemed to float down the road in the morning mist, past houses where the carousers still slept, until they found themselves on the outskirts of Sodom, well past the city gates, on the road leading out of town. Here the two strangers stopped and turned to face Lot and his family.
“Keep going until you reach the highest mountain,” one of the strangers said, gesturing toward the range of black and gray peaks on the far horizon. “If you stay here, you will be burned into ash along with the others.”
“Flee for your life!” the other one commanded. “And do not look back!”
And Lot said unto them: “Oh, not so, my lord; behold now, thy servant hath found grace in thy sight, and thou hast magnified thy mercy, which thou hast shown unto me in saving my life; and I cannot escape to the mountain, lest the evil overtake me, and I die. Behold now, this city is near to flee unto, and it is a little one; oh, let me escape thither—is it not a little one?—and my soul shall live.”
—GENESIS 19:18–20
“Why can’t we look?” demanded Lot’s wife, emboldened by the fact that they were now safely out of Sodom.
“Hellfire and brimstone will rain from the heavens,” intoned one of the strangers in a solemn voice, “and all will be destroyed—”
“Right down to the last blade of grass?” Lot’s wife interrupted.
“Yes, that’s right,” the other stranger continued, glancing at Lot and then fixing a stern gaze on his wife, “and you are not permitted to see it happen, or something terrible will happen to you, too!”
“Hasten to the mountain,” the first one repeated, “and do not look back.”
“The mountain, you say?” asked Lot.
The stranger sighed in exasperation. “Yes, the mountain.”
“But, surely,” Lot said, “if your servant Lot has found grace in your eyes—and, surely, I am your very humble servant—and if you have stretched your mercy so far that you are willing to save the life of one miserable man—my life, you understand—well, then, surely you can stretch your mercy just a bit farther, can’t you?”
“What?” the stranger interrupted, now plainly out of sorts and anxious to get started on his work back in Sodom. “What are you talking about?”
“Kind masters, merciful masters,” Lot stammered, “it’s the mountain, which is so far off, and covered with snakes and wild beasts, I’m sure, and a hard climb even if we managed to get there at all. Surely it would be a foolish thing to spare my life here and now, only to have some evil befall me on the way to the mountain—and have me die anyway.”
“Perhaps you do not understand,” the other stranger said, struggling to control his temper, speaking slowly and clearly as if to a child. “A terrible thing is going to happen to the cities of the plain and everything that lives there, from your ill-mannered neighbors right down to the last blade of grass under your feet—as your wife has already grasped, even if you haven’t—and you can only save yourself by going to the mountain.”
“What is it about the word ‘Flee!’ that you don’t understand?�
�� the first one asked.
“Look,” said Lot, bargaining now rather than pleading. “There’s a small town not far away from here, just a watering hole and a few palm trees and some miserable hovels, just a little place, not a big cesspool of corruption like Sodom. I’m sure the people there are much nicer than the Sodomites who were so rude to you last night. Why don’t you let me go there? After all, it’s a tiny place, not even worthy of being called a town at all, really, don’t you see? But it’s so handy and close by, and if you could see it within yourselves to spare that little town, then my poor miserable family and I will find a decent place to lay our heads, and we won’t have to go all the way into the wilderness and climb the mountain you speak of. So we might actually survive all the terrible things you’re going to do, which is what you want, isn’t it?”
“All right, all right, we’ll do it,” said the first stranger. “We’ll spare the little town you speak of. But you’ve got to go, and you’ve got to go right now—”
“—because,” the other one interrupted, “we can’t even start doing what we came here to do until you’re gone!”
“We’ll go,” Lot conceded at last. “Believe me, we’re as good as gone already.”
And he said unto him: “See, I have accepted thee concerning this thing also, that I will not overthrow the city of which thou hast spoken. Hasten thou, escape thither; for I cannot do any thing till thou be come thither.” Therefore the name of the city was called Zoar.
The Harlot by The Side of The Road: Forbidden Tales of The Bible Page 3
