John Bengel Commentary - Luke 17:32 - 17:32

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John Bengel Commentary - Luke 17:32 - 17:32


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Luk 17:32. Τῆς γυναικὸς Λὼτ, the wife of Lot) who did not do what is enjoined in Luk 17:31. If you weigh well the strict meaning of the words, Gen 19:26, and the variety of the interpretations, which are carefully enumerated by Wolf on this passage, the substance of the facts will amount to this: Lot’s wife looked back, and fled more slowly than her husband; and so, not reaching Zoar, she involved herself in that calamity of which the angels had warned her, and perished by a death nearly the same as befell the people of Sodom: for the extreme outskirts of the miraculous and fearful shower that rained on Sodom seized on the wretched woman, and deprived her of life, and suddenly scorched, covered over, discoloured, smote, and utterly changed [the state and look of] her body; so that she, who had not run as she ought, stopped altogether still. For her corpse, in that state, standing upright, and preserved from decomposition, is called a statue [pillar]: and that statue [pillar] was one, not of sulphur, but of that which is milder and yet akin to sulphur, viz. salt. Comp. Deu 29:22; Mar 9:49. The Asphaltic Lake, being a sea of salt, was similar. Had she fallen into the midst of the shower, she would have been at once wholly consumed; but whilst the fire was lightly playing about her, she became stiffened. However, there is no doubt but that either her dead body was buried a short while after (as is usually the case with bodies which have been both overwhelmed with, and afterwards drawn out from, snows, waters, and sands, or which have been killed by Divine interposition, Lev 10:5 [as was done in the case of Nadab and Abihu, Aaron’s sons]), or else, when the salt melted, the body passed into decomposition. At all events, neither in the time of Moses nor in that of Christ, is that statue (pillar) said to have been in existence: and accordingly here He says, Remember, not, Look upon, Fix your eyes on.