1. In the deep recess which is found at either side of the gateway of an Eastern city, Lot had taken his accustomed seat. Wearied and vexed with the din of the revellers in the street, and oppressed with the sultry doom-laden atmosphere, he was looking out towards the cool and peaceful hills, purple with the sinking sun behind them, and letting his thoughts first follow and then outrun his eye; he was now picturing and longing for the unseen tents of Abraham, and almost hearing the cattle lowing round at evening and all the old sounds his youth had made familiar. He is recalled to the actual present by the footfall of the two men, and, little knowing the significance of his act, he invites them to spend the night under his roof.
2. Lot's character is a singularly mixed one. With all his selfishness, he was hospitable and public-spirited. Lover of good living, as undoubtedly he was, his courage and strength of character are yet unmistakable. His sitting at the gate in the evening to offer hospitality may fairly be taken as an indication of his desire to screen the wickedness of his townsmen, and also to shield the stranger from their brutality. From the style in which the mob addressed him, it is obvious that he had made himself offensive by interfering to prevent wrong-doing. He was nicknamed “the Censor,” and his eye was felt to carry condemnation. It is true there is no evidence that his opposition had been of the slightest avail. How could it avail with men who knew perfectly well that, with all his denunciation of their wicked ways, he preferred their money-making company to the desolation of the hills, where he would be vexed with no “filthy conversation,” but would also find no markets? Still it is to Lot's credit that in such a city, with none to observe, none to applaud, and none to second him, he should have been able to preserve his own purity of life, and steadily to resist wrong-doing. It would be cynical to say that he cultivated austerity and renounced popular vices as a salve to a conscience wounded by his own greed.
That he had the courage which lies at the root of strength of character became apparent as the last dark night of Sodom wore on. To go out among a profligate, lawless mob, wild with passion and infuriated by opposition-to go out and shut the door behind him-was an act of true courage. His confidence in the influence he had gained in the town cannot have blinded him to the temper of the raging crowd at his door. To defend his unknown guests he put himself in a position in which men have frequently lost life.1 [Note: Marcus Dods.]
3. The rescue of Lot occupied the brief interval between the earliest dawn and the rising of the sun. The moment of sunrise was the moment of judgment on the condemned towns. What reasons can we give which justify this act of destruction?
(1) It was a warning to others. It is true that the visitation, if it temporarily alarmed the nations of the immediate neighbourhood, did not prevent them from reaching a similar excess of immorality some centuries later, or from incurring at the edge of Joshua's sword the doom which heaven's fire had executed on their neighbours in the Jordan plain. Still, God's warnings have a merciful intention, even where they are unheeded; and this Sodom catastrophe has been well said to belong to that class of terrors in which a wise man will trace “the lovingkindness of the Lord.”
(2) In this terrible act the Almighty simply hastened the result of the inhabitants' own actions. Nations are not destroyed until they are rotten at the core; as the north-east wind which snaps the forest trees only hastens the result for which the borer-worm had already prepared. It would have been clear to any thoughtful observer who had ventured out after dark in Sodom that it must inevitably fall. Unnatural crime had already eaten out the national heart, and, in the ordinary course of events, utter collapse could not be long delayed.
(3) Besides, this overthrow happened only after careful investigation. “I will go down now and see.” Beneath these simple words we catch a glimpse of one of the most sacred principles of Divine action. God does not act hastily, or upon hearsay evidence; He must see for Himself if there may not be some mitigating or extenuating circumstance. It was only after He had come to the fig-tree for many years, seeking fruit in vain, that He said, “Cut it down: why cumbereth it the ground?” And this deliberation is characteristic of God. He is unwilling that any should perish. He is slow to anger. Judgment is His strange work. He tells us that some day, when we come to look into His doings, we shall be comforted concerning many of the evils which He has brought on the world, because we shall know that He has not done without cause all that He has done (Eze_14:23).
No other event in early history has left such deep traces upon the language and traditions of the world as the catastrophe which in Abraham's days overthrew the towns of the Lower Jordan. In some twenty passages scattered over Scripture from the Pentateuch to the Apocalypse, this is referred to by name as the most conspicuous instance of Divine vengeance upon sin. The very word used by the Hebrews to describe it, which our Version renders “overthrow,” and which St. Peter translates by “catastrophe,” is almost reserved for this special use; and what is still more curious, its equivalent is said to recur in the same sense in the Arabic Koran till it becomes quite a proper term for the unfortunate cities. Sodom's very name is “the overthrown.” Nor is it Oriental peoples only who have gazed with horror on this “example” of vengeance. The Roman Tacitus describes the region of perpetual burning in language similar to that of the Jew Josephus, or the Christian St. Peter. Neither the suddenness of that destruction, nor its completeness, nor even the miraculous incidents which attended it, might have availed to preserve through so many centuries the impression which it made upon the primitive world, had not its visible effects (the vestigia of the Latin historian) remained from that day to this as a witness to successive generations how the wickedness of man had once worn out the long-suffering of God.1 [Note: J. O. Dykes.]
