Wickedness and Incest (Gen 18:16-19:38)

After chilling with Abraham and Sarah for awhile, the visiting emissaries move on towards Sodom, but God stays behind to have a little chat with Abraham. You see, God had decided to not hide what is about to happen from the father of nations, especially because it'll end up being the bloody past of the land they'll all inherit. God will wipe clean the rampant wickedness of Sodom and Gomorrah. At least, God is going to check out the situation, and make sure that everything matches up to the rumors going around. (Again with that supposedly omniscient thing...?)  And Abraham brings up a good point: What if there are still righteous people in the cities? Do they also get destroyed because everyone around them is bad? So they haggle for human life, with God seemingly in favor of destroying it all, but God gets talked down to 10 people. But any less than 10, and the remaining righteous people are apparently S.O.L.  Wouldn't that suck? To be the one good person in a place and get wiped out anyway?

The two angels (of the three that visited Abraham...the third being God...) get to Sodom, and Lot greets them at the gates, proving his righteousness just enough to pass the test and save himself and his family (righteousness count: 6).  Lot tries to tell his (future) sons-in-law about the impending doom and they just laugh at him and go about their business (down to 4). The angels intend to stay the night in Lot's house to judge just how bad Sodom is.  While they are there, the men of Sodom, all the men, surround the house and demand to see those who would judge them...because somehow, magically, they know they will be judged by Lot's strange visitors.  Or they just feel guilty enough about all of their wickedness and assume.  So Lot goes out to tell them to go away, and offers up his virginal daughters to them to use as they see fit instead of letting them rape and destroy the angels of God.  Nice move Lot. That'll surely prove your righteousness. Also... THEY'RE YOUR DAUGHTERS!! Don't they teach you that in Parenting 101? Don't offer up your children to violence and sexual abuse. That's got to be second only to the your-children-need-to-breathe-air-to-live rule. Ugh. Anyways, instead of giving up his daughters for real, the angels pull Lot back inside and blind everyone outside.

Come morning, the angels tell Lot to get the hell out of Dodge with his family, but Lot lingers.  Really?? Dude. When angels tell you to go: GO! So the angels take them by the hand, and lead them out of the city where God says to them "Flee for your life; do not look back or stop..." (Gen 19:17)  And Lot keeps bargaining. Instead of fleeing to the hills like he's told, he wants to go to the little city nearby because that one can't be bad... it's just a little city. God, who is sick of arguing with him, just says "Fine, Go! Just go now. I've got work to do." So Lot, Lot's wife, and Lot's two daughters go. But Lot's wife looks back, and immediately becomes a pillar of salt. I can't say I blame her. She probably spent her whole life in that city, and just happened to find the one good(ish) guy who moved in. Everything she's ever known is there.  Also, her daughters might've been running behind her in the mad dash. Wouldn't you look back to make sure they're okay? The only thing my footnotes have to say about that is that there was probably a local landmark that happened to be a pillar of salt... I'm not satisfied with that. Poor Lot's wife.  Then randomly Abraham shows up to check out the aftermath of the sulfur and heavenly-wrath-fire, and God kind of does a "see? I told you I'd save the righteous people," thing. Super classy, God, super classy.

Once Lot and his daughters get to Zoar, they don't stay. Lot's afraid of cities now it seems. Go figure. So they go live in the caves like God initially intended. Hmm. Okay. Lot's daughters start hatching plans. They seem to be under the impression that they have no men left in the world other than their father that might be able to give them children. None at all. Apparently the residents of Zoar are all female, or gay men. Seems unlikely. Where was I? Oh right, Lot's daughters were scheming... to get their dad so drunk that he passes out and they can rape him so they can have his children? What? Ew. This leads to Lot's failure of Parenting 102: Incest is bad, especially with your parents. Spread out that gene pool. Night one: the firstborn daughter takes her turn, and, um, succeeds? So she tells her sister that it worked, and then the next night, her sister goes for it. And they both end up pregnant... I wonder how that conversation went... The firstborn daughter's son gets named Moab (a play on "[Of] the Same Father"), and from him come the Moabites. Remember them, they're important later. The younger daughter's son gets named Ben-ammi ("Son of My Paternal Kin") who begets the Ammonites.

And on that incestuous daughters-rape-father unsettling kind of note...

<3 Agnostic in the Pews