Today, I am reading and commenting on Genesis 19-20.

I wrote the other day about Abram giving Lot the choice of where to settle and Abram would go elsewhere.  Lot chose the rich and fertile plains around Sodom.  This turned out to be a bad decision on Lot’s part.  And at some point, this led to Lot giving up the nomadic life and moving into the city.  Previously we say that Lot was captured and taken prisoner when Sodom was sacked, only to be rescued by his uncle Abram.  In today’s passage Lot loses everything except for his two unmarried daughters (as I read the passage, Lot had other daughters who were married and whose husbands would not listen to Lot when he told them to flee the city).  This did not happen to Lot just because he made the selfish choice when Abram asked him to choose where to live.  This passage leads me to believe that Lot knew about the evil behavior of the people of Sodom, and chose to live among them anyway.  That would explain why Lot insisted so strongly that the angels spend the night in his house rather than in the town square.  But not only did Lot move in among these people, he entered into marriage alliance with them by arranging for his daughters to marry men of Sodom.  I am tempted to write that Lot does not appear to have made any attempt to convince the people of Sodom to change their evil ways, but the passage does not really provide us any basis for believing that to be true.  Nevertheless, Lot can serve as a warning to us.  If we live among evil people and wish to avoid Lot’s fate we should strive to convince them to change their ways.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.