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

Today, I am reading and commenting on Genesis 19-20. I have decided to switch from suing the New Living Translation to using the New International Version because, all in all, I prefer the NIV.

I struggled with what to write about this passage until I was skimming it for the umpteenth time and I read this in isolation, “This fellow came here as a foreigner, and now he wants to play the judge!”  I knew right where that was in the story, so I understood the context.  Lot was trying to convince the men of Sodom not to rape his visitors and their response was essentially, “Who are you to judge us?”  He was an outsider among them, even though it was because of Lot that they, or their parents, had not been enslaved when Sodom had been plundered some years back (Abram had gone after those who had plundered Sodom and taken many of its people as slaves because Lot was one of them).  In many ways, this was THE sin of Sodom.  Sodom was not destroyed because of what these men wanted to do to strangers.  It was destroyed because the men of Sodom were going to turn on their neighbor for standing up for those strangers.