Sodom & Gomorrah 3 - Genesis 19:12-26

I can’t believe that I’ve been gone from here for almost 4 months. I can definitely tell a difference in my daily life when I haven’t been doing a deep daily study of the scriptures. I’ve tried to read the Book of Mormon everyday but the deep reflection and study everyday really helps me stay focused spiritually. I had to study pretty intensely for a test that I had to take for work and I did that everyday for 2 months. It actually helped a lot to give up my in depth study of the scriptures because I told myself, “you are giving up scripture study for this so you better get to studying.” I probably won’t know if I passed for another couple of weeks, so that’s a little frustrating, but I’m optimistic. I took that test on October 5th, then I started a new job on October 10th so I’ve been working during the day training for that, and now I’m finally back on nights where I have a bit more breathing room to do what I want to do, which is study the scriptures. 19:12-26 - Lot has just told the people of Sodom that they can’t gang rape the visiting men that are staying in his house, and the people are not pleased. The angels have to pull Lot back inside the house just in time to avoid being snatched up and then they blind all the rapist gathered around. The angels ask Lot “Hast thou here any besides? Son in law, and thy sons, and thy daughters, and whatsoever thou hast in the city, bring them out of this place.” Basically, “get all the members of your family out of here right now,” “for we will destroy this place… and the Lord hath sent us to destroy it.” Lot gets out of the house somehow and goes to the houses of his sons in law and told them to get out of town “for the Lord will destroy this city,” but it seems like they didn’t listen and stayed in town. In the morning, the angels “hastened Lot,” telling him to take his wife and daughters and leave “lest thou be consumed in the iniquity of the city.” It seems like the angels came and told Lot to leave the day before the city was to be destroyed, and usually the Lord gives more time than that. Lehi left Jerusalem at least 8 years before it was destroyed, the Jaredites had plenty of time to get out of town because all the languages were changed, and Noah built the ark for 150 years before the flood. So I guess it might just seem like it was less than a day after the angels showed up that Lot had to leave, but who knows. Even though the angels are telling him to get out of town, Lot and his family seem to be taking their sweet time, to the point where “while he lingered, the men laid hold upon his hand… and set him without the city.” The angels had to physically remove Lot from the city, and even then the angels told Lot to “escape to the mountain,” and he was like “Oh, not so, my Lord,” and asked to be allowed to go to some little town on the way to the mountain named Zoar. The angels allowed him to go to Zoar, but “then the Lord rained upon Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven.” And even though literal angels came to their house and dragged them out of the city, and even though there was a group of men trying to destroy their house so that they could rape some visitors, and threatened to rape their daughters as well, Lot’s wife “looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.” I always thought that this was a case where the punishment didn’t fit the crime. If fire and brimstone were raining down from the sky as you ran away, I would imagine that hearing a loud boom behind you would cause an instinctual turning around, like I don’t think it would be a conscious decision at that point. But apparently it wasn’t just her turning around to see what that noise was behind her. The IM comments, “The implication is that Lot’s wife started back to Sodom, perhaps to save some possessions, and was caught in the destruction… Again, the implication is that of a return to wickedness. Most scholars agree that the most probable site of Sodom is not covered by the southern part of the Dead Sea, a body of water with a high salt content. If Lot’s wife returned to Sodom, she would have been caught in the destruction. Her becoming a pillar of salt could be a figurative way of expressive this outcome. But whatever it was that happened to Lot’s wife, it is clear that she perished.”