Tonight we will be reading Chapter 3 of Liz Curtis Higgs’s Bad Girls of the Bible: And What We Can Learn from Them on Lot’s wife. We read about Lot’s wife in connection with the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 19 and in Jesus’ teaching on the apocalypse in Luke 17. We will begin with these Biblical accounts tonight.
As we attempt to discern the meaning of the story of Lot’s wife, one place to start is the reason why Sodom was destroyed and why was Lot’s family spared. The angels foretell the destruction of Sodom prior to the townspeople’s attempted rape of the angels. The first time Scripture speaks of Sodom is at the time of the destruction, and Genesis gives us no background as to their malfeasance. The prophets, however, fill in this gap. Ezekiel says that “this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, a surfeit of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy. They were haughty, and did abominable things before me; therefore I removed them.” Ezek. 16:49-50. The sin of Sodom, therefore, goes beyond inhospitality and sexual lust for heavenly beings. Ezekiel’s statement also gives us an insight into Mrs. Lot’s character and why she longingly looked back to her life in the city.
Also important is the reason scripture gives for why Lot was spared. At the end of the narrative, Genesis says: “So it was that, when God destroyed the cities of the valley, God remembered Abraham, and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow, when he overthrew the cities in which Lot dwelt.” Gen. 19:20. In other words, God saved Lot and his family because of the promises he made to Abraham. This is the same teaching that Paul uses in both Galatians 3 and Romans 4 – that the blessings and salvation of God come through God’s relationship with Abraham as proclaimed in Jesus Christ. Therefore, within this story, we have a proto-Gospel through which we can apply the lessons of Lot’s wife directly to us as Christians.
Dinner is at 6. The menu is Chili cheese dog bubble-up-bake. (Vegetarian option available.) Discussion about 6:45. Hope to see you here, and please bring a friend.
“But in the prophets of Jerusalem
Jeremiah 23:14
I have seen a horrible thing:
they commit adultery and walk in lies;
they strengthen the hands of evildoers,
so that no one turns from his wickedness;
all of them have become like Sodom to me,
and its inhabitants like Gomorrah.”