Lot's Daughters
By way of reminder, let’s review what we know so far about Lot’s daughters:
When a violent mob surrounded their house, their dad offered to sacrifice them in order to protect visitors who had come under his roof. (Genesis 19: 4-8)
Having a father who is hospitable and protective toward visitors is a good thing.
Having a father who is protective of you, on the other hand, is irreplaceable. After all, isn’t that one of a dad’s biggest jobs?
I’m not implying anything about Lot as a father… just curious that he’d put anyone’s safety (including his own and except for his wife’s) ahead of his two girls. I have no idea how old the daughters were at the time but it doesn’t matter.
One of the sweetest moments of my life happened during the time Pat and I were engaged but not yet married. My dad was a jovial, generous and gentle man but not at all one for emotional conversation. He was also about 5’0 tall. At 5’4, I was the biggest one in our family, so I’m sure my 6’3 fiance must have seemed like a giant… and Dad had something to get off his chest before seeing this big man marry his daughter.
Taking advantage of a moment when the two of them were alone, Dad (as later reported by Pat) suddenly adopted a very serious manner and said, “ONE thing I have never done… I’ve never hit a woman!”
I was 26 years old and had been out of the house for years, working and living on my own, but none of that mattered at all. He was still my dad, and he was doing his job.
More than thirty years later, the memory never fails to bring a fond chuckle; the priceless part, however, is the warmth I STILL carry inside from having been loved and looked after by a dad who just needed to know his daughter was safe….no matter how old she was.
Isn’t the carefree innocence of feeling safe, no matter what, because “Dad’s” here, something every daughter ought to be able to take for granted? Sadly, it isn’t.
Thankfully, for the sake of Lot’s, they weren’t what the men of Sodom had in mind. Let’s hope they were mercifully out of earshot and never knew about the “bargain” their dad had proposed!
2. Lot’s daughters had been engaged but left their fiances (who had taken Lot’s warning about Sodom’s imminent destruction as a joke) behind when the family fled the doomed city.
3. Having reached safety in nearby Zoar, their mother had made the fatal mistake of looking back and been turned into a pillar of salt.
In case their story so far isn’t sufficiently disturbing, it isn’t over….We pick up in Genesis 9:30.
Having escaped to Zoar but afraid to stay there, Lot takes the daughters and they move to the mountains …. to a cave in the mountains, to be exact.
The older sister proposes a plan by which they’re going to preserve the family line, since it’s now just the three of them:
And that’s what they do….
The following night, they repeat the scenario, this time with the younger daughter slipping into their father’s bed.
And Lot, apparently, is unaware of either… shall we say…incident.
Two daughters. Two nights in a row of drinking to the point where a whole pregnancy could be initiated without awareness. Two pregnancies.
Like Genesis does, I’m going to refrain from further commentary, partly because of not knowing where to start but mostly because I ‘m not touching this one with a ten foot pole.
I am curious, though. What do you imagine it was like for Lot when his daughters turned up pregnant?
The story of Lot’s daughters is brief and bizarre; in the end, we don’t even know their names. We do, however, know the names of their sons and they are worth remembering: Moab (father of the Moabites) and Ben-Ammi (father of the Ammonites). This may be the first but isn’t by any stretch the last we will hear of these two!
This isn’t a lesson about dads, as such, but it does seem like a good time to comment on the important role they play in shaping our sense of self-worth, dignity and place in this world. From the beginning, while we are still young and unquestioning, we gather a sense of who we are based on our interactions (or lack thereof) with the powerful people in our lives. Be it intentional or unintentional, for good or for bad, a dad’s influence is never neutral.
Their examples also influence us as we form our earliest impressions about Who God is.
I’m incredibly thankful to have been blessed with an earthly father who made it easy to understand, to love and to feel loved by God as my heavenly one.
Speaking of fathers, next time we’ll return to Abraham. We are only a lesson or two away from the death of this ”father of the faithful” and the passing of the torch to the next generation.
Blessings until then! Kim