Fear No Fear

(All scripture from the World English Bible, ebible.org, all rights reserved)

“They struck the men who were at the door of the house with blindness, both small and great, so that they wearied themselves to find the door. The men said to Lot, “Do you have anybody else here? Sons-in-law, your sons, your daughters, and whomever you have in the city, bring them out of the place: for we will destroy this place, because the outcry against them has grown so great before Yahweh that Yahweh has sent us to destroy it.””
(Genesis 19:11-13)

Here the angels reveal themselves. The men of the city don’t get the revelation, they only get struck with the light. They become blind to where they really are and are unable to find Lot’s house – even though they had surrounded it. This was probably a spiritual blindness (like with the Syrians – 2 Kings 6:18-23). When they could not achieve their goal – no matter how hard they tried – they gave up and went home.

Whether Lot knew they were angels before, he certainly knew now. Although he was right in his desire to preserve the bonds of hospitality, it is clear that nothing bad could have happened to these angels.

The angels do not tell Lot who he has for offspring. They may not have been told, or they may have been ‘playing dumb’. They were under no obligation to save Lot, but they extended mercy regardless. Lot had two sons-in-law, which means that he probably had other daughters than the ones in the house. There is no hint that Lot had any sons in scripture, but it seems clear from the language that he had at least four daughters.

The sage Sforno writes: ‘וילאו למצוא הפתח, even though they had already been smitten with blindness they did not therefore desist from their wicked intention. This is in line with the psychological insight of our sages in Eyruvin 19 that the wicked will not become penitents even when they stand at the gates of hell.’

The sage Rashbam writes: ‘וילאו, they wearied and were unable למצוא הפתח, they gave up trying to find the doorway. We find the word נלאו describing the inability of the Egyptians to find water after digging for it when Moses had turned the waters of the Nile in to blood. (Exodus 7,18-21) There are numerous instances when the word is used when it expresses a total inability, such as in Jeremiah 20,9 ונלאתי כלכל לא אוכל, “I was totally unable to restrain.” Compare also Isaiah 16,12 כי נלאה מואב על הבמה ובא אל מקדשו להתפלל ולא יוכל, “when it became clear that Moav had gained nothing in the outdoor shrine, he shall come to pray inside his temple, also to no avail.” Job 4,2 also employs the word נלאה in a similar sense.’