Fear No Fear

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

“Lot went out, and spoke to his sons-in-law, who were pledged to marry his daughters, and said, “Get up! Get out of this place, for Yahweh will destroy the city!” But he seemed to his sons-in-law to be joking. When the morning came, then the angels hurried Lot, saying, “Get up! Take your wife and your two daughters who are here, lest you be consumed in the iniquity of the city.””
(Genesis 19:14-15)

Lot was able to leave his home without being molested, so the crowd had dissipated by this time. Also, his sons-in-law were at home, not milling about (the WHOLE town had participated in the desired sexual assault – Genesis 19:4). He found them in their homes, but they did not believe him.

The sons-in-law thought Lot was mocking them. They were as morally bankrupt as the rest of the town. It can be assumed the daughters they were married to probably didn’t feel the same, but they chose to stay behind with their husbands. Lot was not passing down the kind of godly living that picks God over everything else – including family.

It was during the very early morning that Lot fled and judgment came on the valley. The people here worshipped deities of the sun and moon. Their destruction came at the line which blurred from one to the other, showing that both were powerless fictions unable to circumvent the will of God Almighty.

The sage Rav Hirsch writes: ‘V. 14. Then the poor old man goes out in the night to his sons-in-law, to the men to whom he has entrusted his daughters, implores them to save them and themselves — and they just laugh at him as a joker. Not for nothing does it add לקחי בנותיו as an amendment to חתניו. They had married his daughters, but his “sons-in-law”, in the pure sense of the word “חתניו״ they had not become. For were they not men of Sodom, and in their outlook on life and aims, there could be no “mutual bond” between them and Abraham’s nephew. For him there could be no real חתן to be found in Sodom, and for his daughters, had he understood how to bring his children up for himself and his outlook on life, no husbands in Sodom. But, as already indicated in V.3, although he himself subscribed to better tendencies, and even had the courage to stand up against the whole community for the right, at great personal risk, nevertheless, in his own household, and towards his own children, he was evidently weak, and in consequence, lonely and isolated. An Abraham would never have satisfied himself with getting לקחי בנותיו who could not become חתניו; Abraham’s daughters would never have married men who could not have harmonised with the spirit of their parental home. Here we see a shortcoming which, still, thousands of years later, repeats itself in a similar way in similar circumstances, and takes its revenge in a similar manner — when he came to his sons-in-law and spoke to them of God, they simply laughed at him. And apparently he expected more consideration and attention from his sons-in-law than he did from his own sons. For he made the attempt to convince them at his sons-in-law first, and when he found that they only laughed at him and would pay no attention to his warning, he gave it all up and did not even make an attempt to get his sons to listen to him. To all this, unfortunately, our present days offer a sad commentary. V. 15. קח, be satisfied with the members of your family whom you have here in your house; if you linger making further attempts, the oncoming catastrophe might overcome you also.’

The sage Rashbam writes: ‘וכמו השחר עלה, the reason the Torah wrote this verse is seeing that it says in verse 23 that Lot had arrived in Tzoar as the sun had risen, this would have been at least 1-2 hours later than the early dawn described here. In other words, the angels delayed carrying out their mission for a considerable period all out of fondness for Avraham, so that his nephew would not perish in Sodom.’