Old Testament – Genesis 18 & 19

Lot was good, but there was not one more of the same character in the city.

Lot was righteous only relatively; and though his soul was daily vexed by what he saw, it was not vexed enough to make him quit such evil surroundings, and return to the healthy and virtuous life of the mountains.

The warning of his fall is, that men who will live among unrighteousness people, people who constantly sin and do not believe in and follow God, for the sake of gaining worldly advantages, are in danger of sinking morally, of being de-sensitized toward sin, having a seared conscious, and losing their self-respect and happiness, as well as the Lord’s best for their life.

Lot, his wife and daughters hesitated – they did NOT want to leave. The angels had to grab their hands and tear them away from the place.  But after taking them so far, it was Lot’s family’s responsibility to run as far away from the place of sin and destruction as they could.

Lot still won’t completely return to Abraham’s place. He still wants to be NEAR the place of sin. Lot’s wife turned back because she wanted to keep her life the way it was instead of returning to serve only God. We are not to suppose that she was actually turned into one, but having been killed by the fiery and sulphureous vapour with which the air was filled, and afterwards encrusted with salt, she resembled an actual statue of salt; just as even now, from the saline exhalation of the Dead Sea, objects near it are quickly covered with a crust of salt,

Why was Lot afraid to stay at Zoar, the city he said he would live in? Some say that he thought that town was as wicked as S&G, and God would destroy it too. Or maybe it was because that was what the Angel originally told him to do, but he panicked and asked to do it his own way – so he went up to the mountains finally.

Although, upon the whole, Lot was a righteous man, and possessed of many amiable qualities, yet it evidently appears that his principles also, as well as those of his daughters, had suffered some degree of contamination by the society of evil-doers, otherwise surely he would have withstood every temptation to excess of drinking. Here the history of Lot ends; after this we hear no more of him or of his daughters. We cannot but be sorry to leave them under so dark a cloud.