⁴ Before they had gone to bed, all the men from every part of the city of Sodom—both young and old—surrounded the house. ⁵ They called to Lot, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we can have sex with them.”

⁶ Lot went outside to meet them and shut the door behind him ⁷ and said, “No, my friends. Don’t do this wicked thing. ⁸ Look, I have two daughters who have never slept with a man. Let me bring them out to you, and you can do what you like with them. But don’t do anything to these men, for they have come under the protection of my roof.” (Read the rest of the chapter here!)

Woohoo! The first of the clobber passages!  Actually, some people say Genesis 1:27 is the first clobber passage – the bit about God creating male and female, but this is the first really explicit clobber passage.  And what is a clobber passage, you ask? It is a set of verses in the Bible used to condemn sexuality other than heterosexuality, most specifically, male homosexuality. There’s about six of them (again, some people put a few extra in, like Genesis 1:27), but this chapter is kind of the first really big one.  So let’s dive in, shall we?

Let’s talk about this “wicked thing” the men of Sodom want to do to Lot’s guests in verse 7.  It’s not homosexuality, rape.  Yes, it’s males raping males, but it’s still rape.  That is the evil thing.  And there is no Biblical atonement (other than death) for male-on-male rape.  As horrific as it sounds, I believe Lot offering his daughters to the men was his way of trying to do right by everybody.  You see, his male guests couldn’t be married to their rapists, but his virgin daughters could be – thereby negating the rape (See Deuteronomy 22:28-29) Again, horrific, but Lot literally has his back against a wall here and is trying to appease an angry mob.

Just to thoroughly debunk this clobber passage, let’s say Lot was talking about consensual homosexual sex and not rape when referring to this “wicked thing.”  Would you really want to be taking moral advice from this guy?  He has a lot of strikes against him.  First, in chapter 13 he chose to live near Sodom and Gomorrah, known hotbeds of deviant activity even at the time.  Second, he is either so prone to histrionics or so disrespected (or both) that his own sons-in-law don’t heed his ardent warning to get out of town before it is destroyed.  Third, the guy is getting so drunk that he doesn’t remember sleeping with his own daughters – twice!  Yes, they gave him the wine, but he drank it.  I seriously doubt they held Lot down and poured wine down his throat.  Again, is he really the one we want to be leading the conversation on morality here?

So if condemning homosexuality isn’t the point of this including this story in the Bible, then what is?  I also don’t think it’s an illustration of God’s wrath just to scare us – that’s just what earlier interpreters have used it for, and, as I’ve stated several times now, this blog is all about finding evidence of God’s unbounded love for us. From a literary standpoint, this is the conclusion of Lot’s story.  As his one daughter says in verse 31: “Our father is old.” Fathering the Moabites and the Ammonites is his last major act, and while there is no “and then he died” passage of finality like earlier lineages in the Bible, we can infer the end.

From a teaching standpoint, this story shows that God has a plan, the importance of our faith in it, and the tragedy (of our own making) that happens when we lose faith.  Lot has had numerous chances to rejoice and trust in the Lord.  We hear nothing of him paying any sort of homage or sacrifice to God after Abraham rescues him from Kedorlaomer, as faithful Abraham does; Lot does not first turn to his celestial guests (who can totally take care of themselves – they struck the men outside Lot’s door blind!) to seek a resolve to the angry crowd of this chapter, but instead offers up his daughters; his lack conviction in God means he isn’t even able to sway his own family in a time of great peril; and he leaves Zoar for the mountains.  These angels, or whoever they were, that destroyed Sodom, agreed to Lot living in Zoar because Lot said he couldn’t make it to the mountains.  Basically, he got special dispensation to live there.  Even this he did not trust, and fled later to the mountains to live in a cave, where he came to a rather ignominious end.  And this is just Lot – his wife’s lack of faith literally got her killed. Same with his sons-in-law who refused to listen to Lot’s warning.

Does it seem like you’ve had a string of bad luck lately?  Perhaps it’s just that, a rough patch you need to get through. But perhaps it’s also a good time to turn to God and ask, “Am I still doing right by You?” It can’t hurt.  I think if Lot had maybe asked that question a little more his story would have been different. God does have a plan, probably untold number of plans, to guide our every decision towards His desired outcome.  The moral of this story?  Not that homosexuality is bad, but that faith is good.

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