Genesis 19

Wow - there is a lot that could be said about this passage. It is one of the most disturbing chapters I know of, on several levels. It deals with attempted rape, homosexuality, incest, and extremely destructive judgement. If I had the time I could write pages on all of this, but for now I'll just list off a few of the oddest and most surprising (and disgusting) things I noticed.

- Lot lives with the people of Sodom, which he selected because of the nice land quality in that region (earlier in Genesis). Here he appears to actually live in the city, though he apparently does not participate in or condone the activity that the others there take part in. I guess the old adage of "location, location, location" is not strictly true: your neighbors and their moral compass (or lack thereof) should also be taken into consideration!

- The passage says that all the men of the city came to try to rape the angelic messengers, so it makes me wonder if the men engaged to marry Lot's daughters were also there. If so, did they not speak out when Lot offered his daughters to satiate the crowd? Did they care? They certainly didn't heed the warning that Lot gave them to leave, which leads to the next observation...

- Lot's daughters were planning to marry before Sodom was destroyed. They don't seem to have had kids yet, which likely means that they weren't simply sleeping around as appears to have been the norm in the area they lived. That speaks well for Lot and his parenting, but I guess he hadn't mentioned that incest was a bad idea - left to their own devices the girls didn't say "lets go find new husbands", but instead got their dad drunk and raped him (effectively). That seems to be the opposite of many abusive family relationships these days, and seems just plain weird... and wrong! I wonder how much wine it took to get Lot so far drunk that he didn't even know they were taking advantage of him. I'm also curious what the conversation looked like nine months later when his daughters gave birth, and Lot thought back to the three of them being alone in the mountains :/

- Lot's wife looking back on the destruction - and so bringing judgement on herself - and the actions of the daughters later on seem to be very influenced by the culture of Sodom that they lived in. I wonder if the wife was actually from that area, and married Lot after his arrival in the area. That would explain the resulting tragedies a bit more, if they felt that they were loosing the only home they had known (whereas Lot was still considered a foreigner).