Not One Righteous in the Whole City - Genesis 19:1-9

Bible Study Lesson for September 30

Introduction: This passage is probably the most well-known story within the Abraham section of Genesis. It’s one of those passages that we think we know, but has accumulated a lot cultural baggage. It’s a good idea to go back to the original story and see how our common readings keep us from seeing important points that have a bearing on our lives today. In what follows, I will reexamine the problems in Sodom to see if it speaks to our society beyond its common use in debates over homosexuality. As we will see, the central issue of the passage is about oppression and hospitality.

19:1-3 Angels in Sodom

The angels receive a welcome from Lot much like the welcome they received from Abraham. Like Abraham, Lot gives considerably more than he promises. He promises a place to freshen up and stay the night. Guests could assume that they would be provided with a meal, but Lot provides them with a feast, and since it is already evening, he insists that they stay at his house. The angels at first seem to be performing what is expected of a guest by resisting Lot’s invitation. In this culture you often had to be offered something twice before you would accept it, which would allow the host to back out of the offer. However, many interpreters have been drawn to the possibility that the angels want to sleep in the city square in order to test the city to see if it is as bad as God has heard (18:21). As it turns out, even Lot’s protective hospitality will not shield them from the wickedness of the city.

19:4-9 The Sins of Sodom

I want to be careful in how we talk about this section of the story, because it is a story that we think we know, and it carries a lot of baggage with its interpretation. The wickedness of Sodom and Gomorrah is the stated reason for the angels’ visit. In Genesis, the angelic mission is presented as a fact-finding visit, with the angels serving as detectives and agents of God’s judgment. As the story unfolds they also become the “bait” that reveals the wickedness of the city.

Today, the sins of Sodom are often simply identified as homosexuality. That focus draws our attention away from deeper lessons and cautions that are relevant to our lives today. We should look more carefully at what the Bible has to say about Sodom and Gomorrah’s sins to get a clearer picture for ourselves. Throughout the Old Testament and even up until today, Sodom and Gomorrah are a stock reference to refer to the possibility of total destruction of a society that is wicked.

The next time after this story Sodom and Gomorrah are mentioned is in Deuteronomy 29:23 as a warning to Israel concerning the devastation that will visit them if they become too confident in their status with God and take God for granted. These cities also appear in the Song of Moses (Deuteronomy 32)— in verse 32, Moses connects Israel’s idolatry in the wilderness to Sodom and Gomorrah, stating that the people seem to be of the same genealogy as the two cities that most represented wickedness and God’s retribution. So in Deuteronomy we see that Sodom’s root sin is idolatry, which is turning away from God.

In the prophets, we see an understanding about Sodom’s sin that I think speaks profoundly to our culture. Isaiah 3:9 says that the people “proclaim their sin like Sodom, they do not hide it.” Sodom is thus characterized as a society that isn’t even ashamed of their sins; Isaiah says that likewise the rulers of Judah oppress the people and don’t even seem to acknowledge that their wealth and power come from dishonest means. Ezekiel puts it plainly: “This was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy” (Ezekiel 16:49). Here, Ezekiel breaks down three things that Sodom had going for it, and then one thing that led to their downfall. They had pride, more food than they needed, and were able to enjoy luxury. In Ezekiel’s account these things do not necessarily seem to be bad in and of themselves, but they made the people of Sodom uniquely capable of helping the poor. Their failure to do this, to use the wealth and privilege that they had to benefit those who had need, represented a rot that took over the city.

Briefly in the New Testament, Sodom appears as an image of total destruction, much like the bulk of Old Testament references. In Jude verse 7, Jude presents Sodom and Gomorrah as a warning against some who have interpreted the grace of Christ to mean that they can do basically whatever they want to do. He encourages them to look to the example of the destruction of “Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which, in the same manner as they, indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural lust.” There is undoubtedly a sexual dimension to Sodom’s sin, as we will see, but the problem goes far beyond our modern discussions of sexual orientation. As we will see, Sodom’s sexual sin is an outworking of their deeper spiritual problem of mistreatment of the vulnerable.

In Genesis 19, a mob characterized as all of the men of the city surround Lot’s house demanding that he deliver up his guests “so that we may know them.” Now this is ambiguous at first, as “know” in Hebrew can simply mean to make acquaintance, or it can be used as a euphemism for sexual relations. All that ambiguity is resolved by Lot’s attempt to appease the men of the city by offering them his two daughters, that they might “do with them as you please.” This is obviously a bad plan. Lot’s behavior here is gross, abusive, and it reveals something about his priorities in the world. It also colors my interpretation of the last part of this chapter, but that will have to wait for next week.

One thing we need to see here is that this story is about sexual assault. The mob in the city seeks to assault the two visitors, simply because they can. This connects to Ezekiel’s diagnosis of Sodom’s problem. The biggest ethical problem in Sodom is how they treat the vulnerable in their midst. Remember, hospitality is a core value in the ancient world, particularly in the Biblical world. This is because a guest was uniquely vulnerable in a world without hotels. It is not as though they could call or text message their family to let them know where they were spending the night. 

I saw someone make a poll the other day online about who gets more nervous before a first date, men or women. It was meant as a lighthearted reflection about first date jitters, but then some women shared their experiences. They spoke of sharing their location with friends before a first date in case they go missing or get into a bad situation. In a country where sexual assault and domestic violence are as prevalent, the way in which we allow the vulnerable to be exploited reveals something of the character of our society. And when women come forward with allegations of sexual assault, particularly against powerful men, too often they are dismissed and ignored or painted as slanderous villains.

Once we start to recognize the abusive dimensions of the interaction between the men of Sodom and Lot’s guests, we can more readily identify the problem in this story and see it in our own culture. What happens at Lot’s house in the first nine verses of this chapter is an angelic sting operation to investigate a city that does not value its poor and vulnerable. The men of Sodom demonstrate how low the people in such a society will go, violating the deep cultural value of hospitality in order to gratify their own twisted desires.

Conclusion

Genesis 19, taken in the context of the rest of the Old Testament, paints a picture of what happens to people who lose sight of God. Losing sight of the Lord, the One True God, results in a disordering of our place in society. The most condemning thing in the passage, in verse 4, is the statement that all the men, young and old, came to Lot’s door to demand that the angels be delivered over to them. There is no righteous man to stand against the mob and turn them back. The only person to resist them at all is Lot, but his solution is no better. In Chapter 18, God promised Abraham that for the sake of ten righteous in the city he wouldn’t destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. As it turns out, we can’t even find one.

In last week’s lesson I talked about the importance of praying for the people we believe are walking down the path toward condemnation. Today I want to conclude with a different, but related, thought. What would righteousness have looked like for the men of Sodom in this story? It would mean standing up to the crowd and saying no to exploiting the visiting men. But in order to develop the strength and fortitude to resist the mob, we have to practice this kind of righteousness in our daily lives. When we see vulnerable people on the street or in our neighborhoods, do we extend care to them? Do we speak to them or do we pass by and try to avoid eye contact? A few years ago we did a series of missions lessons on human trafficking. One of the things that allows that to go on in our society is people being willing to say, “well that’s none of my business.” If we want to make a difference in the world, it starts by making a difference in one person’s life. Jesus says, “If you are faithful in small things, you will be faithful in large things” (Luke 16:10).