Lot’s Wife and a Pillar of Salt: Another Read?
The Bible tells a tale of two wicked cities, Sodom and Gomorrah. They’d become so rank and evil God decided to destroy them. But before He did – and this is one of the most remarkable aspects of the whole story – God elected to tell Abraham about His decision, and then allows Abraham to intercede and question Him – in fact, to debate and negotiate with Him.
Of course, through this we learn a few things about God. We learn that God will allow us to question Him, even argue with Him, and that such an exercise is not pointless or mere pro forma. It is meaningful, it carries weight with Him, the Creator and Sovereign of the universe! We also learn that our intercession, in even a huge matter, can be meaningful.
We learn that God will spare even a city (or … a people?) for the sake of just ten righteous souls! Now, there’s an answer to those who question or deny God’s “goodness”, who might lose eternity for the lie that God is unfair or unjust, too ready to judge and punish, an angry deity with insufficient mercy in their eyes. “How can God….?” is a question we are all too accustomed to hearing, and that unanswered is a barrier to too many souls finding the grace of God.
But the most serious problem for most modern readers comes later in the account. And I can assure you, this is where we lose many sons and daughters. The wickedness of Sodom and Gomorrah and their destruction is OK, but what happens to Lot’s wife brings up a couple of “unacceptables” to modern morality and scientific (read “naturalistic”) sensibilities.
When not even ten righteous people can be found in Sodom or Gomorrah, God still has mercy on the four who do live there – Abraham’s brother Lot, and his wife and two daughters. They are warned by two angels of the immanent destruction and sent running to the hills to be sheltered from the wrath:
“With the coming of dawn, the angels urged Lot, saying, “Hurry! Take your wife and your two daughters who are here, or you will be swept away when the city is punished.” When he hesitated, the men grasped his hand and the hands of his wife and of his two daughters and led them safely out of the city, for the LORD was merciful to them. As soon as they had brought them out, one of them said, “Flee for your lives! Don’t look back, and don’t stop anywhere in the plain! Flee to the mountains or you will be swept away!” Genesis 19:15-17 (NIV)
They escaped the destruction …“But Lot’s wife looked back, and she became a pillar of salt.” Genesis 19:26 (NIV).
Though she was told “Don’t look back” by none less than God’s own lieutenant (the angel), it seems a harsh punishment to people who have a hard time, nowadays, accepting the death penalty for a serial murderer, mass murder for political ends, even a sexual abuser and mutilator of children. There’s little I can say to such sensibilities, but I can perhaps offer two other interpretations that might circumvent them.
First, for whatever difference it might make, Lot’s wife was more than just curious, more than a victim of a moment of “rubbernecking”! A more thorough look at the possible meanings of the Hebrew texts reveals that her looking back was less innocent than the traditional interpretations imply, and more something that would offend God.
God was not eager to destroy the cities. He had tolerated them for a long time. He allowed the intercession by Abraham. He bargained away His pending judgment if only ten amongst the thousands could be found righteous. He sent two angels to search for those few, angels who were themselves nearly victims of sexual abuse (and no mere rape, at that) by all (every one) of the men of the city. Only after that last example of total depravity, was the judgment ordered. This is hardly a God (“not wanting anyone to perish” 2Peter 3:9 NIV) rejoicing in the deaths of anyone.
So, what about Lot’s wife? She did not merely glance back over her shoulder. The verb used in verse 26 is the Hebrew nabat: “to look intently, regard with pleasure”. She was watching, and taking pleasure in the destruction she saw there. And, we might assume, spending some time watching the horrific rain of “burning sulfur” that destroyed not just the two cities, but “the entire plain, including all those living in the cities – and also the vegetation in the land”. Even more, the verb I translate “destroyed” includes in its connotative domain, “overthrow, overturn, upturn”, which many interpreters take to signify there was an earthquake. Altogether, one could argue the cities were destroyed by asteroids! It has been thought.
At any rate, Lot’s wife wasn’t likely running for her life and guilty only of a fearful backward glance. More likely, if we understand the text and the terrain where it is maintained that she died (there is a pillar of salt that stands tall above the site said to be where the cities lay, called “Lot’s Wife”!), the refugees had reached a place of relative safety, or at least some shelter. Lot and his daughters may well have run deeper into the cave while she turned and watched, even gloated at the disaster being visited upon the cities. Which brings us to my second point. It comes from a study just published in the journal, Biblical Archeology Review (How Lot’s Wife Became a Pillar of Salt, May/June 2009, pp38 – 44, 64.)
The author is Associate Professor of Geography, Amos Frumkin, director of Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Cave Research Unit. Dr. Frumkin has quite thoroughly studied that pillar of salt standing high above the plain of Sodom, at the southern edge of the dead sea, actually called “Lot’s Wife” for at least several millennia.
His studies certainly tie the pillar to the scene of her demise. It’s geographical location is right, just off and above the place most think was where the cities would have been. He’s carbon dated the creation of the pillar to about 4000 years ago (2000 BC). Historical records (including Josephus’) tell us that the people living there at least 2000 years ago were calling it “Lot’s Wife”. But his scientific analysis tells us something else about the pillar’s nature and origins. Something he thinks invalidates the Biblical story, but I think only does the opposite!
Briefly, Frumkin concludes the site was a huge cave already carved/dissolved out of the salts that had thrust up from beneath the local earth’s mantle, covered and protected by a much less soluble cap of rock. He believes that an earthquake (a common occurrence, here) caused the roof of the cave to collapse, leaving this pillar of salt standing, with it’s own small rock cap protecting it against millennia of subsequent rains. A particularly severe cluster of earthquakes is geologically recorded in Dead Sea sediments at about 2100 to 2000 BC. The strongest, about 8.0 on the Richter scale, occurred about 2050 BC.
Take Frumkin’s determination that there was a huge cave looking out across the Sodom plain at the time the Bible says God destroyed the cities. That Lot and his family fled to the hills to avoid the destruction. That the destruction visited upon the whole plain was huge and violent, even to the point of “overturning” or “upturning” the cities (as the ancient Hebrew language in the Torah’s text can be read). That this cave, a likely place for Lot’s family to have run to and taken shelter, then collapsed. That Lot’s wife, stopping to watch the scene below, was suddenly buried beneath the salt and rock roof above the outer (weaker, less supported) mouth of the cave. That she did not “become” a pillar of salt, but became buried beneath/within a pillar of salt! And we have validated, not refuted the event described in the Bible!
Does the language of the Bible support this relatively minor reinterpretation of the text? Yes indeed! Note, first, it does not begin to say that God, or some supernatural action by God, converted her into salt. That is, what happened happened, but was not done to her. And if we look at the Hebrew language, we find that the Hebrew verb, hayah, can also read “finished”, “remained”, “continued”, “was left”, or “came to be in” a pillar of salt.
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