Reclaiming our Stories: Lot's Wife

by Alexandria Long

Read more of her story: Genesis 19:12-29 

Two angels arrived in Sodom in the evening and were invited to spend the night at Lot’s home.  Due to the depravity and wickedness of the men in Sodom, the angels were used by the Lord to destroy the town.  Lot, his wife, and two daughters were taken away from the town and told not to look back and to flee to the hills to survive.  Lot only wanted to go to a small, nearby town however, because he said he would die if he went to the hills.  The angels agreed.  As they were fleeing, Lot’s wife looked back and became a pillar of salt.

That’s all we have for Lot’s wife.  She is not named in the Bible, although some Jewish traditions (the Midrash) have named her “Edith.”  She doesn’t argue with the angels, she doesn’t defend the men or their actions in the town, and she certainly doesn’t offer up anyone else to be raped, like Lot did with their two virgin daughters.  She definitely doesn’t rape anybody herself, like Lot’s daughters do to Lot after the destruction of the Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding area.  She actually doesn’t say a word.

I thought, when I picked Lot’s wife to reflect on her story, it was going to be a story about a test of faith and Lot’s wife failed.  She turned into a pillar of salt because she didn’t have faith or trust in God.  And, it’s true that some commentaries say that.  Women in Scripture reads, “Salt preserves her in a fixed state.  Is this symbolic of her still being tied to the security that city culture is assumed to offer?”  Some traditions come in super aggressively, saying Lot’s wife disobeyed the angels and looked back because she was betraying her secret longing for that way of life (Schrafstein, Torah and Commentary), while some opinions are kinder, saying she was checking on her daughters.  All the text says is: The angels said, “Flee for your life; do not look back or stop anywhere in the Plain; flee to the hills, or else you will be consumed,” (Genesis 19:17).  Lot’s wife looked back, and she was turned into a pillar of salt (Genesis 19:26).  All the traditions and commentaries are just offering opinions and conjecture that the Bible certainly doesn’t have.  

There’s no real judgement or test in the Bible.  It wasn’t about her faith or her past sins.  The angels cautioned the humans to keep running and not to look back so they wouldn’t get distracted.  A natural disaster courtesy of God’s judgement and wrath was about to rain down on that area and any human still in the area was going to be consumed.  The text says “sulfur and fire,” and the Lutheran Study Bible says this could have been an earthquake with associated fires and natural bitumen deposits.  Lot’s wife becoming distracted and hesitating wasn’t about her faith or sins, it was about her getting caught up in an explosion in an environmental disaster because she didn’t flee the area.  The biblical text does not comment on Lot’s wife: she’s just another human, in the wrong place at the wrong time, caught up in an act of God.

How have natural disasters affected you or your faith community, especially when they’re blamed on God’s judgement for perceived wickedness (e.g. hurricanes and tornadoes being blamed on God for people accepting gay marriage)?  How do you react when life just happens, when you’re caught up in something damaging through no fault of your own and you just have to learn how to deal with it?  What does it mean to your faith or your outlook on God, that the oppressed and the oppressors are treated the same in this story? (The entire area was destroyed; those who sinned, those who were innocent, elderly, children, all animals, etc).

Humanity, God, & Sin

There have been several conversations among the members of our church concerning humanity and sin.  While some sinful people are excused as “only human,” others are dismissed as “pure evil.”  These statements are theological in that they are very real statements about God’s creation, the purpose of humanity, and the nature of sin and salvation.  Our theology on these matters is important because it is related to how we understand salvation and ultimately related to our own salvation.    

We see from the very beginning of the creation story and creation stories throughout the scripture that God created all things (John 1:3) and everything that comes from God is good (Genesis 1).  Therefore, all of creation is created good.  God did not create evil, nor did God create humanity to be anything less than “ very good” (Genesis 1:31).  God is pure goodness and humanity is good in association and relationship with the Creator.  Because there is nothing in the world that God did not create (thus nothing in the world was created bad), there is nothing in the world that is pure evil.  If everything is good, nothingness is evil.  It is impossible for creatures to be so consumed by evil that they diminish into nothingness.   To say that something is “pure evil” is simply untrue.  This is not to say, however, that there is no evil in the world.  Sin causes evil, but sin was not created by God because God created all things - especially humanity - as good.  The goodness of creation and the goodness of humanity is innately related to the purpose of humanity.       

We see from the Genesis story that God created humanity to be in full communion with divinity.  Before the Fall, God was in such full communion that God walked in the garden with Adam and Eve (Genesis 3:8).  Creation was created by God as an act of outpouring love so that creation might be in relationship with one another and with God.  It is impossible to deny the fact that God created humanity to be relational with the divine.  The very Trinitarian nature of God is relational.  The truly human are the ones who are caught up in the Trinitarian relationship with the divine.  The theologian Augustine said that “our hearts are restless until they rest in God.”  It was through the Fall that relationships were corrupted and divided.  The Fall, original sin, and evil were not supposed to happen.  God did not create humanity to be separated and constantly longing for God.  Fundamentally social, we were created to be in communion with God, the rest of creation, and other human beings.  In fact, we see that the only thing “not good” about the creation story was that the first human being was without a companion (Genesis 2:8).  We know that through sin and death, there is separation from God that is not natural and not indicative of our created human nature.   

So the question remains: where does evil come from if it was not a part of creation?  Sin and the Fall are a complete surd.  There is no explanation for why the first human beings would turn away from God and toward themselves.  God created everything for humanity and offered everything, including full communion, to humanity, and humanity turned away.  The Fall put humanity in bondage to sin.  The entire world is enslaved by sin and we cannot change this enslavement by simply trying to become better.  We have fallen and it is impossible for us to be redeemed and turn back to God without God’s redeeming power.  But God, being so merciful and completely loving, longs for humanity to be in communion with God.  In the same way, creation continues “its groaning, and its longing to be renewed and perfected.”  Thus God became incarnate in the person of Christ Jesus in order to redeem creation to its original intent.

It is only through Christ that humanity and all of creation might become reconciled to God’s self once again.  Church doctrine claims that Jesus is the perfect human being.  If sin were a natural part of humanity, then Jesus would have to be a sinner in order to be the perfect human being.  On the contrary, Jesus does not sin.  Through this doctrinal statement, we realize that to be perfectly human is to be perfectly in communion with God.  To be perfectly human is to be without evil and without the sin that separates us from our Creator.  Jesus is “God’s proclamation, revealing who we are not and who God created us to be.”  What we think of creation and sin is directly related to how we understand salvation.      

Salvation is to “become partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4).  Our salvation is not the abandonment of our humanity, but the chance for us to become truly human by participating in communion with God through Christ Jesus and the Holy Spirit.  Through the life, death, and resurrection of Christ Jesus, all of creation has been released from the bondage of sin.  Salvation is the chance for us to be exactly as God created us to be: in full communion with the divine.  Humanity is now completely free to turn toward God.  Theologians such as Athanasius described salvation as God becoming “human that humanity might become divine.”  It is our humanity that longs to be in communion with God.  As the Westminster Confession states, the “chief end of humanity is to worship and enjoy God forever.”  

Saying that a person is “just human” is to say that she or he is longing to be in communion with God.  To say that a person is “purely human” would mean that the person is in full communion with God, the way God intended she or he to be from the beginning of creation.  Statements such as these are indicative of our core beliefs about creation, humanity, and the nature of salvation.  Thus, it is important that we understand and portray such theology adequately.

Sources: 

Dr. Daniel Bell, “Creator, Creation, and Communion” lecture, Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary of Lenoir-Rhyne University, September 29, 2014.

Dr. Daniel Bell, “Sin, Death, and the Devil” lecture, Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary of Lenoir-Rhyne University, October 6, 2014.

Daniel L. Migliore, Faith Seeking Understanding (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publihsing Co., 2004). 

Jann E. Boyd Fullenwieder, “Proclamation: Mercy for the World,” in Inside Out: Worship in an Age of Mission, ed. Thomas H. Schattenauer (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1999).