Sodom and Gomorrah

Posted byPeter JohnsonPosted inUncategorizedTags:, , , , ,
Sodom and Gomorrah afire by Jacob Jacobsz. de Wet c.1680 Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt, Germany (Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication)

This is the third blog in the series where I am revisiting the themes I addressed in my original essay, but hopefully in a shortened format.  Last time I began to look at the various Scripture passages used to justify the anti-gay stance taken by many, particularly, but not limited to, evangelical churches.  In the last fifty years we have seen faith groups claim that certain passages of scripture condemn those who identify as being part of the LGBTQ+ community.  It is these passages I want to look at, and they are: Genesis 1 & 2 (which I dealt with in the previous blog); Genesis 19; Leviticus 18:19-22 & 20:1-18; Romans 1; 1 Corinthians 6:9; 1 Timothy 1:9-10 and Jude 1: 7.

The Sodom and Gomorrah story

Today, having looked at the creation passages last time, I want to look at the Sodom and Gomorrah story.   I hope you were able to read ahead with the link I gave last time.  As I pointed out the story may be focused on chapter 19, but we need to get the context from chapters 13, 14 and 18, before we get to chapter 19.

Briefly, in Chapter 13 we see how Abram  (who God later renamed Abraham) and Lot his nephew, had got far too many animals between them to be sustained by the area in which they were living.  They separate, and Lot chooses to go to the fertile areas in the valley, where the vegetation was plentiful, leaving Abraham to seemingly get the thinner pickings in the hill country of Canaan.  When you read between the lines of the Bible narrative, Lot seems to have looked for an easy life.  In chapter 13 he has huge flocks and herds, along with presumably a good number of herders, and the valley looked very fertile, so he pitches his tents near Sodom.

In chapter 14, we have five local kings who rebel against four more distant kings from Babylonia and Elam.  The four come down to meet the rebels in battle, beat them and then chase the escaping soldiers into the hills.  The conquering kings scoop up “all the goods of Sodom and Gomorrah and all their food; then they went away.” [ch.14:11] This also included Lot and his possessions “since he was living in Sodom”.

So, earlier, Lot was living in tents near Sodom, and we now find he is living in Sodom.  What happened?  It is reasonable to assume that a “significant” amount of time passed between Lot’s separation from Abram and the destruction of Sodom.  However, the specific duration is not provided in the biblical text, so any estimation would be speculative.

The last we hear of his livestock and herders was when they moved down into the valley.  Had he sold his animals, laid off his men and used his money to buy a nice house in Sodom for him and his family to live comfortably?  Or, perhaps he still had some livestock, but that he has people to do all that work for him.

Following his capture, fortunately for Lot, a man escapes and tells Abram what had happened.  Abram musters his 318 fighting men, which gives us an idea of how big both groups were when they split.  Presumably he left a good number of other men to keep an eye on things – perhaps those too old to fight and a few herders, along with all the women and children. You have to ask, just how big a force were the invaders to be beaten by Abraham (spoiler!)? Therefore how big were the valley forces to be beaten by the invaders? Too many questions, not enough answers!

Melchizedek

Long story short, Abram catches up with the treasure-laden army, routs them and recovers the captives including Lot, along with all the possessions.   Abram then returns the possible 150-170 miles from Dan, back to Sodom, to bring everyone home.  They are met by the grateful king of Sodom, but also by a mysterious figure, Melchizedek, whose identity, and significance have been the subject of theological and scholarly discussions for ever! 

Some view Melchizedek as a historical figure, while others see him as a symbolic or archetypal figure.  The name “Melchizedek” means “king of righteousness” in Hebrew.  Overall, Melchizedek’s role in the Bible is significant for its connections to the themes of priesthood, righteousness, and the anticipation of a greater and eternal priesthood fulfilled in Jesus Christ.  Because he is seen as a priest-king, he is usually seen as a foreshadowing of Jesus Christ, who is also described as a “high priest forever in the order of Melchizedek”.  It is hugely significant that he brings out bread and wine to Abram.  This a great clanging bell of a reminder of the Holy Sacrament of Communion.  It’s important to note that in Jewish circles there is the practice of offering bread and wine at religious rituals.

Non-affirming Christians like to talk about the total depravity of homosexuality, and that Sodom represents the extreme of this.  So, if Sodom represents all that is degenerate, what is Melchizedek doing conducting such a symbolic and holy moment in the presence of the king of Sodom?  Thinking of the logistics,  Salem (aka Jerusalem) is a long way to the north, and it would have been far easier, quicker, and nearer, for Melchizedek to have intercepted Abram as he journeyed south, relatively close to Jerusalem, on his back down to Sodom.  If this symbolic act had to occur in that area why not make sure it happened before the king of Sodom arrived?  Clearly it was important that the king of Sodom witnessed it.

Again, I ask questions without being able to give sensible answers!  Moving on, Abram gives Melchizedek a tenth of all he recovered, also foreshadowing the Biblical principle of giving God/his priest, a tenth of what you produce.  Abram owed Melchizedek nothing, by right, from a human perspective, so why give him a tenth.  That’s a discussion for another day.  After Abram’s interaction with Melchizedek, the king of Sodom tells Abram he can keep all the goods, but only requests he return the people, clearly Abram’s intent anyway, because of his journey to Sodom.  He could have just returned to his own home and allowed those from Sodom to either stay with him,  or make their own way back.  However, Abram shows his honour, by protecting them and giving almost everything to the king, just allowing some of his leading men to have a share.

Promises

The next relevant chapter is chapter 18, when God in the form of three men appear to Abraham (yes, he’s been given the name-change by God).  We aren’t told who they are exactly, but it seems to be God and two angels in the form of these three men.  They are here to give him two messages: one is to confirm the promise made in the earlier meeting, that Abraham will definitely have a son with Sarah, even though they are both very old, and the second is to tell Abraham that Sodom will be toast, because of its sin.  The two angels begin their walk down to Sodom while God stays and talks to Abraham.  Abraham is concerned for Sodom, bartering with God, saying “are you going to kill them all – including the righteous?”  Abraham gradually knocks God down to agreeing that if 10 righteous people can be found, Sodom will be spared. Spoiler: In the end only four escape!

A not so angelic welcome to Sodom

The narrative now switches to the angels arriving at Sodom where they are met by Lot who is sitting at the gateway.  It seems to have been a tradition throughout Biblical history that the city gate was a central location where important matters were discussed, legal disputes were settled, and judgments were made.  The elders, who were respected members of the community known for their wisdom and experience, would often gather at the city gate to offer advice, make decisions, and act as judges.  Whether Lot was a respected elder or was just killing time, sitting there watching people coming and going, doesn’t really matter.  When he sees these strangers, his inbuilt instinct is to offer the expected hospitality of food and shelter.

This is where things start running out of control.  I’ll give a brief overview and then come back to have a closer view of the text.  The angels initially declined the hospitality, but were persuaded by Lot to accept.  After eating, but before going to bed, “all the men from every part of the city of Sodom—both young and old—surrounded the house” (v4).  They demanded that Lot bring out the visitors so they could have sex with the men.  (This is clearly where the anti-gay issue comes from, but it’s as a result of failing to read and understand the passage.)  The situation threatens to really  get out of hand and Lot offers his daughters to the mob in the place of the visitors.  The would-be attackers get angry with Lot and the angels open the door enough to pull lot back in before slamming it shut again.

The angels strike the attackers with blindness and asked Lot whether there were any other relatives or friends he wanted to save, and Lot goes out to find the sons-in-law who were pledged to marry his daughters.  Yes, there are issues there we’ll come back to!  The sons‑in‑law thought it was a big joke and weren’t interested.

Just before dawn, the angels virtually dragged them out of the city and told them to run for their lives for the mountains.  Lot protested it was too far and could they please just go this small nearby town of Zoar.  The angels agreed to protect Zoar and allowed them to go there.  This encourages us to think that Lot had grown inactive, breathless and overweight.  Maybe, if he had continued to have a hands‑on with his flocks and herds, he would no doubt have been a lot fitter.

When they reached Zoar, we are told that burning sulfur rained down on Sodom and Gomorrah destroying the cities and the vegetation of the plains.  I’m not going to take the story much further, because it isn’t really relevant to what we are supposed to be looking at.  However, I just want to add that Lot didn’t stay in Zoar but went into the mountains, presumably at his own pace.  I also assume that although Zoar was spared destruction, life would have been almost impossible, because trade routes would cease (why would traders wander through a destroyed and blacked expanse with no trade possibilities?) and any pastureland destroyed.  What does surprise me is that Lot doesn’t go and stay with Abraham – maybe his pride was too badly damaged, after leaving with huge wealth and now being penniless – and having already been rescued once.

A closer look

So, let’s go back and explore things more closely.  As I said, Lot was very insistent (v3) that the angels stay with him for the evening and travel on in the morning.  I wondered whether he thought there might be trouble if he didn’t; but he really couldn’t have imagined what was to happen.  Personally, although I think that Lot seems to be a rather inactive, perhaps selfish, man, he still had an inbuilt morality of offering hospitality to visitors, and in other biblical passages he is referred to as being righteous.  Indeed, in that passage from 2 Peter it looks like Peter is saying that Lot was making an overt point of offering hospitality to shame those around him.  Maybe a contemporary example is that because society is being turned against Asylum Seekers, we, as Christians, need to redouble our efforts to make them welcome, offering them help with the minefield that is our wretched UK Home Office Asylum process.

In verse 4 we have the expression “all the men from every part of the city of Sodom—both young and old” come to Lot’s house.  The Message translation says that “men from all over the city of Sodom, young and old, descended on the house”.  The problem here is that all the major versions use the expression “all the men” which we are forced to accept literally.  But this presents issues later in the story.  If it is that “some men” come from every part of the city, it is easier to explain the later narrative.  We can’t be sure how many people that represents, but as Sodom was described as a city, we have to picture a population of many hundreds, or maybe, thousands, of men.  The story simply doesn’t support  the idea that every man of Sodom was there – think of the space between houses, and the ease of making your way through the crowds.

Were most of the men of Sodom homosexual?

Then we come on to the attempted rape.  Firstly, attempted male‑on‑male rape is not a sign of homosexuality.  Rape is sexual violation for domination, and nothing less.  It often followed warfare and was conducted by the victorious army against the defeated, whether male or female.  That is still true today.  When Russian soldiers raped Ukrainian women, was that an expression of hetero love and commitment?  Of course not, it was humiliation and domination.  In the last couple of years we have seen it in Sudan and other places.  We see it in most prisons across the world, including both the UK and USA, as those who want to be viewed as top of the pecking order, impose their domination on the vulnerable.

It is impossible to make the case that most of the men of Sodom were homosexual – the text simply doesn’t support it.  Oh, and by the way, don’t forget the women.  A Gallup survey in 2020 found that 6.4% of female respondents in the United States identified as LGBT, while 4.9% of male respondents identified as LGBT.  That’s just a statistic, so don’t lean on it too heavily, but the point is that there are as many women who identify as gay, as men.  Those figures are fairly universal ±1-2%.  Those figures are likely to have been similar in Sodom, it’s just that no-one ever really recognised sexual orientation until a couple of hundred years ago – until then it was utterly irrelevant.  If the destruction was because God was angry about the gay men of Sodom, why don’t we hear talk about God’s anger towards the gay women.  Or is God as prejudiced as many of our faith groups?  After all, we mainly hear our faith groups referring to male homosexuality, rather than female homosexuality.  Why is that?

Getting back to Sodom, if the men had been mainly aroused by other men, Lot would have known, and would have also recognised it was pointless offering his daughters to the mob.  As repugnant as that was, Lot clearly thought the desperate gesture might have bought off the crowd.

However, the crowd turn on Lot and want to rape him instead/as well.  This is not attraction – it is dominance/revenge, and has nothing whatsoever to do with a loving, consensual relationship of equals.

The angels take charge.

The angels have let this play out, and now, the time for action has arrived.  Firstly, they pull Lot into the house, out of the clutches of the baying mob, then they strike all of them with blindness, so they can’t find the door, and, presumably, get in each other’s way!  I wondered about the nature of that blindness – was it temporary, or permanent (till Sodom is flattened!).  Could they find their way home?  Was it localised – just near Lot’s house, or absolute.  Was it more of a sense of total confusion: “Where am I?  What am I doing here?  No idea, let’s go home!”

The angels ask Lot if there are any other relatives elsewhere in Sodom that they want to save.  Lot mentions his daughters’ future husbands and the angels tell him to get them immediately, because this place is about to be trashed. 

If you’ve walked through a crowd after a football match, imagine all the supporters being blind, angry, and disorientated, and you are trying to get through.  That’s what Lot faced.  But this is another problem, because we were told that all the men in Sodom were at Lot’s door, so where were these sons‑in‑law?  If “all the men” were there, how was it that these guys weren’t?  If these sons-in-law weren’t in the crowd, it’s logical to assume others weren’t either, in which case, it wasn’t ALL the men.  Was it simply a large group of local troublemakers on the way home from the pub, maybe a few score, in which case the description of what we’ve read is a lot more plausible. 

If the sons‑in‑law had been part of the crowd – now blinded, how would Lot find them in a large crowd, and what were they doing there?  That questions the concept the crowd was a gay mob.  Then how do you get to them to separate from the crowd, so you can tell them to escape, or leave with the family.  Also, it would be a bit tricky for Lot to explain to them why he’d just offered his daughters to the crowd!  Awkward! In any case, the sons‑in‑law thought it was a joke and refused to leave.

As dawn approaches, the angels try to get the family moving because the danger is fast approaching, and the warning light is going from orange towards the red.  In the end, the angels literally drag Lot, his wife and two daughters to safety.

What is the sin of Sodom?

So, what is the sin of Sodom?  From what I have said it isn’t homosexuality.  And as a reminder of what I have argued elsewhere, there is no evidence that what we think of as homosexuality, can be regarded by God as a sin.  So, what does the Bible say was its sin?

Ezekiel provides the most detail, and he explains that the sins of Jerusalem far exceeded the sins of Sodom – without there being any link to homosexuality (read that link), and that the sins also exceeded the sins of the detestable Samaria.  There has never been any hint of unusual homosexuality associated with either Jerusalem or Samaria.  Jerusalem’s sins were linked to idolatry.  In that chapter (16), Ezekiel goes on to say 49 “‘Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. 50 They were haughty and did detestable things before me.  Therefore I did away with them as you have seen.”  The “detestable things” mentioned there are likely to refer to idolatry, as this is normally what these words refer to when used in scripture.

Other passages mention:

  • Idolatry – Deuteronomy 29:17-26; 32: 32-38.
  • Meaningless offerings, murder, greed, theft, rebellion – Isaiah 1: 9-23
  • Oppressing the poor, arrogance, sensuality – Isaiah 3: 8-19
  • Adultery, deceit by prophet and priest, pride, idolatry, ungodly leaders – Jeremiah 23: 10-14; 49: 16-18; 50: 2-40  [It must be significant that so many verses are written – none have a sexual element.]
  • Cruel oppression of the young and poor – Lamentations 4: 3-6
  • Oppression of the poor – Amos 4: 1-11
  • Sexual immorality and perversion – Jude v7  [We’ll revisit this passage later in this series, but there are plenty of perversions hetero folks can get up to without looking at homosexuality, and the author of Jude simply isn’t specific enough.  Suffice to say making the claim that “unnatural lusts” is a reference to the angels is reading back into the passage something that isn’t there.

So, as we have seen, we can’t use the Sodom and Gomorrah story to justify an anti-gay position, because it has nothing to do with it whatsoever.  Furthermore the attempted rape of the angels isn’t the cause of the judgement, since God had already planned it long beforehand as we saw in Genesis 18.

As I finish, I must also draw your attention to an identical story In Judges, which I believe puts the final nail in the coffin.  The story is horrible and has huge repercussions for all the tribes of Israel, but particularly Benjamin.  Although identical, perhaps arguably worse, there was no total destruction by God.  I don’t need to provide any further comments as the story speaks for itself.  Read it in Judges 19, but also read to the end of Chapter 21.

Destruction, but how?

If you are interested in what caused the destruction of Sodom, Gomorrah, and surrounding towns we can’t be sure but here are the common suggestions:

Next month I hope to cover Leviticus 18:19-22 and 20:1-18; Romans 1 so it would be worth reading ahead by following that link, which should mean that the January blog will finish the series and probably be shorter.