About eight years after his separation from Abraham (B. c. 1913), Lot was carried away pri soner by Chedorlaomer, along with the other in habitants of Sodom, and was rescued and brought back by Abraham (Gen. xiv.), as related under other heads [ABRAHAM ; CHEDORLAOMER]. This exploit procured for Abraham much celebrity in Canaan ; and it ought to have procured for Lot respect and gratitude front the people of Sodom, who had been delivered from bard slavery and re stored to their homes on his account. But this does not appear to have been the result.
*At length the guilt of tbe cities of the plain' brought down the signal judgments of Heaven. The avenging angels, after having been entertained by Abraham, repaired to Sodom, where they were received and entertained by Lot, who was sitting in the gate of the town when they arrived. While they were at supper the house was beset by a number of men, who demanded that the strangers should be given up to them, for the unnatural purposes Nvhich have given a name of infamy to Sodom in all generations. Lot resisted this de mand, and was loaded with abuse by the vile fellows outside on that account. They had nearly forced the door, when the angels, thus awfully by their own experience convinced of the righteousness of the doom they came to execute, smote them with instant blindness, by which their attempts were rendered abortive, and they were constrained to disperse. Towards morning the angels apprised Lot of the doom which hung over the place, and urged him to hasten thence with his family. He was allowed to extend the benefit of this deliver ance to the families of his daughters who had married in Sodom ; but the warning was received by those families with incredulity and insult, and he therefore left Sodom accompanied only by his wife and two daughters. As they went, being hastened by the angels, the wife, anxious for those who had been left behind, or reluctant to remove from the place which had been long her home, and where much valuable property was necessarily left behind, lingered behind the rest, and was suddenly involved in the destruction, by which—smothered and stiffened as she stood by saline incrustations— she became a pillar of salt.' Lot and his daughters then hastened on to Zoar, the smallest of the five cities of the plain, which had been spared on purpose to afford him a refuge ; but being fearful, after what had passed, to remain among a people so corrupted, he soon retired to a cavern in the neighbouring mountains, and there abode. After some stay in this place, the daughters of Lot became apprehensive lest the family of their father should be lost for want of descendants, than which no greater calamity was known or appre hended in those times ; and in the belief that, after what had passed in Sodom, there was no hope of their obtaining suitable husbands, they, by a con trivance which has in it the taint of Sodom, in which they were brought up, made their father drunk with wine, and in that state seduced him into an act which, as they well knew, would in soberness have been most abhorrent to him. They
thus became the mothers, and he the father, of two sons, named Moab and Ammon, from whom sprung the Moabites and Ammonites, so often mentioned in the Hebrew history (Gen. xix.) This circumstance is the last which the Scripture records of the history of Lot ; and the time and place of his death are unknown.
The difficulties which the narrative that we have sketched has been supposed to involve may be reduced to two—the death of Lot's wife, and the conduct of his daughters. With respect to the former of these, whatever difficulty has been con nected with the subject has arisen from the ridicu lous notions which have been connected with it, for which no authority is found in tbe Scriptural narrative. It has been supposed that the woman was literally turned into a pillar of salt, and that this pillar stood for many ages, if it does not still exist, as a standing monument of the transaction. Indeed, sundry old travellers have averred that they had seen it ; and no doubt they did see something which they supposed to be the pillar into which Loes wife was turned, or were told to be such. This notion originated with the author of the Wisdom of Solomon, which was regarded by the Roman Catholics as Scriptural authority that might not be disputed. Therefore old pilgrims and travellers sought for this monument ; and, from their example, more modern travellers have done the same : al though, if Protestants, they could attach no par ticular weight to the authority which alone justified their predecessors in their hopes of finding it. The passage referred to is that in which the author, after alluding to the punishment of Sodom and the de liverance of Lot, adverts to the existing evidence of the former, and then adds, somewhat vaguely, cirLo- TO6Crlit IkUjelt p-ww-teiov garvwca crriXn itX6s, a standing pillar of salt is a monument of an unbe lieving soul.' This was no doubt the authority relied upon : indeed, we find it expressly quoted by some old travellers as the ground of their ex. pectation. But the testimony of Josephus is still more explicit, and with us would be quite as autho ritative. He expressly says not only that the monument existed, but that be had seen it (Antiy.