Rabbah 10:5); she even tried to bar their entry to the house. She was turned into salt either because God couldn’t forgive her this desire . Hence, at least if one follows Radak, it seems that Lot’s wife was not the spectacular aberration I had always thought her. Surely, surely, with the Lord’s counsel “look not behind thee” ringing clearly in her ears, Lot’s wife, the record says, “looked back,” and she was turned into a pillar of salt. But she did. Why may Lot’s wife have looked back, and what did her disobedient act cost her? Why Did Lot's Wife Became Salt . Consequence. But even among those who give to close personal ties the stamp of rational approval, the mere fact of family relationship has rarely been thought to amount to very much, philosophically speaking. “God said not to look, and she looked. She was driving her car and was constantly looking in her rear-view mirror. Lot’s wife divided their house into two parts and told her husband: “If you want to receive them, do so in your part” (Gen. Rabbah 50:6). In such a moment of grief one knows only one desire: to follow after one’s child, to experience what she’s experienced, to be one with her in every aspect of suffering. 25 Thus he overthrew those cities and the entire plain, including all those living in the cities—and also the vegetation in the land. A couple of thousand years later, Christ was talking about the end of the One of the midrashim tried to explain why it was salt, of all things, that she became. They didn’t stop for a moment, and they didn’t look back. It was exactly here, the rabbi told me, each Friday eve, right before sunset, that ha-Ari and his followers would gather, greeting one another and the Sabbath, as they expected at every moment to be greeting the Messiah. Was she curious about what was happening? So, if we live our lives constantly looking back and yearning for what we have left, we deny this new creation and we stifle the life of Jesus within us. What, then, would be the shortest verse ever spoken by Jesus? Don’t look back. But Lot’s wife could not resist one last look back at the cities she had left. The angelic visitors to Lot’s home command him to flee the town of Sodom and not look back as it is destroyed the fire and brimstone. . Islamic accounts also talk about the wife of Prophet Lut when mentioning 'People of Lut'. Why Did Lot's Wife Turn Into Salt. …looked back… She thought she could get away with it, but of course she couldn’t. God burned Sodom with fire from heaven and Lot’s wife was looking back at Sodom; God judged her behaviour and attitude and turned her into a pillar of salt. And all the white-robed disciples silently followed the Master out of the city of Safed, and across the fields. Frozen in the moment of her transgression, exposed to the eyes of all in her act of rebellion, she was transformed into a spectacle of salt, reduced to an element vaguely ridiculous, as if to turn back any motion of pity in us. Sorry to get all biblical, but you asked a biblical question and so I will answer from my perspective. Remember: Lot’s wife perished although she committed only one sin. Or was it rather for the whisper of a doubt, soft but irrepressible, that is perhaps always spoken in such actions as looking where one is told not to look? But the context as a whole was never challenged as an inextricable aspect of the life represented. And it was for this desire that Irit was turned into a pillar of salt. “Do not look behind you,” was the clear command of the angels. —Read Genesis 19:17, 26. Lot’s Wife Looks Back. And the reason for her disobedience was her love for the world. Ariri is the technical term for this punishment, and there is a dispute in the Talmud as to whether ariri is implicit or not in the wider punishment of koret, which literally means being cut off, and is interpreted as an early death. He had spoken, and He would do what He said. Whoever tries to keep his life will lose it. In fact, Isaac loves this prodigal, life-grabbing son so completely that he must be tricked by the clearsighted and undivided Rebecca into giving the deserving son the blessing that will ensure the preordained dynasty. Subscribe. And was it for this that her punishment had come swift and horrible? It cost her, her life. LOT’S WIFE LOOKS BACK BUT HIS WIFE LOOKED BACK FROM BEHIND HIM, AND SHE BECAME A PILLAR OF SALT-Gen 19:26. And when that son, on the way to the land of Moriah, turned to the father and said: “My father. Lot’s Wife Looks Back. 25 Thus he overthrew those cities and the entire plain, including all those living in the cities—and also the vegetation in the land. And what request had that been? Why did she look back? It costs them their life. Flee to the mountains or you will be swept away!" You mean Sodom and Gomorrah burning? And Michal, the daughter of King Saul and the wife of King David, also suffered this punishment: And it was so, as the ark of the Lord came into the city of David, that Michal the daughter of Saul looked out at the window, and saw King David leaping and dancing before the Lord; and she despised him in her heart. You should read all of Genesis 19. But looking where one is told not to look? She was commanded not to, and told she would be consumed if she did. Why did she look back? A couple of thousand years later, Christ was talking about the end of the Perhaps it wasn’t so much that there were moments forbidding doubt as that there were places that merited no sense of attachment. Escape to the mountains, lest you be destroyed” (Genesis 19:17). Many today will not believe that God means what He says. Lost your password? But now, only recently, I’ve discovered a commentary on the story of Lot’s wife that I wish I might have been able to talk over with my father. But as she did so, vapors of sulfur overtook her and she became a pillar of salt. Did He mean “Don't look back over your shoulder or you will become a king-sized salt shaker”? “It doesn’t matter why she looked,” my teacher answered. Many today will not believe that God means what He says. . And he overthrew those cities, and all the valley, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew on the ground. He agreed with me that it was consistent, but he wouldn’t agree that it was right. The angels told them not to look back or stop (Genesis 19:17). Don't look back, and don't stop anywhere in the plain! Learn more about our. She looked back to the world instead of forward to God’s plan for her life. Prior to God destroying Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham pleaded with Him on the people’s behalf. Compared to the mother, Irit, Abraham was a figure of terrifying purity. Sadly, Lot’s wife did not reach the safety of the mountains because she “looked back.” And she immediately was turned into a pillar of salt. When Lot warned these two sons-in-law that Sodom was about to be destroyed, they laughed and said, ‘There is music and festivity in the city, and you speak about destruction!’, “According to this midrash, Irit had pity on her two older daughters who were left behind with their husbands. This woman's 15 minutes of fame came from one dreadful moment. When we look back, when we fail to see Jesus. While fleeing Sodom with her family, she had disobediently looked back and was turned into a pillar of salt. He had explicitly told them, Flee for your lives! You will receive a link to create a new password via email. But Lot's wife, behind him, looked back, and she became a pillar of salt. Why Did Lot S Wife Look Back But Isaac, who is also a righteous father, loves Esau. Lot ran, his daughters close behind. Nobody can get away with anything. Then he says, Remember Lot’s wife! But Lot’s wife… Genesis 19:26. Jesus warns his disciples that when he is revealed from heaven, nobody should even try and go back to their house to get any of their possessions, for that would be fatal (Luke 17:30-33). But such considerations aside, David’s wife, we are told, was divinely punished for the scorn she harbored for her God-silly husband: “And Michal the daughter of Saul had no child unto the day of her death.”. When Abraham learned that there were not even 10 righteous Sodomite men he accepted the city's doom and was silent. Whatever the case, the point is she was called to desert everything to save her life, but she could not let go, and she paid for it with her life. You begin to see why the story frightened me. Lot's Wife, (sometimes called Edith) looks back and is immediately turned into a pillar of salt. That is how it is with us: if we spend too much time yearning for the things of the past, we miss out on what is happening in the present and our life with Jesus may well crash. For that, she was turned into a pillar of salt; and even today you can see a pillar of salt named ‘Lot’s Wife’ near the Dead Sea at Mount Sodom in Israel - though whether this is indeed Lot’s wife is open to question. He relates this to two periods in Old Testament history: firstly, the days of Noah, when judgment came on the whole earth in the flood, and secondly, the days of Lot, when judgment suddenly came on Sodom and Gomorrah with burning sulphur raining down from heaven (Luke 17:26-30). 19:26 But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt. Why did "it" happen? Don’t look back. But Lot’s wife disobeyed. But that is a sermon for another day. The Bible does not even tell us her name, though Jewish tradition says that she was called Edith and was a native of Sodom. Ezekiel 16:49. God agreed, but there were no such 50—nor 45, nor 40, nor 30, nor even 10. I suspect he even felt a little sorry for any great man of ideas who had cut himself off, so consistently, from what my father saw as the fullness of human life. It's left open, of course, that the truth might very well include the existence of God. Abraham bargained with God until it was clear there was no one righteous. And from his confusion I knew many things. He chopped the wood and saddled the donkey himself, not allowing any of his servants to perform these tasks that would ordinarily have been theirs. My teacher’s response therefore seemed to me irreproachable so far as its theology went. Sadly, Lot’s wife did not reach the safety of the mountains because she “looked back.” And she immediately was turned into a pillar of salt. Jesus said, No-one who puts his hand to the plough and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God (Luke 9:62). The command was to “Flee for your lives! To look back was a sign of unbelief. At the time, I truly believed that God sees everything. They, without doubt were on the mind of Lot's wife when she "looked back" to Sodom as it was being incinerated. ( Yair Haklai, (CC BY-SA 3.0) But why did she break the commandment not to look back? Flee to the mountains or you will be swept away!" They obeyed the word of God unconditionally, down to the last letter. The life of the righteous men and women of Genesis was, deeply and intensely, a life of familial passions, of family loves and also hates, of family loyalties and betrayals. According to Bible commentaries like the NIV Zondervan Study Bible, Lot’s wife was turned into a pillar of salt as she looked back, “for disobeying the instruction not to look back. My father did come up with several more midrashim regarding Lot’s wife. It cost her, her life. 26 But Lot's wife looked back, and she became a … Subject: Don’t Look Back Scripture: Luke 17:26-32; Genesis 19: 23-26 Don't Look Back Sermon PDF “Remember Lot’s wife.” These three words from Luke 17:32 have always gripped me. This seems like a rather harsh punishment for simply looking back on Sodom, which was formerly her … I love this blind and confused father, who can’t see clearly because of love, who’s so utterly and pitifully confused, because of love. When the two angels brought Lot, his wife and his two daughters out of Sodom, they told them to not stay in the plain area and to not look back (verse 17). She is not named in the Bible but is called "Ado" or "Edith" in some Jewish traditions. And for what? What led to the utter destruction of this city in a way … Jesus warns us not to follow her example so that we will not follow in her punishment (Luke 17:32). She took her eyes off the path of the Lord. ... and that which grew upon the ground. This cautionary tale is for all of us. II. But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt. Our wives and our children are waiting for us and surely beginning to worry.”. The “wrath of God” that struck Sodom and Gomorrah was a natural phenomenon. Lot more thought. After a while he said to me: “According to this midrash her name was Irit (some say Idit). But she did. Genesis 19:15-25 tells how Lot was led urgently out of Sodom by the angels because it was to be destroyed. And I did, and do, admire her. Everything we know about her from the Bible is in one verse - Genesis 19:26, which tells us, Lot’s wife looked back, and she became a pillar of salt. In the original Hebrew, not only does her name not appear in this verse; his name doesn’t either. Lot’s Wife Looks Back. Why did lots wife look back? For that, she was turned into a pillar of salt; and even today you can see a pillar of salt named ‘Lot’s Wife’ near the Dead Sea at Mount Sodom in Israel - though whether this is indeed Lot’s wife is open to question. Genesis 19:26 If you go to the Holy Land today to visit the Dead Sea, your tour guide may show you “Lot’s Wife” standing at the edge of what used to be Sodom and Gomorrah – now a desolate wasteland. I wasn’t about to press the issue any further with my teacher, but I was fairly certain that whatever it was that had made Lot’s wife look back in her flight was in the nature of an overwhelming compulsion (a concept with which children tend to be well acquainted): the sort of irresistible urge that makes the whole question of whether or not one is going to get away with it pretty much beside the … looked. Jesus told us to remember Lot’s wife. Genesis 19:24-26 Then the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the Lord out of heaven. We are taken from the blessings and protection that comes from following God exclusively and left to our own defense. Lot allowed his wife to unduly pressure him to … But Lot’s wife did, and she became a pillar of salt. In fact, it’s a vision of life as pellucid with rationality as the other is thick with the ties of blood and with the heavy decisions one is asked to make between the orders of one’s love. The rabbi who told me this story was obviously very moved by it, and I was, too, though there’s little doubt that we were responding to quite different aspects. Obviously, Lot was a wealthy man who had enough livestock and servants to cause a problem while he lived with Abraham (Genesis 13:5-7). 26 But Lot's wife looked back, and she became a … Had Lot’s wife, I wondered, looked back simply because she had been told not to do so, as I unfailingly sneaked a peek while standing between my mother and sisters in our pew in the synagogue during the recitation of the Priestly Blessing that was said on the holidays? Why looking back was a big deal is also a completely different question. Genesis 19:26 Lot's wife did not merely look back—she dragged her heels from Sodom to Zoar, dawdling and wasting time. One of the contenders would surely be Luke 17:32: Remember Lot’s wife! And the angels instructed them saying, “Escape for your life! So she reluctantly left Sodom because she loved the world, not having the faith. If we felt we had to go to college, said our teachers, then we should at least be aware that there were certain subjects that were much safer than others. Because she was my namesake I wanted to love and admire Rebecca. 1 And it's only right to remember that even Abraham might, on occasion, try to get God to change His word, as he did when he was informed that Sodom was imminently to be destroyed. Lot's Wife Looks Back . We read: “But his wife looked back behind him, and she became a pillar of salt” (verse 26). And was it for this that she herself had been turned, most appropriately, into the stuff of tragic spectacle? They didn’t stop for a moment, and they didn’t look back. In the Bible, Lot's wife is a figure first mentioned in Genesis 19. Lot’s wife lost her life because she “looked back.” This was more than just a glance over the shoulder; it was a look of longing that indicated reluctance to leave or a desire to return. “Lot’s Wife,” 1878, by Sir W. Hamo Thornycroft, R.A. Marble. In the last hours before his death, recorded in Plato’s Phaedo, Socrates gathers around him his friends and disciples, so that they may engage in one last philosophical discussion, this one focused on the pertinent theme of the soul’s immortality. To me he is a child, lying there beneath his father’s raised knife.) But before the conversation can begin, Socrates (one of the very few “family men” among the notables in the history of Western philosophy, who, almost to a man, were bachelors) orders someone to remove his weeping wife, Xanthippe, and “the little boy.” Plato also has Socrates declaring that flesh-and-blood children are of little or no account, compared to the ideas, embodied in books, and the disciples that a man leaves behind as his true progeny.4 The good life, from the philosophical viewpoint, certainly doesn’t require family and children to complete itself. Please enter your username or email address. She was told not to look back at the massive explosion occurring because it was DANGEROUS to do so! Was it the regret and longing she had directed back to her home in Sodom that had drawn God’s wrath down on her? Finally, after they had walked for miles, one of the disciples spoke up. She lagged behind. But it was Abraham's pleading that subsequently won Lot and Lot's family their lives. As they were escaping, the sky rained brimstone and fire on Sodom. Do not look behind you nor stay anywhere in the plain. Lot’s wife, consumed perhaps with the sin in the city she was leaving behind, looked back and was instantly turned into a pillar of salt. But Lot’s wife looked back, and she became a pillar of salt. She was told not to look, and she looked; and her punishment came swift and horrible. Here are both fire and wood, but where is the lamb for the sacrifice?” the righteous father answered: “God Himself will choose the lamb for the sacrifice, my son”—adding (again in the version embellished by rabbinical tradition), “and if not, you will be the lamb.” At which, in this version, the son put his face between his hands and wept. Obviously, Lot was a wealthy man who had enough livestock and servants to cause a problem while he lived with Abraham ( … “The moment for the Messiah had come,” he said, “and I was walking to Jerusalem. He told her that if she did that too much, her eyes would not be on the road ahead and eventually she would crash. And yet another sort, a meaner sort, of motive behind her action suggested itself, one that would remove her to a safer distance from myself: a kind of cold enchantment with the drama of death. I think she was looking back to see if what the angels said would happen really did. But it’s Isaac whom I love. The OT God was an authoritarian God. But far more importantly, I knew from his confusion that my father, just like Irit, would also have looked back to see if all his daughters were following. Yet Lot’s Wife disobeys. Her action suggests that she identified with the people of Sodom. God sees all.”. But Lot’s wife disobeyed. Now, what did Jesus mean in Luke 17 when He said “Remember Lot’s wife”? For the original Hebrew of the Old Testament tells us that ‘she looked around from behind Lot’. He tells them that as this kingdom is spreading and as he is preparing to come back to judge the world, most people will be blithely unaware and will be carrying on with their everyday lives, eating, drinking, marrying, buying, selling, planting. Did God want Lot's wife to be a pillar of salt, so he just forbade something he knew she would do? It was one of the stories from Genesis that most frightened me as a child: the story of Lot’s wife. But why did he take such drastic action? There are extensive artistic works examining this story- painters painting her shocked face as she gazes on the ruins of her home, poets writing words from her perspective as to why she turned to look. (2 Corinthians 5:17). And why does Jesus tell us to remember her? A. Did Lot’s wife and I share the same perversity of nature that compelled us to take stupid risks for no very good reason at all, for no reason that really went beyond the risk itself? In vivid contrast was the picture of Lot’s wife: fleeing the accursed city, the shrieks of the damned in her ears, and in her nostrils the sickening stink as Heaven’s fire and brimstone came raining down behind her. 2 But why did Lot’s wife look back? Being an inquisitive child, I gave Mrs. Toward this end his allegiance is all for transcendence—in the more impersonal form, known as truth, that transcendence takes in this tradition.3. The life of the mind in Western philosophy has nothing at all like this dense emotional context surrounding it. Was she curious about what was happening? One Friday evening ha-Ari appeared before the doors, dressed in the special white garb he wore for the Sabbath. Isaac married Rebecca, my namesake, who became the mother of the twin boys, Esau and Jacob, the fraternal pair who (as I saw and still see them) are the Genesis version of the mind-body problem: Esau, the lusty embodiment of throbbing desire and reckless appetite, living always in the vivid here-and-now, grabbing life with his two great hairy arms; and Jacob, for all his guile, a pure soul, emanating all the otherworldly aspirations of the born saint. Victoria & Albert Museum. The context does not specifically give a reason, but she probably had an inordinate love for the world and the material things she had in Sodom. It was clear that God’s seeing all was a consequence of God’s being God. The first requirement of any system of philosophy is to be free from conceptual contradiction and confusion; and the philosopher asks for something similar in the life he would choose. But why did she look back? Suddenly I felt the whole story of Lot’s wife shifting. The righteous father Abraham arose early in the morning, while it was still dark, to prepare firewood for the sacrifice. Don't look back, and don't stop anywhere in the plain! (I ignored then, and forever have ignored, that Isaac is said by rabbinical tradition to have been thirty-seven at the time of the aborted sacrifice. Meaning Of Pillar Of Salt. or because He could. (again the kids can answer that – She looked back) But why did God care if she glanced over her shoulder at Sodom? Later, during the years I spent as a student of this dangerous discipline, I found a restatement, although in somewhat different terms, of the old dilemma that had first been crystallized for me in the story of Lot’s wife, the conflict between the demands of transcendence and the backward pull of love and accidental attachment. And ha-Ari sank down where he stood in the field and began to cry. Lot’s wife looked back. She disobeyed and received the indicated punishment. But Lot’s wife could not resist one last look back at the cities she had left. 2 But why did Lot’s wife look back? The symbolic significance of the gesture of looking back wasn’t lost on me. And for this I was extremely grateful. Don’t look back” (Genesis 19: 17); but she “looked back… ” (verse 26) - and she perished. On the way, Lot's wife looked back and was turned into a block of salt. Run to the hills, so that you won’t be killed.’ Lot and his daughters obeyed and ran away from Sodʹom. The blindness began with the young because it was they who had instigated the mob. It cost her, her life. The angels did not initially want to be her guests, but rather those of her husband Lot, since he was more righteous (Num. The outcome of the physical devastation wrought upon Sodom was that the place itself became sulfur, while the people became salt. Why Lot's Wife Look Back November 10, 2011 The account of Lot's wife (her name is not recorded) is one of the most well-known incidents of Bible History. Do not look behind you, nor stop anywhere in the plain; flee to the hills, lest you be swept away!” The rest of the story, we already know. I wouldn’t have thought so, and I was a mere child, living in pallid, nonbiblical days. Why did God command Lot and his family not to look back when he KNEW Lot's wife was going to look back? Lets get into the Bible a bit for an idea of what happened to her. She looked back. After they had gone some distance from Sodʹom, she stopped and looked back. When God poured sulphur and fire on the cities, Lot’s wife did not follow the commandment not to look back as it says in Breisheet 19:26 “But his wife looked back … He thought it was right for human life to be subject to contradictions, for a person to love in more than one direction, and sometimes to be torn into pieces because of his many loves. In other words, she was lagging behind the others and carefully surveying the scene, probably with more than a hint of regret and nostalgia at all the friends and familiar things which she had left behind. Is This What Biden’s Voters Actually Want? Lot’s wife, biblical character, a disobedient woman who was turned into a pillar of salt for looking back to see the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah as she and her family were fleeing. 4 In the Republic Plato attempts to construct a society in which the force of the ties of blood will be effectively neutralized, with children being held collectively and the facts of who is the biological relation of whom concealed. The scriptures say that the angels took hold of Lot, his wife, and two daughters to hurry them out of the doomed city. 3 Impersonal, that is, as compared to the more personal conception of transcendence represented in the notion of God. Lot’s Wife Looks Back. LOT’S WIFE LOOKS BACK. At that moment Lot and his family were fleeing from Sodom and Gomorrah, where they had lived, because God was destroying these cities on account of their wickedness. When we decide to follow him, his resurrection life enters into our bodies, so that we are ‘in Christ’ and we become a new creation. They would linger, and then look back … While fleeing Sodom with her family, she had disobediently looked back and was turned into a pillar of salt. Lessons from her choice: What was the sin of Lot’s Wife? So even before I was graduated from high school, I used one of my summer vacations to take a course in philosophy. It’s clear that his thoughts were all on the Master, and the tragedy of that lost moment; while I could only think of the disciple, who had looked back to the hills of Safed, where his family was waiting. By conducting herself in this way, she gave unmistakable evidence that her heart did not believe what the angel had said to her—God would not really destroy all of their possessions. Abraham had argued that there must surely be at least 50 righteous inhabitants who should not be killed because of the sins of the others. Evidently, out of his great love for God’s word, he wished to perform for himself every part of God’s request of him. My father simply offered me this midrash, without suggesting that he thought it supplied the final resolution to the conflict we both felt on looking back at Lot’s wife. Disobedience could be punished by death while raping ones sister could go completely unpunished. At all like this dense emotional context surrounding it and so I answer! Wife? over one ’ s raised knife. she loved the world was silent sometimes Edith... 'S left open, of course, that transcendence takes in this verse ; his name doesn ’ matter. 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