Lot’s Daughters

Gen. 19:30-38

After the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, and the death of his wife, Lot takes his two daughters and goes to live in the caves rather than the city of Zoar.  We are told that he was afraid to stay in Zoar, but not exactly why he was fearful.  Keil and Delitzsch surmise that he feared that city might be marked for destruction too, so it may be that the culture was not that different from what was found in the other cities.  What ever reason, he chose to seek refuge now in the vary mountains he was told to flee to by God’s messengers.

Lot’s daughters are now concerned that they will not find husbands in their present condition.  We are not told much over the decision to cause their father to become drunk enough that they are able to become impregnated by him, but their plot succeeds and they both bear children by their father.  And other than the children’s names, Moab and Ben-ammi, we do not hear any more about this line of Abraham’s relative until the children of Israel return to the promised land.  I am not going to go into this aspect right now, but rather I want to think on what drove these two women to commit such an act as sleeping with their father with the purpose of have a child by him.

I would say it had two aspects: 1.  they are showing the influence of the culture of the world in this act.  After all their excuse was “”there is not a man on earth to come in to us after the manner of the earth.”  (v31b, emphasis mine).  So they took it into their own hands to preserve their family line through their father.  2.  though they were spared the judgement delivered to Sodom and Gomorrah, they did not trust God to preserve their family line, so they felt they needed to act for their own survival.  It is this lack of faith I want to address specifically, but also that they were strongly influenced by the world’s sinful culture that justified their actions in their own minds.

Once again lets try and put ourselves in their place, remember they were taken out of a city with nothing but their clothes on their backs.  They had been betrothed to men of the city, but those men did not accompany them when they fled (see vs 14).  So to the daughters the future did not appear good.  Then their father leaves the city of Zoar and goes to live in the mountains, further removing them from the comfort and security they must have left behind in living in a city.  Have you ever found yourself in a situation where it seemed there was not a way out?  That no matter how much you might pray God does not seem to be there?  How do you handle such times?  Do you see it as a time to grow in faith, trusting God despite the circumstances? Or do you try to solve the problem yourself as Lot’s daughters did?  I don’t want to say that doing something is always sinful, but what Lot’s daughters did was.  They did not even seek God in the matter.  Their Uncle Abraham was not so far away that they could have sought refuge with him and place themselves back under the protection of God’s covenant, but neither they nor their father appear to have considered this as an answer.  So rather than seeking the God of Abraham, they sought the solution the world and their circumstance afforded.  This was their mistake.

Before making any decision we need to be sure we have sought godly advice, from your husband and the elders of the church.  Be sure that your thinking is influenced by the word of God, and not the thinking of the world.  That means you need to be reading the Bible daily, and studying it, you also need to be hearing the solid preaching of the word and not just cute comforting messages in church.  Ladies, our culture around us will tell you that you have the right to make your own decisions and go your own way in many areas that God’s word clearly tells us we are to submit to our male heads (authority) in.  Be sure that you are choosing God’s way and not the world’s way.  Single ladies, you are to be under godly male authority until you are married.  Your Christian father is your primary head until that is exchanged in marriage to your Christian husband.  Just as a wife submits to her husband, the single daughter submits to the godly counsel of their father.  If your father is not a Christian, then seek the godly counsel of your church elders.  The point being, seek to be under godly male authority during all aspects of your life, whether married or single. I Corinthians 11: 3 says, “But I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man, and the man is the head of a woman, and God is the head of Christ.”

In conclusion, I want to always encourage you to be reading the Word, let that be your primary source of knowledge.  Yes, there are many good books out there today that we can also read and enjoy, but if you are not saturated with God’s Word, how will you know that what you are reading is Biblical?  II Timothy 3:16-17 tells us that: “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.”

As always, I welcome your comments and pray that God will enrich you with His word and the work of His spirit in your lives.

This entry was posted on 25. October 2011 at 15:27 and is filed under Other Women. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

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