THE SWIFT DESTROYER
by Alexander Maclaren
'And when the morning arose, then the angels
hastened
Lot, saying, Arise, take thy wife, and thy two
daughters,
which are here; lest them be consumed in the
iniquity of
the city. And while he lingered, the men laid
hold upon
his hand, and upon the hand of his wife, and
upon the
hand of his two daughters; the Lord being
merciful unto
him: and they brought him forth, and set him
without
the city. And it came to pass, when they had
brought
them forth abroad, that He said, Escape for thy
life;
look not behind thee, neither stay thou in all
the lain;
escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed.
And Lot
said unto them, Oh, not so, my Lord: Behold now,
Thy
servant hath found grace in Thy sight, and Thou
hast
magnified Thy mercy, which Thou hast shewed unto
me in
saving my life; and I cannot escape to the
mountain, lest
some evil take me, and I die: Behold now, this
city is
near to flee unto, and it is a little one: Oh,
let me
escape thither, (is it not a little one?) and my
soul
shall live. And He said unto him, See, I have
accepted
thee concerning this thing also, that I will not
overthrow
this city, for the which thou hast spoken. Haste
thee,
escape thither; for I cannot do any thing till
thou be
come thither. Therefore the name of the city was
called
Zoar. The sun was risen upon the earth when Lot
entered
into Zoar. Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and
upon
Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of
heaven;
And He overthrew those cities, and all the
plain, and
all the inhabitants of the cities, and that
which grew
upon the ground. But his wife looked back from
behind
him, and she became a pillar of salt.' -- GENESIS
xix. 15-26.
The religious significance of this solemn page of
revelation is but
little affected by any of the interesting questions
which criticism
raises concerning it, so that I am free to look at
the whole
narrative for the purpose of deducing its perennial
lessons. There
are four clearly marked stages in the story: the
lingering of Lot in
the doomed city, and the friendly force which
dragged him from it;
the prayer of abject fear, and the wonderful answer;
the awful
catastrophe; and the fate of the wretched woman who
looked back.
1. Lot's lingering and rescue by force. Second
thoughts are not
always best. When great resolves have to be made,
and when a clear
divine command has to be obeyed, the first thought
is usually the
nobler; and the second, which pulls it back, and
damps its ardour,
is usually of the earth, earthy. So was it with Lot.
Overnight, in
the excitement of the terrible scene enacted before
his door, Lot
had been not only resolved himself to flee, but his
voice had urged
his sons-in-law to escape from the doom which he
then felt to be
imminent. But with the cold grey light of morning
his mood has
changed. The ties which held him in Sodom reassert
their power.
Perhaps daylight made his fears seem less real.
There was no sign in
the chill Eastern twilight that this day was to be
unlike the other
days. Perhaps the angels' summons roused him from
sleep, and their
'arise' is literally meant. It might have given
wings to his flight.
Urgent, and resonant, like the morning bugle, it
bids him be
stirring lest he be swept away 'in the punishment of
the city.'
Observe that the same word means 'sin' and
'punishment,'--a
testimony to the profound truth that at bottom they
are one, sin
being pain in the root, pain being sin in the
flower. So our own
word 'evil' covers all the ground, and means both
sin and sorrow.
But even that pealing note does not shatter his
hesitation. He still
lingers. What kept him? That which had first taken
him there--material
advantages. He had struck root in Sodom. The tent
life which he had
kept to at first has been long given up; we find him
sitting in the
gate of the city, the place for gossip and friendly
intercourse. He
has either formed, or is going to form, marriage
alliances for his
daughters with men of the city who are as black as
the rest. Perhaps
his wife, whom the story will not name, for pity or
for horror, was a
Sodomite. To escape meant to leave all this and his
wealth behind. If
he goes out, he goes out a pauper. So his heart,
which is where his
treasure is, makes his movements slow. What insanity
his lingering
must have seemed to the angels! I wonder if we, who
cling so desperately
to the world, and who are so slow to go where God
would have us to be
for our own safety, if thereby we shall lose
anything of this world's
wealth, seem very much wiser to eyes made
clear-sighted with the wisdom
of heaven. This poor hesitating lingerer, too much
at home in the city
of destruction to get out of it even to save his
life, has plenty of
brothers to-day. Every man who lets the world hold
him by the skirts
when Christ is calling him to salvation, and every
man who is reluctant
to obey any clear call to sacrifice and separation
from godless men,
may see his own face in this glass, and perhaps get
a glimpse of its
ugliness.
What a homely picture, full of weighty truth, the
story gives us, of
the angels each taking two of the reluctant four by
the hand, and
dragging them with some degree of kindly force from
destruction into
safety! So, in a great fire, domestic animals and
horses seem to
find a strange fascination in the flames, and have
to be carried out
of certain death by main force. They 'set him'--or
we might read,
'made him rest'--outside the city. It was but a
little distance, for
these 'cities' were tiny places, and the walls were
soon reached.
But it was far enough to change Lot's whole
feelings. He passes to
feeble despair and abject fear, as we shall see.
That forlorn group,
homeless, friendless, stripped of everything,
shivering outside the
gate in the cold morning air, may teach us how wise
and prudent the
man is who seeks the kingdom of God second, and the
other things
first.
2. There was a pause outside the city. A new voice
speaks now to
Lot. 'They' brought him forth; but 'He' said
'escape.' The same
'Lord' to whom Abraham had prayed, has now rejoined
the mysterious
pair whom He had sent to Sodom. And Lot's entreaty
is addressed to
Him whom he calls 'my Lord.' He uses singular
pronouns throughout,
although the narrator says that he 'said unto
_them_.' There
seems to be here the same idea as is embodied in the
word 'Elohim';
namely, that the divine powers are regarded as in
some sense
separable, and yet all inhering in a personal unity.
At all events,
we have here a distinct representation of an
intercourse between God
and man, in which thoughts are conveyed to the human
spirit direct
from the divine, and desires pass from the human to
the divine. The
manner of the intercourse we do not know, but the
possibility of the
fact can scarcely be denied by any believer in a
God; and, however
we may call this miraculous or abnormal, the essence
of the event
can be repeated in the experience of each of us. God
still speaks to
men, and men may still plead with God. Unless our
religion is
communion, it is nothing.
The divine voice reiterates the angels' urgent
command in still more
stringent words: 'Escape for thy life.' There is to
be no more
angel-leading, but Lot's feet are to be made as
hinds' feet by the
thought of the flaming death that is pursuing. His
lingering looks
are sternly forbidden, since they would delay his
flight and divide
his heart. The direction of his flight is for the
first time pointed
out. The fertile plain, which had lured him down
from the safe
hills, is prohibited. Only on the mountain-side,
probably the
eastern mountains, where the morning red was
beginning to blush, is
there safety.
Lot's answer shows a complete change of feeling. He
is too fully
alarmed now. His fright is so desperate that it has
killed faith and
common sense. The natural conclusion from God's
mercy, which he
acknowledges, would have been trust and obedience.
'Therefore I can
escape,' not 'but I cannot escape,' would have been
the logic of
faith. The latter is the irrationality of fear. When
a man who has
been cleaving to this fleeting life of earthly good
wakes up to
believe his danger, he is ever apt to plunge into an
abyss of
terror, in which God's commands seem impossible, and
His will to
save becomes dim. The world first lies to us by 'You
are quite safe
where you are. Don't be in a hurry to go.' Then it
lies, 'You never
can get away now.' Reverse Lot's whimpering fears,
and we get the
truth. Are not God's directions how to escape,
promises that we
shall escape? Will He begin to build, and not be
able to finish?
Will the judgments of His hand overrun their
commission, like a
bloodhound which, in its master's absence, may rend
his friend? 'We
have all of us one human heart,' and this swift leap
from
unreasoning carelessness to as unreasoning dread,
this failure to
draw the true conclusion from God's past mercy, and
this despairing
recoil from the path pointed for us, and craving for
easier ways,
belongs to us. 'A strange servant of God was this,'
say we. Yes, and
we are often quite as strange. How many people
awakened to see their
danger are so absorbed by the sight that they cannot
see the cross,
or think they can never reach it!
God answered the cry, whatever its fault, and that
may well make us
pause in our condemnation. He hears even a very
imperfect petition,
and can see the tiniest germ of faith buried under
thick clods of
doubt and fear. This stooping readiness to meet
Lot's weakness comes
in wonderful contrast with the terrible revelation
of judgment which
follows. What a conception of God, which had room
for this more than
human patience with weakness, and also for the
flashing, lurid
glories of destructive retribution! Zoar is spared,
not for the
unworthy reason which Lot suggested--because its
minuteness might
buy impunity, as some noxious insect too small to be
worth crushing--but
in accordance with the principle which was
illustrated in Abraham's
intercession, and even in Lot's safety; namely, that
the righteous are
shields for others, as Paul had the lives of all
that sailed with him
given to him.
God's 'cannot' answers Lot's 'cannot.' His power is
limited by His
own solemn purpose to save His faltering servant.
The latter had
feared that, before he could reach the mountain,
'the evil' would
overtake him. God shows him that his safety was a
condition
precedent to its outburst. Lot barred the way. God
could not 'let
slip the dogs of' judgment, but held them in the
leash until Lot was
in Zoar. Very awful is the command to make haste,
based on this
impossibility, as if God were weary of delay, and
more than ready to
smite. However we may find anthropomorphism in these
early
narratives, let us not forget that, when the world
has long been
groaning under some giant evil, and the bitter seed
is grown up into
a waving forest of poison, there is something in the
passionless
righteousness of God which brooks no longer delay,
but seeks to make
'a short work' on the earth.
3. So we are brought face to face with the grim
story of the
destruction. There is a world of tragic meaning in
the simple note
of time given. 'The sun was risen upon the earth
when Lot entered
into Zoar.' The low-lying cities of the plain would
lie in shadow
for some time before the sun topped the eastern
hills. What a dawn!
At that joyous hour, just when the sunshine struck
down on the
smiling plain, and lake and river gleamed like
silver, and all
things woke to new hopes and fresh life, then the
sky darkened, and
the earth sank, and horrible rain of fiery bitumen
fell from the
black pall, salt mud poured in streams, and over all
hung a column
of fat, oily smoke. It is not my province to discuss
the physical
cause of the destruction; but I may refer to the
suggestions of Sir
J. W. Dawson, in his _Egypt and Syria_, and in _The
Expositor_ for
May 1886, in which he shows that great beds of
bituminous limestone
extend below the Jordan valley and much of the Dead
Sea, and that the
escape of inflammable gag from these through the
opening of a fissure
along a great 'line of fault,' is capable of
producing all the effects
described. The 'brimstone' of the Authorised Version
is probably
rather some form of bituminous matter which would be
carried into the
air by such an escape of gas, and a thick saline mud
would accompany
the eruption, encrusting anything it reached.
Subsidence would follow
the ejection of quantities of such matter; and hence
the word 'overthrew,'
which seems inappropriate to a mere conflagration,
would be explained.
But, however this may be, we have to recognise a
supernatural
element in the starting of the train of natural
causes, as well as
in the timing of the catastrophe, and a divine
purpose of
retribution, which turns the catastrophe, however
effected, into a
judgment.
So regarded, the event has a double meaning. In the
first place, it
is a revelation of an element in the divine
character and of a
feature in the divine government. To the men of that
time, it might
be a warning. To Abraham, and through him to his
descendants, and
through them to us, it preaches a truth very
unwelcome to many in
this day: that there is in God that which constrains
Him to hate,
fight against, and punish, evil. The temper of this
generation turns
away from such thoughts, and, in the name of the
truth that 'God is
love,' would fain obliterate the truth that He does
and will punish.
But if the punitive element be suppressed, and that
in God which
makes it necessary ignored or weakened, the result
will be a God who
has not force enough to love, but only weakly to
indulge. If He does
not hate and punish, He does not pardon. For the
sake of the love of
God, we must hold firm by the belief in the
judgments of God. The
God who destroyed Sodom is not merely the God of an
earlier
antiquated creed. 'Is He the God of the Jews only?
Is He not also of
the Gentiles? Yea, of the Gentiles also.'
Again, this event is a prophecy. So our Lord has
employed it; and
much of the imagery in which the last judgment is
represented is
directly drawn from this narrative. So far from this
story showing
to us only the superstitions of a form of belief
which we have long
outgrown, its deepest meaning lies far ahead, and
closes the history
of man on the earth. We know from the lips which
cannot lie, that
the appalling suddenness of that destruction
foreshadows the
swiftness of the coming of that last 'day of the
Lord.' We know that
in literality some of the physical features shall be
reproduced; for
the fire which shall burn up the world and all its
works is no
figure, nor is it proclaimed only by such
non-authoritative voices
as those of Jesus and His apostles, but also by the
modern
possessors of infallible certitude, the men of
science. We know that
that day shall be a day of retribution. We know,
too, that the crime
of Sodom, foul and unnatural as it was, is not the
darkest, but that
its inhabitants (who have to face that judgment too)
will find their
doom more tolerable, and their sins lighter, than
some who have had
high places in the Church, than the Pharisees and
wise men who have
not taken Christ for their Saviour.
4. The fate of the loiterer. Her backward look must
have been more
than momentary, for the destruction of the cities
did not begin till
Lot was safe in Zoar. She must have lingered far
behind, and been
overtaken by the eruption of liquid saline mud,
which, as Sir J. W.
Dawson has shown, would attend or follow the
outburst of bituminous
matter, so that her fate was the natural consequence
of her heart
being still in Sodom. As to the 'pillar of salt'
which has excited
cavils on the one hand and foolish legends on the
other, probably we
are to think rather of a heap than of a pillar. The
word does not
occur in either meaning elsewhere, but its
derivation implies
something raised above the level of the ground; and
a heap, such as
would be formed by a human body encrusted with salt
mud, would suit
the requirements of the expression. Like a man who
falls in a
snowstorm, or, still more accurately, just as some
of the victims at
Pompeii stumbled in their flight, and were buried
under the ashes,
which still keep the outline of their figures, so
Lot's wife was
covered with the half-liquid slimy mud. Granted the
delay in her
flight, the rest is perfectly simple and natural.
She was buried in
a horrible tomb; and, in pity to her memory, no name
has been
written upon it. She remains to all generations, in
a far truer
sense than superstition dreamed of when it pointed
to an upright
salt rock as her prison and her monument, a warning
of the danger of
the backward look, which betrays the true home of
the heart, and may
leave us unsheltered in the open plain when the
fiery storm bursts.
'Remember Lot's wife.'
When the angels awoke Lot, the day was breaking. By
the time that
Abraham had risen 'early in the morning,' and
reached the place by
his tent from which he had yesterday looked on the
smiling plain,
all was over, and the heavy smoke cloud wrapped the
dead with its
pall-like folds. So swift and sudden is to be the
coming of the Son
of man,--as the lightning which rushes in one fierce
blinding flash
from one side of heaven to the other. Wherefore, God
calls to each
of us: 'Escape for thy life; look not behind thee.'
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