Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Banyai Michael" <banyai AT t-online.de>]

Robert Vining Wrote:
> Genesis 19:24-26 (JPS)- "The Lord rained upon Sodom and Gomorrah
> sulfurous fire from the Lord out of heaven. He annihilated those cities
> and the entire Plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities and the
> vegetation of the ground. Lot's wife looked back, and she thereupon
> turned into a pillar of salt".
>
> Query?  Could the last sentence above be the cryptic, vestigal  remains
> of an ancient story? Common interpretations include the ideas, (1) Lot's
> wife shouldn't have looked back; (2) God did the pillarizing; (3) the
> pillarizing was God's punishment; and (4) God's action was fatal.  None
> of these ideas seem to be necessarily supported by the text.

You should notice the parallels between the Sodom and Gomorah story and
the story of the crime of the Benjaminites. The former story should
probably give the conduit lines for the late historical case. So it
probably was created during the period of the Judges and may be understood
by looking to which (real) crimes the story of the Benjaminites alluded.
They seemingly abandoned the Israelite amfictiony to enter terms with the
Philistines and in first line with the Amalekites.(((((We have the Samson
story relating of Philistine-Benjaminite intermarriage. Deut. 33, dating
to the time of Gideon - from Deut. 33:5 and 33:21 and so on- lacks
originally Benjamin, because Benjamin in Deut.33:12 is later intervention,
being, due to the older text, associated with Schechem in the following
33:13. Benjamin takes also the wrong place, which once more proves it is a
later insert. This explains Deut. 33:7: "and bring him <Judah> to his people,
strengthen his hands for him and be a help against his adversaries.)))))

The salt pillar is a word game between "melah" salt and "Meluhha"/Amalek.
That should mean, those looking back became Amalekites. We should assume
the same for Benjamin, in the later story.

I don´t understand the purpose of such a pseudo-literary approach to the
bible. There are plenty serious poets working with biblical material, but
they don´t try to publish in BR. Many tears, little substance...

Best regards,

Bányai Michael