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  • From: JimStinehart AT aol.com
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [b-hebrew] Abraham, Sarah, Lot and Lot's Wife: Part II of II
  • Date: Thu, 27 Dec 2007 12:43:39 EST


Stephen Shead:

Part II of II.

3. You wrote: “Lot's wife may have been unable to bear more children. Far
more importantly, your leap of logic is nowhere stated, nor even faintly
hinted
at, in the text. Where is there the slightest indication of Lot's wife's
attitude to producing a son? Her major moment in the narrative - the "pillar
of
salt" incident - has, in the text itself, nothing to do with bearing
children,
but rather with her attachment to the condemned city.”

Why does Lot’s wife die at Sodom, while Lot and Lot’s two youngest daughters
survive the fiery destruction of Sodom? In your view, is it a “coincidence”
that Lot’s wife never bore Lot a son? In your view, is it a “coincidence”
that each of Lot’s two youngest daughters insists on bearing a son/grandson
for
their father?

The reason why Lot’s wife deserved to die at Sodom is because she considered
her own health issues to be more important than what should have been her
all-important goal: bearing a son. Why do we constantly get Lot and Lot’s
wife
interspersed with the main couple, Abraham and Sarah? Precisely to contrast
Lot
’s wife unfavorably with beloved Matriarch Sarah. Sarah gives up 24 regular
years off of what otherwise would have been her life expectancy in order to
accomplish the supreme goal of bearing Abraham a son in her old age. That is
why she is buried with full honor in Hebron. By sharp contrast, Lot’s wife
is
turned into a “salt”/royal statue for failing to try to bear Lot a son after
bearing him only four daughters who became teenagers.

4. You wrote: “Why, if this is a "fine justification", do the girls [Lot’s
daughters] have to keep it hidden from their father and get him blind drunk
before sleeping with him?”

That is to show two things. First, that Lot had no untoward desires toward
his daughters. Second, that it was Lot’s daughters who themselves insisted
on
taking the physical risk that their health might be adversely impacted by
getting pregnant at such a young age.

It is easier to see that if you know Amarna. Akhenaten’s daughter #2 was
impregnated by him at age 12, and died at age 13 in childbirth. In 3,000
years
of Egyptian iconography, the most terrible grief depicted is when Akhenaten
and
Nefertiti mourn the death of their young teenage daughter in childbirth. So
this was a delicate issue for Akhenaten. He wanted everyone to think that
each of his 12-year-old daughters insisted on bravely trying to bear their
father
the craved-for male heir, rather than that Akhenaten had pressured them into
it. That is precisely what is depicted at the end of chapter 19 of Genesis.

5. You wrote: “As for your equally astounding claim that father-daughter
unions are not prohibited by the Mosaic Law, Lev 18:17 is perfectly clear.”

Here is what Leviticus 18: 17 says:

“Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of a woman and her daughter; thou shalt
not take her son's daughter, or her daughter's daughter, to uncover her
nakedness: they are near kinswomen; it is lewdness.”

That means that according to the later law of Moses, as long as one’s wife
was living, one could not sire a child by one’s wife’s daughter. The
sensible
theory of that rule was that as long as one’s wife was living and could bear
a
son, there was no need to sire a son/grandson by one’s wife’s daughter.

But Lot’s wife died at Sodom. Now Lot has no living wife. And Lot has no
male descendant. That was the perfect situation in the ancient world,
including
among the Hebrews, for the son-less widower to sire a son/grandson by his
deceased wife’s daughter.

The Hebrews did not condemn such a father-daughter union. (For what it’s
worth, father-daughter unions were common in Egypt, especially for the
pharaohs.)
There is no statement in Leviticus that a man shall not uncover the
nakedness of his daughter. No, the prohibition, rather, is that as long as
the man’s
wife is living, the man shall not uncover the nakedness of the man’s wife’s
daughter. Such a prohibition ended upon the death of the man’s wife.






The author of the Patriarchal narratives approves of the audacious, brave
actions of Lot’s two youngest daughters. Once again, that story must be
there,
with that particular point of view, in order for me to have any hope of
viewing
the Patriarchal narratives as coming straight out of the well-documented
secular history of the mid-14th century BCE. I must have daughters trying to
bear
a son/grandson for their son-less father, with the author approving of the
daughters’ behavior in that regard. And that is just what is found at the
end
of chapter 19 of Genesis.

The fact that this particular, peculiar theme regarding Lot’s daughters is
not reprised in the rest of the Bible is not surprising. The Patriarchal
narratives “march to the beat of a different drummer”, because they are so
very,
very old, dating all the way back to the mid-14th century BCE.

Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois




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  • [b-hebrew] Abraham, Sarah, Lot and Lot's Wife: Part II of II, JimStinehart, 12/27/2007

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