“But Lot’s wife looked back, and she became a pillar of salt.”
Genesis 19:26
I remember discovering that this is the whole “story” of Lot’s wife and being amazed that it’s only one verse. But there is so much packed into it.
Lot and his family were told not to look back: “Flee for your lives! Don’t look back, and don’t stop anywhere in the plain! Flee to the mountains or you will be swept away!” (v.17).
That “look back” apparently demonstrated the depth of longing in her heart for her life in Sodom and, whether because she dragged her feet or was punished in that moment, it led to her death. She was consumed by the burning sulfur rained down on Sodom and Gomorrah (v24) and she became a pillar of salt, a monument to disobedience.
We get further insight and confirmation as Jesus tells us of his eventual return in Luke 17:26-30:
“It was the same in the days of Lot. People were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building. But the day Lot left Sodom, fire and sulfur rained down from heaven and destroyed them all.
“It will be just like this on the day the Son of Man is revealed. On that day no one who is on the housetop, with possessions inside, should go down to get them. Likewise, no one in the field should go back for anything.
Remember Lot’s wife! Whoever tries to keep their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life will preserve it.”
This gives us some insight into why Lot’s wife looked back: she was trying to keep her life. She didn’t want to let go of it. But she couldn’t have it both ways.
It’s the same, Jesus says, with following him. Either you let go of your old life and follow, or you hold on to it and are destroyed.
Remember Lot’s wife!
It’s a horrid story which seems to have become a motif. Later in Judges 19, a parallel story is told in even gorier detail, only the names were changed to protect the innocent 🙂
A dude traveling with his concubine stop in Gibeah for the night, and after some difficulty, he finally finds lodging with a hard-working bloke coming in from the fields. Unfortunately, the town’s men want to rape the intrepid traveler, so, to calm the crowd, it’s decided to turn his concubine out of the house for whatever use and abuse the males from Gibeah might require to suit their needs. (A great lesson on chivalry here). By morning the concubine is lying on the doorstep and when asked to get up, her unresponsiveness suggests that she is dead, a conclusion which proves true. Instead of giving her a decent burial, the man to whom she was attached cuts her into pieces to be sent to the various other tribes along with the details of her demise. For some reason God can’t immediately see the virtue of the man’s cause (come to think of it, neither can I) and allows 40,030 of his allies to lose their lives before a decisive battle in which 25,100 Benjamites were slain, marks the end of this particular little skirmish.
The way the Lot story reads really leads one to think that there was a rock formation vaguely in the shape of a woman and a story was crafted around the formation. The second story seems likely to be based on the first.