Read with Me
Genesis 19:30-39 (HCSB)
Lot departed from Zoar and lived in the mountains along with his two daughters, because he was afraid to live in Zoar. Instead, he and his two daughters lived in a cave. Then the firstborn said to the younger, “Our father is old, and there is no man in the land to sleep with us as is the custom of all the land. Come, let’s get our father to drink wine so that we can sleep with him and preserve our father’s line.” So they got their father to drink wine that night, and the firstborn came and slept with her father; he did not know when she lay down or when she got up.
The next day the firstborn said to the younger, “Look, I slept with my father last night. Let’s get him to drink wine again tonight so you can go sleep with him and we can preserve our father’s line.” That night they again got their father to drink wine, and the younger went and slept with him; he did not know when she lay down or when she got up.
So both of Lot’s daughters became pregnant by their father. The firstborn gave birth to a son and named him Moab. He is the father of the Moabites of today. The younger also gave birth to a son, and she named him Ben-ammi. He is the father of the Ammonites of today.
Listen with Me
After the complete destruction of four of the cities of the plain, Lot was unwilling to stay in Zoar, the fifth city. He quickly saw that the people of Zoar were as wicked and depraved as those of Sodom had been. He realized that God’s judgment on it was as merited as on the others, and feared that it could fall at any moment. So, he took his two daughters and fled to the mountains where he had been instructed to go at the beginning.
With their homes destroyed and their moving away from the people of Zoar, the daughters figured that their prospects for marriage in this remote place were zero. The eldest came up with a plan that would allow both her and her younger sister to at least have a child to carry on their line. They would get their father drunk and sleep with him while he was unconscious.
Some have tried to say that Lot’s daughters were being altruistic, somehow believing that the whole world had been destroyed, and that it was up to them to repopulate the world. And since their father was a supremely moral man, they simply had no choice but to make him drunk in order to accomplish their noble purpose. But that is not the case. They had lived for a while in Zoar after the destruction, and there had been numerous men, women and families there.
The fact is that Lots’ daughters were as depraved as the people of Sodom had been. In planning the sexual assault of their father, they were considering only their own sexual desires and their desire to have children, and in the process, they completely disregarded the moral consequences of their decisions.
The people groups that rose from these corrupt actions, the Moabites and the Ammonites, were idolaters who had no respect for God or His law, and would cause a lot of problem for God’s people in the future. As a side note, Moab is Hebrew for “from my father”, and Ben Ami means “son of my father”. Lot’s daughters, in giving their sons these names, proved to be a constant torment to him, reminding him every day of his daughters’ immorality and of his own, albeit unwilling, complicity in their sin.
Pray with Me
Father, it is very easy to get so caught up in our own desires, our own plans, that we only focus on how to carry them off and fail to see the problems that will arise on the other side. But those problems are real, especially if we make and execute our plans in opposition to, or even in defiance of, Your standards and Your commands. Lord, help me to always walk closely with You, so that I take up Your plans instead of devising my own, and so that You are glorified, not angered by all my actions. Amen.