the daughters of Lot

Two of the many nameless biblical women. They first come up when their father, Lot offers them up as a sacrifice to the mob gathering outside his house that wants to know (in the special biblical sense of to know) the two angels that are his guests. Aparently it would be better in Lots mind to let his virgin (he makes a special point of mentioning that) be raped by the mob, than violate the rules of hospitality by kicking out his guests.

Later after Lot and his family have fled before the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, and it is just Lot and his daughter's alone in a cave, Lot's daughter's get him drunk and sleep w/ him in order to get pregnant since they have no men left. Bet they don't do that story in Sunday School any time soon.

Genesis 19:8 is often pointed out as a supposed example of the Bible condoning the rape of women. As SophiesCat points out, Lot appears to offer his two virgin daughters to the mob, rather than allow them to rape the men who are his guests.

However, is this really what was happenning here? It is clear that Lot did not want the mob to gets its collective hands on the men. But, if the earlier verses of Genesis 19 are to be believed, Lot was supposed to have been a good man. What good man would offer his daughters to a mob to be raped?

The simple answer is, a good man would do no such thing. And neither did Lot. An examination of the context of this paragraph clearly shows this. The next verse goes on to state that Lot was not native to the town of Sodom; he had moved there at some past point for reasons which are never explained but are not relevant to the matter in question. In any case, it is evident from what the villagers say that he was not very well-liked among them. Plus, Lot knew of his guests' true origins, which the villagers did not, and he likely feared the consequences of handing the angels over to the mob. In short, we have a man in a desperate situation.

What, then, to do? Lot did have one thing on his side: evidently, the people in the mob weren't very bright, given that Lot's eventual escape was through the back door, which the mob had apparently not surrounded. Also, the fact that he spoke of his daughters indicates that he did not believe the mob would ordinarily pass up the offer. However, his daughters were inside the house. If the mob were to take Lot up on the offer, he would have to go fetch them. At which point, the whole family -including the daughters- could have escaped unharmed. While not the most foolproof way of getting out, it would have bought them a valuable head start, and was all they had to go on.

In short, what was described in this chapter was nothing more than a stall tactic. Lot never intended to actually give his daughters to the mob; he just needed a reason to get back into the house, so that he could gather them up and escape. Unfortunately, the tactic failed him (evidently the mob was not interested in women that day), but that does not change its original intent.

According to the bible, Lot was considered by God to be a righteous man and his story tells a lot of what righteous means in the context of Christianity. When a bunch of men came to break down his doors to rape some of his guests, he wanted to send his daughters out to be raped by the men. Apparently, he thought that this would calm them. In an ending foreseen by anyone with any sense at all of human psychology, it didn't calm them at all.

In another context--relatively modern sanity--this sort of direct and obvious child sacrifice is rightly seen as horrible and antirighteous behavior. However, in the context of the entire rest of the bible, child sacrifice is explicitly and obviously condoned by God.

No Christian who has thought much about it says, after all, that, since God is the ultimate of good beings, God wouldn't stoop to child sacrifice ! (How could you think such a thing of God ?!) They all admit that the most righteous being in the universe actually did throw his own child out to those who would sacrifice him (Jesus, God's son, was tortured for hours on end and died as a result they say). Ask any Christian (go on, I'll wait). God's own child sacrifice is the central and most obvious message of Christianity !