-
†. Gen 19:15-16a . . As dawn broke, the angels urged Lot on, saying:
Up, take your wife and your two remaining daughters, lest you be
swept away because of the iniquity of the city. Still he delayed.
In verses 10, 12, and 16, the messengers are called men. In verses 1 and
15, they're called "angels". In verses 17 and 21, they're called "he". In verse
18, Lot called them 'Adonay. In verses 21 and 22, they speak in the first
persona as "I". When you put it all together, it's apparent that God visited
Sodom as a pair of male human beings. Just exactly how He is able to do
that is a bit of a mystery. Some say that the messengers were avatars.
The word for "delayed" is mahahh (maw-hah') which means: to question or
hesitate, i.e. (by implication) to be reluctant; viz: hang back.
I can best picture this with a scene from John Steinbeck's novel: The Grapes
Of Wrath. When the day came for the Joad clan to move out of their shack
from the impoverished Oklahoma Dust Bowl to California during the
economic depression of the 1930s, Ma Joad spent a few last minutes alone
inside going through a box of mementos.
She had lived in Oklahoma many years, since she was a young bride-- raised
her family there and enjoyed the company of her kin. As she held up an old
pair of earrings, looking at herself in a mirror, it pierced her heart to see
etched in her face the many years that she had lived as a hard-scrabble
sharecropper; and that it was all now coming to naught. Her clapboard home
was soon to be flattened by a bulldozer.
I can imagine that the Lots walked through the rooms in their house,
reminiscing all the things that took place in their home over the years. As
the girls grew up, maturing into young women, they made marks each year
on a doorjamb to record their height. They looked at the beds where each
girl slept for so many nights from their youth; and Mrs. Lot thought back to
the days when she gave homebirth to each one in turn, read bedtime
stories, and rocked them all to sleep accompanied by soft lullabies.
Leaving a home of many years rends the soul; most especially if kids grew
up there too. When I was about eleven, my parents sold the place where I
had lived since toddlerhood. I had a life there out in nature with boyhood
pals: fishing and hunting and exploring. It was so idyllic. Then we moved.
I was never the same after that. My heart was in that first home and never
left it. Subsequently, I became withdrawn, introverted, and disconnected;
never really succeeding in replacing my boyhood pals with new friends who
could give me a sense of belonging.
When ol' Harry Truman perished in the Mount Ste. Helens blast back in
1980, I totally understood why he chose to remain instead of fleeing to
safety. That mountain, and his lodge, had been an integral part of Harry's
life for just too many years. Mr. Truman felt that if that mountain went, then
life wouldn't be worth living any more. He decided to go with the mountain
rather than see it go and leave him behind to live without it.
†. Gen 19:16b . . So the men seized his hand, and the hands of his
wife and his two daughters-- in the Lord's mercy on him-- and
brought him out and left him outside the city.
The word for "mercy" in that verse is from chemlah (khem-law') which
means: commiseration; which Webster's defines as: feeling sympathy for
and/or feeling sorrow or compassion for. Unless one's feelings are in the
mix, their commiseration is a hollow sham.
Does anybody out there reading this feel the plight of Lot's family? Can you
feel any of their pain? Can you feel their sorrow? Do you feel any sympathy
for them at all? None? Well . . anyway; God did. Yes, He was going to burn
their home down and kill the daughters who stayed behind. But God took no
pleasure in it whatsoever.
"Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by? Look around and see. Is any
suffering like my suffering that was inflicted on me, that The Lord brought
on me in the day of his fierce anger?" (Lam 1:12)
Is the Lot family's fate nothing to you-- all you online who journey with me
today through the 19th chapter of Genesis? Just another Bible story? Well . .
those were real people you know.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
†. Gen 19:15-16a . . As dawn broke, the angels urged Lot on, saying:
Up, take your wife and your two remaining daughters, lest you be
swept away because of the iniquity of the city. Still he delayed.
In verses 10, 12, and 16, the messengers are called men. In verses 1 and
15, they're called "angels". In verses 17 and 21, they're called "he". In verse
18, Lot called them 'Adonay. In verses 21 and 22, they speak in the first
persona as "I". When you put it all together, it's apparent that God visited
Sodom as a pair of male human beings. Just exactly how He is able to do
that is a bit of a mystery. Some say that the messengers were avatars.
The word for "delayed" is mahahh (maw-hah') which means: to question or
hesitate, i.e. (by implication) to be reluctant; viz: hang back.
I can best picture this with a scene from John Steinbeck's novel: The Grapes
Of Wrath. When the day came for the Joad clan to move out of their shack
from the impoverished Oklahoma Dust Bowl to California during the
economic depression of the 1930s, Ma Joad spent a few last minutes alone
inside going through a box of mementos.
She had lived in Oklahoma many years, since she was a young bride-- raised
her family there and enjoyed the company of her kin. As she held up an old
pair of earrings, looking at herself in a mirror, it pierced her heart to see
etched in her face the many years that she had lived as a hard-scrabble
sharecropper; and that it was all now coming to naught. Her clapboard home
was soon to be flattened by a bulldozer.
I can imagine that the Lots walked through the rooms in their house,
reminiscing all the things that took place in their home over the years. As
the girls grew up, maturing into young women, they made marks each year
on a doorjamb to record their height. They looked at the beds where each
girl slept for so many nights from their youth; and Mrs. Lot thought back to
the days when she gave homebirth to each one in turn, read bedtime
stories, and rocked them all to sleep accompanied by soft lullabies.
Leaving a home of many years rends the soul; most especially if kids grew
up there too. When I was about eleven, my parents sold the place where I
had lived since toddlerhood. I had a life there out in nature with boyhood
pals: fishing and hunting and exploring. It was so idyllic. Then we moved.
I was never the same after that. My heart was in that first home and never
left it. Subsequently, I became withdrawn, introverted, and disconnected;
never really succeeding in replacing my boyhood pals with new friends who
could give me a sense of belonging.
When ol' Harry Truman perished in the Mount Ste. Helens blast back in
1980, I totally understood why he chose to remain instead of fleeing to
safety. That mountain, and his lodge, had been an integral part of Harry's
life for just too many years. Mr. Truman felt that if that mountain went, then
life wouldn't be worth living any more. He decided to go with the mountain
rather than see it go and leave him behind to live without it.
†. Gen 19:16b . . So the men seized his hand, and the hands of his
wife and his two daughters-- in the Lord's mercy on him-- and
brought him out and left him outside the city.
The word for "mercy" in that verse is from chemlah (khem-law') which
means: commiseration; which Webster's defines as: feeling sympathy for
and/or feeling sorrow or compassion for. Unless one's feelings are in the
mix, their commiseration is a hollow sham.
Does anybody out there reading this feel the plight of Lot's family? Can you
feel any of their pain? Can you feel their sorrow? Do you feel any sympathy
for them at all? None? Well . . anyway; God did. Yes, He was going to burn
their home down and kill the daughters who stayed behind. But God took no
pleasure in it whatsoever.
"Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by? Look around and see. Is any
suffering like my suffering that was inflicted on me, that The Lord brought
on me in the day of his fierce anger?" (Lam 1:12)
Is the Lot family's fate nothing to you-- all you online who journey with me
today through the 19th chapter of Genesis? Just another Bible story? Well . .
those were real people you know.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=