A Lot to talk about!

Sometimes Lot is characterized as one who somehow escaped Sodom by the skin of his teeth, while his family (except for two "wicked" daughters) perished. The proof text used is Genesis 13:12: "Abram dwelled in the land of Canaan, and Lot dwelled in the cities of the plain, and pitched his tent toward Sodom". Ignoring the fact that Abraham proposed this very division (and would have been happy to go either way), some have deduced that Lot "placed the door of his tent so that it looked toward wicked Sodom...because that's where his heart was". Not content to heap contumely upon Lot alone, they deride his wife, as well. "And his wife died because she was disobedient. Her heart was with the wickedness of Sodom". Even Lot's rescued daughters are almost universally deemed to be incestuous whores.

May I propose an alternate "interpretation"?

Righteous Lot showed mercy, compassion and good judgment toward others, including strangers, by which his "righteousness" was proven to the satisfaction of Heaven. His (other) daughters married men of Sodom (whom else could they marry?) and perhaps bore him grandchildren. Their husbands were not persuaded by Lot's "testimony" delivered late in the evening, however: that two strangers told him God would rain down fire from heaven and destroy entire cities by sunrise. (When had that ever happened?!)

Would you pack up the car and leave if your father-in-law told you two vagabonds told him that an unheard-of catastrophe was about to befall the city? Perhaps they wandered outside, looked up at the stars and said, "Let's talk about this in the morning. Are you sure you haven't had too much wine to drink tonight?"

When Lot left town, he left behind many relatives. No doubt his wife's heart ached for her "babies". When she saw that the city had NOT been destroyed, as promised, by sunrise, thinking, perhaps, that God had been once again merciful, she hurried back -- perhaps to persuade a few to join them in the wilderness. But she was caught in the holocaust, vaporized by the blast that left only her salt on a pillar as a testimony of the inferno that descended from On High.

Righteous Lot was left desolate, with only two daughters (of marriageable age) but no "righteous" men among the land's inhabitants to marry. The young women choose their own father to sire their offspring. (No doubt not naive about how such things worked, they growing up in Sodom, after all!) What better man could they have chosen? Angels from heaven had delivered him from death! A righteous man! The scriptures, remarkably, don't even condemn them for their incestuous selection.

We should have compassion for Lot and his kin. Lot's "sin" was living in "Las Vegas", as it were. Ironically, some find him wanting, while Heaven deemed him "worthy" to be saved.