Sadly, Lot’s wife did not reach the safety of the mountains because she “looked back.” And she immediately was turned into a pillar of salt. Beneath my lowered lids I could see my two sisters turned dutifully away, facing the back of the synagogue, as all the congregation was turned away, many of the men covering their heads with their prayer shawls, as the priests themselves were doing. The angels told them not to look back or stop (Genesis 19:17). And he overthrew those cities, and all the valley, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew on the ground. While fleeing Sodom with her family, she had disobediently looked back and was turned into a pillar of salt. My teacher’s response therefore seemed to me irreproachable so far as its theology went. But Lot’s wife disobeyed. One of the midrashim tried to explain why it was salt, of all things, that she became. It costs them their life. It can only be the judgment of God. He told her that if she did that too much, her eyes would not be on the road ahead and eventually she would crash. The Book of Genesis describes how she became a pillar of salt after she looked back at Sodom. 26 But Lot's wife looked back, and she became a … looked. It was a tale of righteousness that could not but awe. For that, she was turned into a pillar of salt; and even today you can see a pillar of salt named ‘Lot’s Wife’ near the Dead Sea at Mount Sodom in Israel - though whether this is indeed Lot’s wife is open to question. Specifically, I didn’t believe that Lot’s wife had thought that she could get away with it. Surely, surely, with the Lord’s counsel “look not behind thee” ringing clearly in her ears, Lot’s wife, the record says, “looked back,” and she was turned into a pillar of salt. “This is only one midrash,” my father finally said. When God poured sulphur and fire on the cities, Lot’s wife did not follow the commandment not to look back as it says in Breisheet 19:26 “But his wife looked back … Why looking back was a big deal is also a completely different question. But why Lot's wife was punished for looking back is explained in scripture. But now one of you has questioned, and the moment is gone.”. But who would want to be a righteous parent’s child? The angels told them not to look back or stop. She did not believe the words of the Lord. I suspect he even felt a little sorry for any great man of ideas who had cut himself off, so consistently, from what my father saw as the fullness of human life. Learn more about our. When the two messengers, who of course were angels, came to Lot’s house to warn him of the imminent destruction, he ordered his wife to serve them a meal, and this time to salt the food properly. She took her eyes off the path of the Lord. Islamic accounts also talk about the wife of Prophet Lut when mentioning 'People of Lut'. The first requirement of any system of philosophy is to be free from conceptual contradiction and confusion; and the philosopher asks for something similar in the life he would choose. Is This What Biden’s Voters Actually Want? By conducting herself in this way, she gave unmistakable evidence that her heart did not believe what the angel had said to her—God would not really destroy all of their possessions. When we decide to follow him, his resurrection life enters into our bodies, so that we are ‘in Christ’ and we become a new creation. But Lot’s wife disobeyed. Of course there were other fathers in Genesis.1 There was, for example, Isaac, the child of the akedah now become a parent himself. I’ve always found the dramatic implications of the scene contained in this sentence to be among the richest of any in the Bible. She is also referred to in the deuterocanonical books at Wisdom 10:7 and the New Testament at Luke 17:32. (again the kids can answer that – She looked back) But why did God care if she glanced over her shoulder at Sodom? The life of the mind in Western philosophy has nothing at all like this dense emotional context surrounding it. My father went to his bookshelf and took down one of his huge tomes, leafed through it for a while, returned it to the shelf, took down another book, and read. If we felt we had to go to college, said our teachers, then we should at least be aware that there were certain subjects that were much safer than others. A child’s knowledge of nostalgia is one of the mysteries of childhood. Why may Lot’s wife have looked back, and what did her disobedient act cost her? Latest News from ... Why did Lot's wife look back? Lot’s Wife Looks Back. After they had gone some distance from Sodʹom, she stopped and looked back. Lot's Wife Bible Study . But she did. Sadly, Lot’s wife did not reach the safety of the mountains because she “looked back.” And she immediately was turned into a pillar of salt. 1 And it's only right to remember that even Abraham might, on occasion, try to get God to change His word, as he did when he was informed that Sodom was imminently to be destroyed. I wouldn’t have thought so, and I was a mere child, living in pallid, nonbiblical days. Was she curious about what was happening? But Lot’s wife did, and she became a pillar of salt. "the Lord rained down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah But Lot's wife looked back and she became a pillar of salt." Isaac married Rebecca, my namesake, who became the mother of the twin boys, Esau and Jacob, the fraternal pair who (as I saw and still see them) are the Genesis version of the mind-body problem: Esau, the lusty embodiment of throbbing desire and reckless appetite, living always in the vivid here-and-now, grabbing life with his two great hairy arms; and Jacob, for all his guile, a pure soul, emanating all the otherworldly aspirations of the born saint. Ariri is the technical term for this punishment, and there is a dispute in the Talmud as to whether ariri is implicit or not in the wider punishment of koret, which literally means being cut off, and is interpreted as an early death. Where Did Lot's Wife Come From . The summer we had spent at the seashore I had seen for myself how the crowd had gathered around the boy who had been pulled unconscious from the ocean, and how the voice and face of this crowd had quickened with a strange excitement, as if it were almost glad for the event. 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