Sodom and Sarcasm

by Doctor Science

I don't seem to have talked about it here before, but last year (5779) I leveled up significantly in my Jewish practice by reading the Torah portion (Parsha) every week, and discussing it on Twitter under the #ParshaChat hashtag (usually on Wednesday evenings, though it was on Thursday last week).

Last week's parsha was Vayeira (Genesis 18:1 - 22:24) , which includes the destruction of Sodom. In thinking about Vayeira last year, I realized that there's an interpretation in which everyone's behavior makes a lot more sense and is more relatable than in the interpretations that have been standard for, um, well, thousands of years. Despite the incredible weight of tradition that's against me, I kind of think I'm right:

The men of Sodom are asking for ID, and Lot replies with a sarcastic pun. Nothing in this is actually about sex, it's about immigration, about how you treat outsiders.

Note: the following includes discussions of rape, abuse, and homophobia. Take care of yourself.

Sodom and Gomorrah (1920) by Henry Ossawa Tanner, the first African-American artist to achieve international fame. (image source)

As you doubtless recall, the story is that disguised angels come to the city of Sodom, and Abraham's nephew Lot insists they stay with him. That night, the men of Sodom surrounded Lot's house:

5 And they called unto Lot, and said unto him, Where are the men which came in to thee this night? bring them out unto us, that we may know them.

6 And Lot went out at the door unto them, and shut the door after him,

7 And said, I pray you, brethren, do not so wickedly.

8 Behold now, I have two daughters which have not known man; let me, I pray you, bring them out unto you, and do ye to them as is good in your eyes: only unto these men do nothing; for therefore came they under the shadow of my roof.

I'm quoting the King James Version here because it's the most familiar one in English--and also because the more up-to-date and sophisticated translations all conceal the fact that there's a pun in the story.

My reading crystalized during the Child Detention & Family Separation protests this past July. The local gathering was at the Methodist church, and as I listened to heartfelt statements by one Christian after another I decided to do something different. So I grabbed the Bible (handily present in the pew), looked up Genesis 19, and did an extemporaneous midrash of Gen 19:1-11. Follow along with your favorite Bible translation! Comments from the Hebrew-enabled will be especially appreciated.

---

[1] The two angels arrived at Sodom in the evening, where Lot was at the city gate, taking a shift as a border guard. The people of Sodom had made many laws and regulations to benefit the rich over the poor, and their attitude toward strangers was "soak them if they're rich, keep them out if they're poor" -- and Lot was supposed to be following these guidelines in determining whether to let people in or not.^[a]

But when Lot saw the angels, he recognized that they were special visitors, ^[b] not thieves but also obviously not wealthy. Just as his uncle Abraham had done, he rose to greet them and, bowing to the ground,

[2] said, "Please, my lords, turn aside to your servant's house to spend the night, and bathe your feet; then you may be on your way early" (before anyone spotted them and tried to shake them down for "Visitor Protection" money). But the angels said, "Oh, that's too much, you don't have to do that. We can spend the night in the square, curled up in our cloaks like the homeless, ^[c] it's no big deal."

[3] But Lot urged them strongly to reconsider, so the angels turned his way and followed him to his house. Though Lot had been wealthy when he parted from Abraham in Chap.13, having large flocks of livestock and many employees, he'd lost almost everything in Sodom through bad investments and rapacious loans, and was down to just his family members and not much extra. So though he ordered a feast from what he had, he wasn't able to serve the angels leavened bread, only unleavened, and there was no extra meat.

[4] The household had not yet gone to bed when a crowd of the men of the town showed up outside the door. It certainly *seemed* like it was everyone in town. As usual for these things, some large young men were toward the front, carrying torches, while older, serious-looking men of middling-high wealth got ready to knock on the door. Also as usual, the really powerful people were hanging back, giving nods of approval but not moving in where it might get messy.^[d]

[5] The men of Sodom pounded on Lot's door, and shouted, "Bring them out! We need to know! We have the right! To know who comes to town! Show us your faces! We need to know!" (and other slogans that worked better in Bronze Age Hebrew).

[6] Lot came out to the entranceway, shut the house door behind him,

[7] and said, "C'mon guys, we're all friends here, right?^[e] You don't want to do anything bad, not really.

[8] "You want me to bring out my visitors because you don't know them, you say yo u have to know who people are before they can stay in town. Look, I have two virgin daughters, you don't "know" them, either. Am I supposed to bring them out, so you can "know" them, too?^[f] Is that what you really want?!? Better that than drag my guests from under the shelter of my roof! Not every stranger is a thief or murderer, any more than every Sodomite is."

[9] But the men at the front of the crowd said, "You, stand back!" Turning to the crowd, they said, "Will you look at this guy! He came here as an alien, a long-term visitor who used to have money, and now he's trying to make the rules around here! He's saying he can bring in whoever he wants, flouting our laws and customs, doing no vetting. Probably they're planning to rob and murder us, or maybe they're full of diseases that'll spread through our city. ^[g]

"You think your friends will be in trouble if they come out, Lot? That's nothing compared to what we'll do to you. Come on, boys, get him!"

[10] But the angels were listening on the other side of Lot's door, so they opened it and quickly yanked him inside,

[11] tossing some flashbangs out as they shut the door. The light and noise stunned and blinded the crowd, and no-one even tried to get to Lot's door for a while.

---

So basically, I think the ambiguity of the verb ידע (yada), translated as "know" in the KJV, is important, not coincidental. The crowd wants to "know" the strangers--in the sense of knowing who they are, seeing some ID. Lot's "offer" of his daughters is a sarcastic, over-the-top pun based on the other meaning of "know" (what we now call "in the biblical sense"). It's sarcastic and over-the-top because no-one would do such a thing, it's obviously outrageous.

I'm going back and forth between the idea that Lot says it angrily, in a "I've had enough of this bullshit" way, or if he's trying to lighten the atmosphere by making a joke (and failing). When I first gave this midrash I thought Lot was sarcastically furious, but the reaction of Lot's sons-in-law in v.14 suggests to me that Lot makes a lot of dumbass and sarcastic jokes, enough that it's hard to tell when you should take him seriously. We all know guys like that.

Lot is not a heroic figure, he's a foil or contrast for Abraham. So his joking words come back to (ahem) bite him in the ass in verses 31-38, when his daughters get him drunk to have sex with him, so they can have children.

In other words, they rape him. I'm quite certain that the original tellers of this story, the editors/redactors who put it in the Torah, and most of the very serious and thoughtful men who've taught and written about it for the last several thousand years didn't think that women drugging a man to force him to have intercourse without his consent "counts" as rape--but you know what? They were all wrong.

Once we start to take Lot's rape seriously--not just as a joke about the Moabites and the Ammonites--then we can see the story has the shape of a tragedy, very much in the Greek style. Lot *is* righteous, he takes in the angels and defends them, but he's also both feckless and sarcastic. Making a joke suggesting he'd be more willing to give his daughters up to rape (and probably death) is at best in very poor taste--but just imagine how it would seem to them, how it could strangle any true affection they might have for their father. Then there's the traumatic flight from the city and the death of Lot's wife/the daughters' mother, and Lot's spiraling down in fear and PTSD, until they end up living in a cave so isolated they don't think there's anyone else left in the world. So the daughters rape Lot: for revenge, and to at last exert *some* control over their lives, to be active doers, not just passive subjects of their father's actions.

What we learn from this:

A) The need for a Sarcasm Font is a *lot* older than the Internet. In general, traditional interpreters of the Bible (all editions) have a *terrible* time with readings that depend on inflection and, especially, humor. See my discussion of problems with I Corinthians 11, for instance.

B) People are much more willing to make Great Evil about sexual deviancy that those people do than they are to make it about behavior that comes too close to home. It looks to me as though, once interpreters (all male, of course) lost the sense that Lot was punning, and assumed that the two occurrences of "know" must have the same meaning, the idea that the Sin of Sodom was homosexuality grabbed onto their brains and just wouldn't let go.

But one problem with the It's About the Gays interpretation is that it forces you to gloss over Lot's offering his daughters up for rape and death. If Lot is serious about this offer and yet is saved from destruction, we can only conclude that gay sex is *so bad* that destroying women is OK by comparison. There's no better example of how homophobia and misogyny work hand in glove to support the patriarchy.

C) If you say (as many modern interpreters do) that the Sin of Sodom was rape and sexual violence, not homosexuality per se, then you're still stuck in the patriarchal tar pit, because you haven't dealt with Lot's offer to toss his daughters to the crowd. How can that be *better* than what the Sodomites are threatening?

D) The only way IMHO to make Lot worth saving is for his "offer" of his daughters to be unserious, a joke. And yet it's still pretty bad! This is why we so-called humorless feminists keep saying "don't make jokes about rape"--because the chances are you can't make them actually *funny* to people who might be raped, it just comes across as a threat.

E) When interpreters say the Sin of Sodom is "lack of hospitality", that sounds more like bad manners than an evil needing the fire-and-brimstone treatment. Better translations would be xenophobia, bigotry, cruelty. Conditions at the US southern border are a good illustration, and are why I first did this midrash at a protest meeting.

---

[a] I'm following traditional rabbinic thinking about the Sins of Sodom. The tokens are my own invention, inspired by the "poverty money" the rabbis imagine; this was long before paper. ^{[return to text]}

[b] how? there's no real indication in the text or in traditional interpretation. ^{[return to text]}

[c] sleeping in our car in the Walmart parking lot ... ^{[return to text]}

[d]


© Samuel Corum/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images^{[return to text]}

[e] Spoiler: They were not all friends. ^{[return to text]}

[f] To be as clear as possible: the crowd wants to "know" who the strangers are, in the sense of "have knowledge about". Lot pretends that he thinks they mean "know" in the sense of "have sex with", and feigns shock that they'll want his daughters next. Lot is trying to make the situation into a comedy sketch, to defuse the crowd's anger with humor. ^{[return to text]}

[g] See comments by the Tree of Life Synagogue shooter. ^{[return to text]}

Comments

[wj]

Much of the Bible is open to misinterpretation because the authors "wrote" as they spoke -- that is, there is significant use of colloquialisms. Any preacher worth his salt will use language that is familiar to his audience. Even if it may, a few hundred years later, confuse those who weren't part of the culture of the day.

If you say "Jonah was in a whale", do you mean that literally? How about if you say "My coworker was in a pickle"** -- do you wonder if it was kosher dill? Language changes all the time. But colloquialisms change far faster, and are far more easily misread.

** It occurs to me that I have no idea whether that particular colloquialism is current. For anyone who has never encountered it, be assured that it was in the mid-20th century. And everyone then would know that it merely meant you were in a difficult situation or in trouble.

[Nigel]

Once we start to take Lot's rape seriously--not just as a joke about the Moabites and the Ammonites--then we can see the story has the shape of a tragedy, very much in the Greek style. Lot *is* righteous, he takes in the angels and defends them, but he's also both feckless and sarcastic...

That is an interesting, and quite persuasive interpretation.

I do wonder, though, if we might read too much into extremely spare accounts - the entire story is a handful of sentences.

One could also question the cultural assumptions - after all Abraham himself was married to a half sister, and was quite prepared to pass her off as his sister for fear of Abimelech...and what are we then to make of this ?
And unto Sarah he said: 'Behold, I have given thy brother a thousand pieces of silver; behold, it is for thee a covering of the eyes to all that are with thee; and before all men thou art righted.'..

[Snarki, child of Loki]

If you say "Jonah was in a whale", do you mean that literally?

There was a big bettor at the local casino that owed Jonah a lot of shekels? It would be irresponsible not to speculate.

[John D. Thullen]

"6] Lot came out to the entranceway, shut the house door behind him,"

Since we're midrashing Biblical text with contemporary sarcasm, may I suggest this instead of that literal translation of the original from the King James:

And Lot beheld the mob and said: "Well, shut the front door and get a load of these Groypers! You are the very examples of victimized manhood whom I will block from reading my daughters' profiles on Tinder!"

[John D. Thullen]

"6] Lot came out to the entranceway, shut the house door behind him,"

Since we're midrashing Biblical text with contemporary sarcasm, may I suggest this instead of that literal translation of the original from the King James:

And Lot beheld the mob and said: "Well, shut the front door and get a load of these Groypers! You are the very examples of victimized manhood whom I will block from reading my daughters' profiles on Tinder!"

[John D. Thullen]

Make it a blues song and sing it twice.

[John D. Thullen]

Make it a blues song and sing it twice.

[John D. Thullen]

I do not know why.

[John D. Thullen]

"If you say "Jonah was in a whale", do you mean that literally?"

Was it a blue whale, which would have been a mansion with a six-car garage and a option to buy for the swallowed Jonah?

He wasn't krill, so he would have been filtered/spit out, but ... details, details.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2bP5FONNxo

Of course, one of the more recent and quintessentially bankrupt American strains of crypto- and biblically-literal corporate tax- dodgy Christianity .... which has sterilized and eunuched the mysterious, metaphorical poetry of biblical religious texts, and thus their deeper more profound meanings ... if one is a believer .. the prosperity gimme yer money so I may prosper gospel, as now personified by trump's new demon- (read "the Other") fighting religious operative in the White House may any day vomit up a Trump AIRBnB offering which rents out the blue whale as a party house, fully furnished with ample parking in the rear for all of the Jonah's among the conservative movement, or perhaps three-day cruises inside the Trump Hotel Blue Whale, but in a peculiar reversal, the suckers will do the swallowing hook, line, and sinker.

[Girl from the North Country]

I do wonder, though, if we might read too much into extremely spare accounts - the entire story is a handful of sentences.

But centuries (or millenia) of jewish learning and argumentation have been devoted to such interpretation. Some of us may wonder whether such energetic attention could be better spent on other matters, but some of us are anti-religious bigots. And at least, in this case, the interesting reinterpretation comes up with something of particularly topical relevance, i.e. xenophobia etc, to which attention can righteously be paid. I have nothing against learning or argumentation for its own sake, but I do pay attention to who thinks which subjects are worthy of time and energy, and under what circumstances.

[russell]

Thanks for this Dr Science!

I occasionally read a blog by a fairly orthodox (small-o orthodox vs Eastern Orthodox) Christian scholar in Jerusalem. A lot of his work has to do with interpreting New Testament stuff, and in particular the recorded sayings of Jesus, in the context of contemporaneous Aramaic usage.

Many things end up... different. And often not so bizarre.

[Doctor Science]

Nigel:

I do wonder, though, if we might read too much into extremely spare accounts - the entire story is a handful of sentences.

It is one of the premises of Judaism that there's no such thing as reading too much into the Torah. It's like any other fandom, in that you get an inverted pyramid of thought, meaning, and story resting on each element of canon.

Our (Jews in general) goal isn't to recover some single, original, definitive, intented meaning for each verse, as though the Torah is a straightforward users manual. Each verse is assumed to have multiple possible meanings and interpretations, and creating midrash--fanfic--to flesh out the stories, to connect them to other parts of the Bible, to history, and to current experience is one of the standard Jewish ways of approaching the text.

I absolutely get your point about what is called the "sister-wife" story. That's a very complex issue, too, and more than worthy of another long post.

[Doctor Science]

russell:

What is the blog? It sounds very interesting, I'd like to read it, too.

[wj]

Hey, russell, how about a link for that. It sounds interesting.

[russell]

The Jerusalem Perspective.

Enjoy!

[Girl from the North Country]

Some of us may wonder whether such energetic attention could be better spent on other matters, but some of us are anti-religious bigots.

By the way, if anybody was in any doubt (not likely, if they're used to my comments) this is not aimed at anybody except myself, a famously anti-religious bigot.

[Nigel]

Thanks, Dr.S.

It is one of the premises of Judaism that there's no such thing as reading too much into the Torah. It's like any other fandom, in that you get an inverted pyramid of thought, meaning, and story resting on each element of canon...

Not entirely unlike the study of history or literature, then ?
(Which I suppose in some way it is in any case.)
Each succeeding generation rereads and reinterprets in its own way.

I can see the appeal.

[CJColucci]

I wasn't familiar with Henry O. Tanner before. He was pretty good.

[Lurker]

Nigel,

Toynbee actually did make this comparison seriously. He noted that the Western literary scholarship discusses secular fiction and poetry with same seriousness as Rabbinical, and later, Christian Theology discussed the Scripture. He even thinks this is one of the great innovations of Western culture, compared to the Ancients.

[Lurker]

Personally, I have always felt that the story of Lot's daughters is a later addition. After all, Lot is the patriarch of Ammonites and Moabites, and Abraham's nephew. The story of her daughter's raping him seems to me as designed to nullify the kinship, and to cast the neighbouring peoples in bad light.

[Donald]

This sort of fits here since it is about something biblical — the uses of hellfire rhetoric. Consider it a tribute to John Thullen.

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2019/11/in-defense-of-hellfire

Though in defense of my co- religionists, there has always been a universalist strand in Christianity. We can believe in hell— some people clearly deserve to suffer ( if not on a lake of fire level) so long as it isn’t eternal. But the article is about how the rhetoric of hell and judgment is actually used in the Bible — usually against rich oppressors. Modern day conservative evangelicals never seem to use it that way.

[russell]

there has always been a universalist strand in Christianity.

Goes back, at a minimum, to Origen.

[Girl from the North Country]

That's an excellent piece, Donald. At first mainly very entertaining, but it works up to something genuinely fierce and impassioned. It's a worthy tribute to JDT.

[Nigel]

LOL
Thomas Aquinas would definitely have been one of those guys in high school who claimed to like the Saw series “for the plot.”..

[Lurker]

The gift of Abimelek is a curious one. I can't read Hebrew but the Greek Septuagint, the ancient translation, says Ιδοὺ δέδωκα χίλια δίδραχμα τῷ ἀδελφῷ σου· ταῦτα ἔσται σοι εἰς τιμὴν τοῦ προσώπου σου καὶ πάσαις ταῖς μετὰ σοῦ· καὶ πάντα ἀλήθευσον. For me, the key part translates as "this is for the fear of your face and for all [that is] with you".

It reads a lot like a damages for rape. We know, naturally, that Abimelech did not lay Sarah. But no one around him, nor Abraham knew. The one thousand silver pieces were to restore her honour, or to compensate for the loss. And this is extraordinary. In the usual run of Hebrew Bible, such things are always punished with blood. In fact, the story needs to be really old, because it runs to the contrary of this central theme.

There are other exceptions, though: Rahab, the whore, Ruth, who goes willingly to bed with a man to survive and, finally, Mary in the New Testament. Matthew lets the Jesus's lineage run through all of them.

But that is an aside. In general, the vein of Abraham's and Lot's interactions with town-folk seem to be negative. It is as if the moral of the stories were: "Don't trust the town-folk. They are without common decency."