Genesis 19:1–11

The Bible and Homo­sex­u­al­ity — Sodom and Gomor­rah

It is claimed that : “Nowhere in scrip­ture is homo­sex­u­al­ity listed as the sin which con­demned Sodom”

Gen­e­sis 19 1:11

1Now the two angels came to Sodom in the evening as Lot was sit­ting in the gate of Sodom When Lot saw them, he rose to meet them and bowed down with his face to the ground.
2And he said, “Now behold, my lords, please turn aside into your servant’s house, and spend the night, and wash your feet; then you may rise early and go on your way.” They said how­ever, “No, but we shall spend the night in the square.“
3Yet he urged them strongly, so they turned aside to him and entered his house; and he pre­pared a feast for them, and baked unleav­ened bread, and they ate.
4Before they lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, sur­rounded the house, both young and old, all the peo­ple from every quar­ter;
5and they called to Lot and said to him, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us that we may have rela­tions with them.“
6But Lot went out to them at the door­way, and shut the door behind him,
7and said, “Please, my broth­ers, do not act wickedly.
8“Now behold, I have two daugh­ters who have not had rela­tions with man; please let me bring them out to you, and do to them what­ever you like; only do noth­ing to these men, inas­much as they have come under the shel­ter of my roof.“
9But they said, “Stand aside.” Fur­ther­more, they said, “This one came in as an alien, and already he is act­ing like a judge; now we will treat you worse than them.” So they pressed hard against Lot and came near to break the door.
10But the men reached out their hands and brought Lot into the house with them, and shut the door.
11They struck the men who were at the door­way of the house with blind­ness, both small and great, so that they wea­ried them­selves try­ing to find the doorway.

This “expo­si­tion” will prob­a­bly con­tain what many would con­sider to be super­flu­ous bits of infor­ma­tion. I don’t do this as an attempt to show off how much I know–I don’t really know all that much. I do it, rather, as a means of show­ing that there are a num­ber of ways to look at a text and arrive at sim­i­lar con­clu­sions, even if the meth­ods of the argu­ment dif­fer. Very sim­ply, I find this infor­ma­tion fas­ci­nat­ing and that’s why I’m shar­ing it. Now with that said, I’ll also pro­vide an out­line at the begin­ning as a means of quickly sum­ma­riz­ing the form this post will even­tu­ally take. You will have to excuse this out­line, I’m not all that great at orga­niz­ing them. I’m sure you’ll still find it use­ful, though. Oh, and one other thing, you may have also noticed that the side­bar is miss­ing when you click this post. That’s not a mis­take. I sac­ri­ficed the side­bar so as to keep this from being a post you scroll more than read.

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Out­line:

A. Intro­duc­tion
B. The men of Sodom were openly wicked and sin­ful (Gen­e­sis 13: 3–4)

1. Lot’s sep­a­ra­tion from Abra­ham is an illus­tra­tion of Sodom’s sep­a­ra­tion from God

C. What were the sins of Sodom? (Gen­e­sis 19: 4–9)

1. Objec­tion: the sin of Sodom was rape, not homosexuality
2. Objec­tion: the men of Sodom only wanted to get to know Lot’s visitors
3. Objec­tion: the sin of Sodom was inhos­pi­tal­ity (Ezekiel 16:49)
4. Answer: there were many sins which con­demned Sodom

D.  Sodom was destroyed for many sins, among which was rape, homo­sex­u­al­ity, arro­gance, inhos­pi­tal­ity, etc.
E. Conclusion

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Intro­duc­tion: The set­ting, the characters…

In prepa­ra­tion for this post I was read­ing H.C. Leupold’s com­men­tary on Gen­e­sis 19, and find his ini­tial com­ments to be an accu­rate reflec­tion my feel­ings, and of the bib­li­cal account:

There is hardly a more hor­ri­ble account any­where on the pages of Holy Writ. Both the degen­er­acy here described as well as the cat­a­strophic over­throw of the cities involved are cal­cu­lated to star­tle by their lurid and grue­some details. Luther con­fessed that he could not read the chap­ter with­out a feel­ing of deep revul­sion (es geht mir durch mein ganzes Herz).

It is prob­a­bly best to begin our exam­i­na­tion of Gen­e­sis 19 by first refer­ring to Gen­e­sis 13:12–13, which speaks ini­tially of Lot’s deci­sion to set­tle in “the val­ley,” (also known as “the round”) and the men of Sodom, who are described as “wicked and very sin­ful in the sight of Yah­weh”. Leupold brings to our atten­tion the Ger­man neo-Lutheran the­olo­gian Ernst Wil­helm Heng­sten­berg, who pro­posed that Lot’s deci­sion to sep­a­rate from his uncle, Abra­ham, and set­tle “in the val­ley,” serves to us as a descrip­tion of the dete­ri­o­ra­tion of Lot’s char­ac­ter. Accord­ing to Leupold, “Appar­ently, at the out­set Lot turned to this region because the quiet tenor of a godly life in the com­pany of Abram was not suf­fi­ciently attrac­tive for him. He craved the diver­sions and the excite­ment offered by city life. So first he turns toward the Round; then he is found in “the cities of the Round”; then he even touches the city noto­ri­ous for its wicked­ness, ‘Sodom.’” How­ever dis­agree­able this view may be — and I sus­pect few here will agree that Lot’s degen­er­a­tion of char­ac­ter is being describe — I may find truth in some other aspect of what’s being said. Mainly, that just as we see a mov­ing apart between Lot and Abra­ham, we see the same in Sodom’s sep­a­ra­tion from God, albeit to a much greater extent and in a basi­cally final state. Leupold’s accep­tance of  Hengstenberg’s rea­son­ing seems pred­i­cated upon the belief that if Sodom was as wicked as described, no godly man would have will­fully gone there.

In the very least, it can­not be denied that Lot will­fully choose the val­ley solely because it pleased his eye (13 v.10). As Henry rightly points out, “It was, in his eye, beau­ti­ful for sit­u­a­tion, the joy of the whole earth; and there­fore he doubted not but that it would yield him a com­fort­able set­tle­ment, and that in such a fruit­ful soil he should cer­tainly thrive, and grow very rich: and this was all he looked at”. Or as John Calvin rein­forces, ““see­ing that he was led away solely by the pleas­ant­ness of the prospect, he pays the penalty of his fool­ish cupid­ity,” that is, he must now con­tent with the men of Sodom. Notice­ably absent was Lot’s con­sul­ta­tion of God. And, in con­trast to the view pro­posed above by Leupold and Heng­sten­berg, it’s sug­gested that Lot was a right­eous man who made a bad deci­sion — thus, his char­ac­ter hasn’t actu­ally dete­ri­o­rated — but that through this poor action, God uses Lot as a prophet of sorts, to warn Sodom of its impend­ing destruction:

Now Lot’s com­ing to dwell among the Sodomites may be con­sid­ered, (1.) As a great mercy to them, and a likely means of bring­ing them to repen­tance; for now they had a prophet among them and a preacher of right­eous­ness, and, if they had hear­kened to him, they might have been reformed, and the ruin pre­vented. Note, God sends preach­ers, before he sends destroy­ers; for he is not will­ing that any should per­ish. (2.) As a great afflic­tion to Lot, who was not only grieved to see their wicked­ness (2 Pet. ii. 7, 8), but was molested and per­se­cuted by them, because he would not do as they did. Note, It has often been the vex­a­tious lot of good men to live among wicked neigh­bours, to sojourn in Mesech (Ps. cxx. 5), and it can­not but be the more griev­ous, if, as Lot here, they have brought it upon them­selves by an unad­vised choice.

We now have the reverse rea­son­ing. A right­eous man may wish to avoid a city filled with the ungodly. But when it’s their destruc­tion and pos­si­ble sal­va­tion that is in the bal­ance, a right­eous man will be sent to “warn the masses”. It seems more likely to me that this is closer to real­ity than Lot hav­ing a degen­er­ate char­ac­ter (as, inci­den­tally enough, I was taught in Sunday-school).

A quick point on the words ‘wicked’ and ‘very sin­ful’. In this con­text, “wicked” is the Hebrew ra’. Adam Clarke sug­gests that the text is imply­ing a wicked­ness to the extent such that the dis­tinc­tion between good and evil has been blurred, or alto­gether for­got­ten. “Very sin­ful” is the Hebrew ma‘od chatta’, we would rec­og­nize this as a very pro­nounced, unhid­den sin­ful­ness. This appears to be sup­ported by Isa­iah 3:9, “The show of their coun­te­nance doth wit­ness against them; and they declare their sin as Sodom, they hide it not. Woe unto their soul! for they have done evil unto them­selves.” (empha­sis mine) When the text speaks of the sin­ful­ness of Sodom, it does so in a very obvi­ous way. Sodom sinned, and they weren’t afraid to show it.

My first point, then, is some what obvi­ous: #1 The men of Sodom were sin­ful and wicked in an pro­nounced, unhid­den way. Fur­ther, Lot’s sep­a­ra­tion from Abra­ham is an illus­tra­tion of Sodom’s sep­a­ra­tion from God.

Now we can ask the ques­tion, how were they wicked and sin­ful? There­fore, we must return to Gen­e­sis 19. In v.4 and 5 we read:

4Before they lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, sur­rounded the house, both young and old, all the peo­ple from every quar­ter; 5and they called to Lot and said to him, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us that we may have rela­tions with them.”

A cur­sory read­ing of this text would sug­gest that the sin men­tioned above is one of homo­sex­ual rape. How­ever, this ren­di­tion has been dis­puted in three ways (cf. W. Roth, “What of Sodom and Gomor­rah? Homo­sex­ual Acts in the Old Tes­ta­ment,” and John Boswell, “Chris­tian­ity, Social Tol­er­ance and Homo­sex­u­al­ity “). The first objec­tion would acknowl­edge the men of Sodom’s desire to rape Lot’s vis­i­tors, but it’s this desire to rape, not the desire for homo­sex­ual rape, that is the sin described here. Sec­ondly, it’s been sug­gested that the peo­ple of Sodom only wanted to get to “know” Lot’s vis­i­tors in the same way you might cor­dially greet another per­son. Thirdly, it’s been sug­gested that the sin of Sodom was one of inhos­pi­tal­ity. The rea­son­ing behind this view is that word we trans­late a “rela­tions” (or, as with the NIV, “sex”) is the Hebrew yada, which, of the 943 times it’s used in Scrip­ture, is only used 10 times in a sex­ual con­text (one of those times in a fol­low­ing verse). Both of these dis­putes are rel­a­tively easy to dispatch.

Objec­tion: the sin of Sodom was rape, not homosexuality

This is actu­ally partly true, rape is one of the sins of Sodom. How­ever, the text would seem to make it clear — espe­cially because of v.9 — that one of the sins of Sodom was, indeed, homo­sex­ual rape. Focus­ing on v.9, “But they said, “Stand aside.” Fur­ther­more, they said, “This one came in as an alien, and already he is act­ing like a judge; now we will treat you worse than them.” So they pressed hard against Lot and came near to break the door.” In refus­ing Lot’s daugh­ters they’ve shown not only their inter­est in sex — and rape — but exclu­sively homo­sex­ual sex / rape. Addi­tion­ally, Jude 7, 3 Mac­cabees 2:5 and Jubilees 16:6 all speak of the sex­ual per­ver­sion of Sodom. This is rein­forced by the sec­ond cen­tury B.C. Tes­ta­ment of the Twelve Patri­archs. As Pro­fes­sor Thomas Schmidt cites:

The second-century BC Tes­ta­ment of the Twelve Patri­archs labels the Sodomites ‘sex­u­ally promis­cu­ous’ (Tes­ti­mony of Ben­jamin 9:1) and refers to ‘Sodom, which departed from the order of nature’ (Tes­ta­ment of Neph­tali 3:4). From the same time period, Jubilees spec­i­fies that the Sodomites were ‘pol­lut­ing them­selves and for­ni­cat­ing in their flesh’ (16:5, com­pare 20:5–6). Both Philo and Jose­phus plainly name same-sex rela­tions as the char­ac­ter­is­tic view of Sodom.

The fol­low­ing refu­ta­tion seems unde­ni­able to me: if the only sin here is rape, why didn’t the men of Sodom set­tle for young vir­gins? We might also ask, why was Lot spared when offer­ing his daugh­ters to the men of Sodom, if he too, in this instance, com­mit­ted the very sin it’s claimed Sodom is being destroyed for?

Objec­tion: the men of Sodom only wanted to get to know Lot’s visitors

This objec­tion is entirely unbe­liev­able, all because of Lot’s reply in verse v.7, “Please, my broth­ers, do not act wickedly.” and in v.8. “Now behold, I have two daugh­ters who have not had rela­tions with man; please let me bring them out to you, and do to them what­ever you like; only do noth­ing to these men, inas­much as they have come under the shel­ter of my roof.” There is another com­mon objec­tion that would state that the sin of the men of Sodom was their inhos­pi­tal­ity. I would ask, then, what could be more hos­pitable then greet­ing vis­i­tors? It seems to me, that when we con­nect the dots, this entire case comes apart. After all, it does not seem to me that a cor­dial greet­ing should be con­sid­ered “wicked,” and so I don’t believe this defense stands even the light­est scrutiny. Fur­ther, as men­tioned above, in v.8 we again see yada ren­dered as rela­tions, this time in an overtly sex­ual context–Lot offer­ing his daugh­ters to the crowd out­side him home (which, to be sure, is a mis­take on Lots part). 

Objec­tion: the sin of Sodom was inhos­pi­tal­ity (Ezekiel 16:49)

A pop­u­lar objec­tion is found in Ezekiel 16:49, “Behold, this was the guilt of your sis­ter Sodom: she and her daugh­ters had arro­gance, abun­dant food and care­less ease, but she did not help the poor and needy.” Again, like the objec­tion above, this is partly true, though not the entire truth. Con­sider the men­tion of Sodom in Jude 1:7, which does men­tion homo­sex­ual acts as a rea­son for their destruc­tion, but which does not men­tion the above as Ezekiel does. If there was ever an exam­ple of eise­ge­sis, this is it. The real­ity is that Sodom was con­demned for a num­ber of sins, included among them was the sin of homo­sex­ual acts.

Answer: there were many sins which con­demned Sodom

As dis­cussed above my sec­ond and final point is sim­ply this: #2 Sodom was destroyed for many sins, among which was rape, homo­sex­u­al­ity, arro­gance, inhos­pi­tal­ity, etc.

Con­clu­sion

I find that in exam­in­ing this par­tic­u­lar text, it can­not be denied — unless one denies the text itself — that Sodom was destroyed, in part, because of its homo­sex­ual prac­tices. How­ever, I also can­not stress that we shouldn’t focus exclu­sively on this, nor should we hit any­one over the head with this infor­ma­tion. Because it wasn’t just homo­sex­u­al­ity that con­demned Sodom–it was their arro­gance, their inhos­pi­tal­ity, their desire to rape vis­i­tors, their rejec­tion of God and their lack of love towards oth­ers. And I think to hold this over peo­ple, and become unlov­ing towards them, is to com­mit some of the same sins com­mit­ted by Sodom, and we really wouldn’t want to put our­selves in that position.

Related posts:

1. A lit­eral read­ing of Genesis?