What to say about Lot?
For most of the story in last week’s parashah, Lot disappeared behind the more imposing character of Abraham. Abraham takes him, as they leave for Canaan. The next time Lot is mentioned, his possessions and those of Abraham are so many that the land is no longer sufficient to provide for both. Their herdsmen fight and at Abraham’s suggestion, they part company. Lot chooses first, but he does not know how to choose wisely. He picks Sodom, and the next thing we hear is that Lot is taken captive in a war. So, Abraham goes to fight and brings back Lot, his possessions, and also his women and everyone else.
Lot is at best an underdeveloped character, who is mostly overtaken by events, and in this week’s parashah, things get really ugly. Lot insists on providing hospitality for two of Abraham’s guests. He feeds them and offers them a bed, but the men of Sodom, all the men of Sodom, demand that he gives his guests to them to do their unspeakable acts. Lot refuses. He offers them his unmarried daughters instead. They are only saved from a horrific fate by the guests, who then urge Lot to leave the city with his family. Yet, Lot delays and again it is only the forceful actions of the visitors that saves at least some of the family.
At the end of the story, his wife has turned into a pillar of salt and Lot finds himself again disappearing in someone else’s story. He has ended in a cave with the same two unmarried daughters. They think they need to repopulate the earth, or at least make sure their father’s name is continued. Thus, they decide to make their father very drunk and sleep with him. The daughters, not Lot, get to name their offspring and these names are testimony to the incestuous act that begot them. The oldest calls her son Moab, literally ‘from my father’ and the younger daughter calls her child Ben-ammi, ‘son of my kinsman’.
To add insult to injury, Lot is often blamed for the misery that befalls him. Both his choice of land and his reluctance to leave Sodom have been attributed to his greed. He cared more about his wealth than about his own well-being or about that of his kin. It is even said that he lusted after his daughters or that he certainly knew what was happening when he slept with his younger daughter.
Yet, there are some redeeming tales. In Pirke DeRabbi Eliezer 25, it is suggested that when Abraham negotiates with God about the destruction of Sodom, he is thinking of Lot. When Abraham suggests that there may be a righteous person among the wicked, this righteous person, this tsaddik, is in fact, Lot.
Yet, this suggestion draws attention to the fact that Abraham is surprisingly negligent when it comes to Lot in the negotiations. He does not mention Lot by name. When Abraham negotiates, he takes a more universal approach. His argument is that a small number of righteous people, whoever they are, may save the city. Starting at fifty, he ends the negotiation at ten. If there are ten righteous people, the city will not be destroyed. And again, it is left to the rabbis to connect these ten righteous people to Lot: Lot, his wife and four married daughters plus husbands make up ten.
This negligence is surprising if one assumes that Lot is the first of Abraham’s potential heirs. Abraham has no children and Lot is next of kin. If he ever was the heir, he is also the first of the three to experience Abraham’s perilous treatment of any offspring. Isaac is almost sacrificed and Ishmael almost dies in the wilderness. Lot’s fate may look mild in comparison, but he too is made to leave, and even if he gets to choose his place of abandonment, he comes close to losing his life.
As we are used to reading these early story for our ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Rebekah, Leah and Rachel, it is not difficult to let Lot disappear between the lines. Given the nature of some of his acts, it is even desirable to turn our attention away from him. He may be a casualty of Abraham’s abstract ambitions, or a misguided or even an evil man. He cannot hold our attention. Just as he was an abstraction in Abraham’s grand narrative, he becomes an abstraction in ours.
Then, I came upon an early picture by Rembrandt van Rijn. It is provisionally called ‘Drunken Lot’. It is not certain whether it indeed depicts Lot or whether this man is some drunk whom Rembrandt noticed in his younger years in Leiden. The man looks defeated. His right hand holds a cup and for his left arm Rembrandt has added some pen scribblings, so the man has something to lean upon in an otherwise empty space. His clothes are dishevelled and his grey hair goes in all directions on his head.
Yet, in all this misery Rembrandt’s drawing restores the poor drunk to his humanity. There is no judgment in the portrait. Rather, it speaks to us about loss of fortune and about shame. Lot, who was once so wealthy and part of a wealthy clan, has been made to feel the consequences of his unfortunate choices and his lack of decisiveness. Rembrandt depicts him at the dawn of realisation.
It is very hard to imagine what must be going through Lot’s mind. Perhaps he feels the panic of the night when he was unable to protect the guests, whom he had invited into his house, from the people of Sodom or the panic he felt when he offered his daughters. Perhaps his mind goes to that moment when he realised Abraham was not going to look for a way to live peacefully together, but instead abandoned the nephew who until then had been part of his household. Perhaps Lot regrets his choice, how his eye fell in love with the wealth of a valley.
The text of Genesis is notoriously sparse when it comes to telling the story. We can read it differently, every time we return. This year I tried to stay with Lot, but I am still not certain what to make of him. I see someone who has done unspeakable things, but also someone who was never given the chance to become himself and who is made to play a part in other people’s stories. I see how difficult it is to remain a tsaddik when surrounded by evil. Whatever we read, nothing should keep us from also recognising someone’s humanity and from supplying some support, even if only a pen scribble for the left arm.
Dr Hannah M. Altorf, LBC rabbinical student
The views expressed in this D’var Torah do not necessarily reflect the position of Leo Baeck College.