Lot's daughters are two people in the Hebrew Bible. They appear when Lot leaves Sodom in Genesis 19. Two angels arrive in Sodom, and Lot shows them hospitality. However, the men of the city gathered around Lot's house and demanded that he give them the two guests so they could rape them. In response to this, Lot offers the mob his two daughters instead, noting that they are virgins (verse 8). The mob refuses Lot's offer, but the angels strike them with blindness, and then help Lot leave the city before it gets destroyed.
Genesis 19:14 indicates that Lot has sons-in-law. These are either "pledged to marry" (NIV) his virgin daughters, or married to other daughters of Lot. Robert Alter suggests that verse 15 ("your two daughters who remain with you") indicates that Lot's two virgin daughters left with him, but that he had other, married, daughters who stayed behind.[1]
Lot's wife turns into a pillar of salt, but Lot and his daughters escape to Zoar, and end up living in a cave in the mountain. Lot's daughters realise that they are not going to find men to have sex with them, so they get their father drunk, and over two consecutive nights have sex with him without his knowledge.The older daughter gives birth to Moab, while the younger daughter gives birth to Ben-Ammi.
Many scholars have drawn a connection between the episodes of Lot's daughters. Robert Alter suggests that this final episode "suggests measure-for-measure justice meted out for his rash offer."[2]
A number of commentators describe the actions of Lot's daughters as rape. Esther Fuchs suggests that the text presents Lot's daughters as the "initiators and perpetrators of the incestuous 'rape'."[3] Ilan Kutz suggests that today it would be called "drug rape", but concludes that it was actually Lot who abused his daughters, and this was covered up by the biblical narrators.[4]
References[edit]
- ^ Alter, Robert (2008). The Five Books of Moses: A Translation with Commentary. p. 93.
- ^ Alter, Five Books of Moses, p. 92.
- ^ Fuchs, Esther (2003). Sexual Politics in the Biblical Narrative: Reading the Hebrew Bible as a Woman. p. 209. Retrieved 10 July 2015.
- ^ Kutz, Ilan (2005). "Revisiting the lot of the first incestuous family: the biblical origins of shifting the blame on to female family members". BMJ 331: 1507–1508. Retrieved 10 July 2015.