Lot Fled to Zoar While His Daughters Planned

Lot ran with fire at his back and sulfur on his tongue. His wife was salt on the plain behind him. The air tore. He stopped on the slope, knees shaking, and begged for a town small enough to reach before the fire did.

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"This city is near to flee to, and it is a little one," he said. "Let me escape there, and my soul shall live." (Genesis 19:20)

The Town That Was Fifty-One

The angel did not send him into the old cities. Zoar had stood fifty-one years. Sodom had stood fifty-two. One year of difference. One town burned. The other held. A young settlement has had less time to pile up sins.

"I have lifted your face," the angel said. Lot's face was still gray from running. It was lifted because he had honored a single messenger. Later the priestly blessing would ask the same lifting for a whole people: "the LORD lift up His face toward you" (Numbers 6:26).

Lot had called Zoar near. Near on the road. Near in years. He took the gift and did not look long at the smoke.

Sun and Moon in the Same Sky

Some in Sodom bowed to the sun. Some bowed to the moon. A blow by day would have let them blame the missing moon. A blow by night would have let them blame the missing sun. God chose the sixteenth of Nisan, when both hung in the sky, so no idol could steal the credit.

The little town stood. Behind Lot the bigger cities unmade themselves. Heat walked the valley. He did not stay in Zoar. He climbed into the mountain with his two daughters and found a cave that smelled of stone and damp wool.

They sat in the dark and listened to the plain finish dying. No other voices came up the slope. The elder daughter counted the silence and took it for the end of the human race.

The Second Cup

She did not whisper. She spoke as if the three of them were the last left alive, an ark of rock instead of gopher wood.

"I lay with our father last night," she told the younger. "Let us make him drink wine again. Go in to him. We will raise up seed from our father."

She poured. The cup shook once in her hand and then did not. Wine ran along the rim. Lot, who had fled fire, did not flee the cup. His head went back. His mouth opened. Sleep took him the way the angel had taken his wrist on the plain, without asking twice.

The man who had bargained for Zoar could not bargain with sleep. On a worse night in Sodom he had offered these same daughters to a mob at the door. Now they took the planning into their own hands in the dark. The younger went in. The cave held still, the way a house does when a door closes on a room that should have stayed shut.

She Named Him Moab

Morning came in thin. The elder named her son Moab, "from the father," with an open mouth. The younger softened hers to Ben-Ammi, "son of my people." Shame still lived in one throat. It had gone out of the other.

Two boys would grow into nations that would meet Israel on the road for centuries, one named without cover, one named with a little cover left. The little town still stood in the valley. The big city was ash.

Lot woke to a cave that had used him. He had no speech for it. His face had been lifted on the slope. Mercy had already been spent. What the daughters had done sat in the dark beside the empty skins.

Hagar Would Not Lower Her Eyes

In another tent, years earlier, the ground had already tilted. Sarah gave her maid Hagar to Abraham. Once Hagar conceived, she set her hand on her belly and did not lower her eyes. The servant carried what the mistress had prayed for. Sarah's mouth tightened. The tent was too small for both of them.

Jealousy moved through the canvas like heat. A maidservant rose. A mistress felt herself pushed aside. The earth shook under that household long before any king fell off a throne.

Lot's cave was the same tilt in a different room. Daughters took the place of wives. A father slept through a plan he did not choose while awake. Morning stood in the mouth of the cave. Two names were already waiting. Zoar still stood below, fifty-one years old, with sun and moon both watching.