Lot Sits at Sodom's Gate and Waits for Strangers

The Gate Where the City Judges Itself

Evening was coming over Sodom and two figures were walking toward the gate. They looked like men. Lot was sitting at the gate of the city, in the place where the elders sat to adjudicate disputes, where merchants haggled, where strangers were assessed before they were permitted entry. It was the threshold of the city's authority, the place where Sodom showed visitors what Sodom was.

Lot saw the two figures and he rose immediately. The Targum's verb for this carries a sense of urgency, not deliberation. He went out from the gate of the tabernacle, as the Aramaic has it, a phrase that carries a faint echo of sanctuary language, as if the threshold itself were more than architecture. He went toward them and bowed his face to the ground and said: My lords, turn aside, I beg you, into your servant's house and spend the night and wash your feet.

He did not know they were angels. He knew they were strangers arriving at Sodom at dusk, which was already enough to make his invitation urgent.

What Sodom Did After Dark

The two visitors declined. They said they would sleep in the street that night.

The Targum does not pretend this was a genuine preference. The angels knew what happened in Sodom after dark. If strangers slept outside in the street without being harmed, the city would have demonstrated something about its character that would have complicated the verdict already waiting to be executed. The angels needed to sleep in the street. They also needed Lot to insist that they not sleep in the street. Both sides of the exchange had to happen before the night could proceed to what it was actually for.

Lot pressed. He urged them strongly. He would not take no for an answer. He brought them into his house, prepared a feast, and had unleavened bread ready to set before them. He was, in the middle of Sodom, acting as if hospitality were still possible, still obligatory, still the thing a man does when travelers arrive at his door at the end of the day.

The Sanctuary Language Around a Compromised Threshold

The Targum's phrase for Lot's movement, from the gate of the tabernacle, was not accidental. The same phrase appears elsewhere in the Aramaic tradition to describe movement from a place of sacred function. In Sodom the sacred function was corrupt, which is why the phrase carries such weight here. Lot was performing the gesture of hospitality that the gate demanded, while sitting in a city that had outlawed the substance of that gesture.

Abraham had performed the same rite hours earlier at Mamre. He too had run toward strangers arriving in the heat of the day, bowed before them, invited them in, prepared food, stood beside them while they ate. The Targum places Lot's welcome in the same gesture-language as Abraham's, which gives the nephew the uncle's hospitality even while the nephew is embedded in a city that will murder you for practicing it.

Before the Mob Arrives

The city of Sodom gathered before the night was finished. All the men of the city, the Targum confirms, from the youngest to the oldest, came and surrounded the house. They wanted the visitors brought out. They named what they wanted to do to them. Lot went to the door and shut it behind him and tried to negotiate, offering his daughters, making arguments, anything to keep the strangers inside safe.

They laughed at him. He was a resident alien who had been sitting in their seat of judgment, and now he was lecturing them about conduct. They pressed forward and reached for the door.

The angels reached out from inside the house and pulled Lot back in and struck the men at the door with blindness. The men groped for the entrance and could not find it.

The city had come for the strangers Lot had welcomed. The strangers had blinded the city that refused to welcome anyone.