Lot Asks to Flee to Zoar, the Small City Whose Guilt Is Light

Lot continues his nervous negotiation in Genesis 19:20.

"Behold, now, I pray, this city, it is a near habitation, and convenient to escape thither; and it is small, and the guilt thereof light. I will flee thither, then. Is it not a little one? and my life shall be preserved."

Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves a precious piece of information here: the guilt of that city is light. The Hebrew only calls Zoar small; the Aramaic tells us that its sin is lighter than the others'. This is the same distinction Abraham had drawn a chapter earlier, when he asked God to spare Zoar because its guilt was less (Genesis 18:29). The rabbis preserved a consistent tradition that Zoar was the youngest of the plain-cities and had not sunk to the full depravity of Sedom and Amorah.

Lot is leveraging that distinction for his own survival. He is saying: if Zoar is not as bad, it does not deserve total destruction; and if it does not deserve destruction, then let me hide there.

There is also a quiet wordplay Jewish tradition loved. The name Zoar in Hebrew (Tzo'ar) comes from a root meaning "small." Lot is, in effect, asking to escape to "Smallville" — the most modest of the plain-towns. "Is it not a little one?" he repeats. "A little one, a little sin."

The angel will agree. Zoar will be spared. But Lot, as we will see in Genesis 19:30, will become so afraid of Zoar that he flees even from there up to the mountain he originally refused. The small rescue never sticks.

The takeaway: the compromise refuge is rarely the final home.