"Turn now hither," Lot says to the two angels, "and enter the house of your servant, and lodge, and wash your feet" (Genesis 19:2). The angels refuse. "No; for in the street we will lodge."
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves this exchange without softening it, because it matters. The angels know exactly what happens in Sedom after dark. They know the mob will come. They also know that if a guest sleeps in the street unmolested, the city cannot claim they were never tested.
Lot knows too. He knows the law of his own city: any citizen who takes in a stranger is in violation of Sodom's famous ordinance against hospitality. He is risking his life, his property, and his daughters' future by bringing these men inside.
But he insists anyway. The rabbis preserved a tradition that Lot had seen Abraham's guests in Hebron — or heard his uncle's stories — and he was not going to be the host who failed the test. So he pressed them. He pleaded. The next verse will say he "persuaded them earnestly" (Genesis 19:3).
There is a quiet theological point inside this. The angels' refusal was not indifference; it was a courtesy, letting Lot prove that his hospitality was real before they committed him to the danger of hosting them. And Lot passed.
The takeaway: real kindness always involves some risk. If your hospitality costs you nothing, it may not actually be hospitality yet.