A Dark and Dirty Bible Story
David Geelan | 10 September 2024 |
Most of us know the story of Lot, the one righteous man in Sodom who was saved from the destruction of that City of the Plain. We recall Abraham’s negotiation with God—“If there are even ten righteous men in Sodom…”—and that it turned out there weren’t.
We find it very challenging that Lot, that righteous man, offered his virgin daughters to a mob with sexual assault on its mind, and struggle to think about how that fits with righteousness. And we know about Lot’s (unnamed) wife, and the perils of looking back as we flee.
But it’s to the even darker story that scripture recounts after the brimstone had cooled on the plain that I want to turn now. Content warning: this story contains incest and sexual activity without consent.
What is less clear, I think, is whose consent was not sought and gained.
I’ll share the NIV version of the story from Genesis 19:30-25
Lot and his two daughters left Zoar and settled in the mountains, for he was afraid to stay in Zoar. He and his two daughters lived in a cave. One day the older daughter said to the younger, “Our father is old, and there is no man around here to give us children—as is the custom all over the earth. Let’s get our father to drink wine and then sleep with him and preserve our family line through our father.”
That night they got their father to drink wine, and the older daughter went in and slept with him. He was not aware of it when she lay down or when she got up.
The next day the older daughter said to the younger, “Last night I slept with my father. Let’s get him to drink wine again tonight, and you go in and sleep with him so we can preserve our family line through our father.” So they got their father to drink wine that night also, and the younger daughter went in and slept with him. Again he was not aware of it when she lay down or when she got up.
I don’t want to be sharing a dirty story merely for its dirtiness. I want us to think about and question the way in which the Bible uses its stories, and how it tells its stories.
What really happened?
A literal reading of this story takes it on its face, as told here, and places the blame on the (unnamed) daughters: they got a man drunk and took sexual advantage of him—please note, for procreational rather than recreational reasons — without his consent. They are guilty of sexual assault.
One traditional Jewish midrash suggests that the daughters had no choice: they believed that the entire world had been destroyed (the passage has sometimes been translated as “there is not a man in the earth”) and resorted to incest in order to preserve the human race. This was affirmed by the early church theologians such as Augustine, Chrysostom, and Irenaeus.
I have to acknowledge, though, that I don’t find this version of the story – presumably related by Lot to someone and passed down to the author of this section of Genesis – especially plausible, based on the history of gender relations and behavior in the world all the time between then and now, and on some practical details of the story.
Is it at least plausible that Lot got drunk and forced himself on his virgin daughters without their consent, and that the story in Genesis 19:30-35 is the story he made up to cover his actions? Was it the story he had to tell himself to be able to live with himself when he woke up hung over and remorseful in the morning?
It certainly seems to have been the story he told someone else to explain how his daughters got pregnant when there were no other men around. Otherwise, how would we hear it now?
The difficulty
Shakespeare in Macbeth talks about how wine provokes the desire but takes away the performance in the bedroom.
Porter
‘Faith sir, we were carousing till the second cock: and drink, sir, is a great provoker of three things.
Macduff
What three things does drink especially provoke?
Porter
Marry, sir, nose-painting, sleep, and urine. Lechery, sir, it provokes, and unprovokes; it provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance: therefore, much drink may be said to be an equivocator with lechery: it makes him, and it mars him; it sets him on, and it takes him off; it persuades him, and disheartens him; makes him stand to, and not stand to; in conclusion, equivocates him in a sleep, and, giving him the lie, leaves him.
Is it plausible that a man so blind drunk that he doesn’t even know when someone comes into the room and sleeps with him was able to perform at all?
Or someone else?
The Quran tells about Lot’s daughters, but Islamic scholars explain it quite differently. They say Lot offered his daughters to the Sodomites in marriage, but they didn’t accept because they didn’t want to convert to his religion. The later incestuous relationship isn’t mentioned at all.
Might there be a much less dark explanation of the story? Perhaps the daughters were actually impregnated by someone else, perhaps the handsome young men of Zoar—but it was so important to maintain the patriarchal line of “Lot’s seed” that the story was told in this way so that their children could inherit Lot’s property and name.
The question, I guess, is do we even have any right to think through some of these alternative possible readings of the story as it is presented in Scripture, or are compelled to read and accept it at face value?
I have to admit, I hope it’s a story about inheritance in a patriarchal society and the polite fictions needed to maintain it, rather than a story about sexual assault.
But what I hope for is not always a reliable guide to what is true.
Dr. David Geelan is Sue’s husband and Cassie and Alexandra’s dad. He started out at Avondale College, and is currently Professor and National Head of the School of Education, within the faculty of Education, Philosophy and Theology at the University of Notre Dame in Sydney, Australia.
