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Notes on Sodom and Gomorrah
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Authored by Frank Redmond, 2006
Now it would be fruitful for me to provide you with a brief summary of the Sodom and Gomorrah affair. My focus will be on Genesis 19, although Sodom is mentioned in the previous chapter too when Abraham intercedes for Sodom. But that episode does not answer our major question: what is the sin of Sodom? This episode does, however, suggest that a great sin has occurred and must be punished, as 18.20 says,
“The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great, and their sin so grave, that I must go down and see whether or not their actions fully correspond to the cry against them that comes to me. I mean to find out”. The episode foreshadows what is to come. And what is to come is that two angels reach Sodom and meet Lot at the gate of the city. Lot, being a good servant and host, bows down to the ground with his face supplanted in the dust, and says, “Please gentlemen [notice that he fails to recognize the men as angels], come aside into your servant's house for the night, and bathe your feet; you can get up early to continue your journey” (19.2). However, the men, or angels, refuse saying that they will remain in the town's square for the night. Yet Lot urged the men so hard to stay, that they stayed, and Lot prepared a meal for them and they dined. “Before they went to bed, all the townsmen of Sodom, both young and old – all the people to the last man – closed in on the house. They called to Lot and said to him, 'Where are the men who came to your house tonight? Bring them out to us that we may have intimacies with them.' Lot went out to meet them at the entrance. When he had shut the door behind him, he said, 'I beg you, my brothers, not to do this wicked thing. I have two daughters who have never had intercourse with men. Let me bring them out to you, and you may do to them as you please. But don't do anything to these men, for you know that they have come under the shelter of my roof.'” (19.4-8). I appears as if this is the last straw with God, for God strikes down the pursuing men with a blinding flash of light, a light which reveals to Lot the true nature of these men. Then, immediately after this, God tells Lot to gathering his belongings and loved ones since the end of Sodom and Gomorrah, due to their sin, is about to become a reality. And finally, after Lot got his family straight, the end comes: “the Lord rained down upon Sodom and Gomorrah from the Lord out of heaven. He overthrew those cities and the whole Plain, together with the inhabitants of the cities and the produce of the soil” (19.24-25).
I think there are two major reasons why, at least per the Yahwist account in Genesis, Sodom and Gomorrah suffered their fates. The two reasons taken from the text are that 1. the townsmen wanted to have homosexual relations with the two angels of God “Bring them out to us that we may have intimacies with them” & 2. the townsmen breeched the guest-host relationship by barraging in on the private gathering between Lot and the two angels “But don't do anything to these men, for you know that they have come under the shelter of my roof”. The second reason may not seem to be as obvious of a reason as the first, but it nevertheless may be the most important, as it seems that God decides to invoke his final judgment after this relationship is breeched, rather than after when just sodomy is suggested. So this leaves us with a dilemma – what was the sin of Sodom to the Yahwist author? I believe that the sin of Sodom is the breech of hospitality, because even after the homosexual relations are brought up, God still has yet to pass judgment upon the cities. It is only when the guest-host relationship gets breeched that God decides this is enough and the process of the cities' destruction begins to take place. Sure, the homosexuality played a role in God's decision; however, it seems more likely, especially with all the focus made earlier on making sure the angels were given proper living quarters and adequate nourishment, that the guest-host relationship's breech is truly the sin of Sodom to the Yawhist source.
However, this is not the only interpretation of the sin of Sodom in the Tanakh. The biblical prophets have a great deal to say about what they consider the sin to be. Yet it must be remembered that these are prophets and they will be using the sin of Sodom for their own purposes. They will view the sin in their own contexts and under their own interpretative gaze. And for this reason ertheless, much can be learned from these later interpretations. But what is a prophet, before we continue? A prophet, in my humble definition, is a person who holds the responsibility of a holy person, thing, or idea with the purpose of making social change. Now this definition definitely changes what the purpose and meaning of the sin of Sodom is. The sin is no longer a thing-to-itself like it is in Yawhist account, but now must be a symbol of instruction with the purpose of making social change. Sodom and Gomorrah are no longer just cities destroyed by God: they are now moral imperatives, pieces of instruction, for the prophets.
In this spirit, Jeremiah uses Sodom and Gomorrah when he speaks of his own kind, prophets, false prophets that is. He says, and I quote:
(23.11-14)
11. Both prophet and priest are godless! In my very house I find their wickedness, says the Lord. 12. Hence their way shall become for them slippery ground. In the darkness they shall lose their footing, and fall headlong; Evil I will bring upon them: the year of their punishment, says the Lord.
13. Among Samaria's prophets I saw unseemly deeds: They prophesied by Baal and led my people Israel astray.
14. But among Jerusalem's prophets I saw deeds still more shocking: Adultery, living in lies, siding with the wicked, so that no one turns from evil; To me they are all like Sodom, its citizens like Gomorrah.
What Jeremiah sees with this passage is an overall, general disregard for God's way. General wickedness has overcome both priest and prophet alike, the leaders of the Israelite people. We find that they are on slippery ground with God and in the darkness they shall lose their footing. Then we have the prophets of Samaria and their deeds, which are that they prophesized by Baal [a Northwest Semitic god] and led my people stray. But worst of all is the shocking deeds done by Jerusalem's prophets: adultery, living in lies, siding with the wicked, etc. This very general sense of wickedness is ascribed to Sodom and Gomorrah. It seems as though this general stuff is the sin which the Sodomites committed on that day with Lot. Jeremiah is saying that the fall of Sodom and Gomorrah was caused by the same general wickedness which he sees around himself centuries later. The downfall of these two cities, per Jeremiah, is caused by this general disregard for God's commandments, not because of the guest-host relationship, or because of homosexual relations. To Jeremiah, the situation was much greater, with myriad factors involved; it wasn't just one episode which destroyed the cities, but an accumulation of sin over time.
(3.8-11)
8. Jerusalem is crumbling, Judah is falling; for their speech and their deeds are before the Lord, a provocation in the sight of his majesty.
9. Their very look bears witness against them; their sin like Sodom they vaunt, They do no hide out. Woe to them! they deal out evil to themselves.
10. Happy are the just, for it will be well with them, the fruit of their works they will eat.
11. Woe to the wicked man! All goes ill, with the work of his hands he will be repaid.
In this prophecy by Isaiah, he is trying to say that the world around them is crumbling, falling into a state of anarchy, so to speak. Things look very bleak, and everything that is being said to God is in provocation, rather than in prayer. Then Isaiah invokes Sodom, which in this case can stand in for Jerusalem or Judah, in order to prove that they are committing the sin of Sodom and this is the reason why these things are occurring. But what is the sin of Sodom to Isaiah? If one looks at verses 10-11, one can begin to better understand Isaiah's purpose. He juxtaposes the “just” man with the wicked man. He says that the happy ones are the just ones and the ones who suffer are their opposites, namely the unjust ones. So by induction, it can be seen that the sin of Sodom to Isaiah is social injustice and a lack of regard for works of just men. Sodom therefore fell, not to homosexuality, or to a broken guest-host relationship, but because of insidious social injustice
(16.46-50)
You elder sister was Samaria with her daughters, living to the north of you; and your younger sister, living to the south of you, was Sodom with her daughters. Yet not only in their ways did you walk, and act as abominably as they did; in a very short time you became more corrupt in all your ways than they. As I live, says the Lord God, I swear that your sister Sodom, with her daughters, has not done as you and your daughters have done! And look at the guilt of you sister Sodom: she and her daughters were proud, sated with food, complacent in their prosperity, and they gave no help to the poor and needy. Rather, they became haughty and committed abominable crimes in my presence; then as you have seen, I removed them.