A Skeptic Reads the Bible 9: Homosexuality and Sexism in Sodom and Gomorrah

Sooner or later we had to get to this little screed: the first clear homophobic passage in Genesis. Actually, I dislike it for a whole host of other reasons, and not (just) the homophobia.

Sodom and Gomorrah are mysterious places. Genesis does not really explain why they are connected, other than that they are both very evil. And of course we borrowed Sodom as the root for the early English word for the homosexual act, "sodomy." Biblically speaking, all that's been seen so far is that Abraham's relative Lot moved there when the two patriarchs decided they owned too many flocks and too many herds to be living close together. Sodom is clearly a tumultuous place and in Genesis 14 Lot is already abducted as a hostage in one of the interminable wars (Abraham takes several hundred "trained men" and rescues his nephew, after which he is blessed by a "priest of God Most High" named Melchizedek). Possibly for the first time in his life, Abraham refuses to accept a reward from the king of Sodom for his actions. The implication is that he does so because Sodom is so evil.

Lot is unconvinced of this, though, and decides to continue living in Sodom. Years go by, and eventually God decides, again for unspecified reasons, that Sodom and Gomorrah are sinning so greatly "that I will go down and see if what they have done is as bad as the outcry that has reached me." Incidentally, this is one of the last times that God appears in Genesis as an imperfect, man-like being -- someone capable of hearing prayers about Sodom and Gomorrah, but not seeming to have any particular personal knowledge of the situation there.

If I'm right about God being much more human-like in the early myths, indeed much more limited, nevertheless he's still becoming a much more brooding, ominous and distant figure. In the past, we heard God musing to himself and unknown other gods, explaining the reasons for his actions. He's still doing that, but his musings are getting less frequent, and more mysterious. What is the sin that is so great in Sodom and Gomorrah? I guess the paragraphs that follow are supposed to explain that to us.

First, though, God stops by Abraham's house to chat about his plans. Actually, three "men" appear, whom Abraham and Sarah take to be angels. One of them, perhaps, is intended to be God himself; in any event, later on one of the men leaves and two continue on to Sodom. Abraham challenges God, effectively bargaining God down to a promise that if just ten "righteous men" are found in the city, God will promise not to destroy it. Abraham bargains God down from a promise to save fifty men to a promise to save ten, and it's not clear whether, had he decided to press the issue, he could have convinced God to agree that even one man would not be killed unjustly.

Incidentally, the fact that Sodom might have been saved if just ten good men had lived there should be seen as a direct challenge to those misguided religious extremists who claim that natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina are examples of divine judgement. Unless you're prepared to believe there weren't ten good people in New Orleans, either.

As it turns out, it's a good thing Abraham didn't bargain God down further, either, or the story wouldn't have been nearly as bloodthirsty as the author plainly wants it to be. Lot is (presumably) a good man, even if the rest of his family isn't. Rather than save the city on their behalf, God opts for the far simpler option of evacuating them in advance of the pending destruction of the city. In the process, the author of Genesis gets another good dig in at women (whom he plainly dislikes) by claiming that Lot's faithless wife needlessly disobeyed orders not to turn around while they fled, and as a result was immediately murdered by God, by the innovative means of turning her into a pillar of salt.

But in rushing forward to the fire and brimstone at the end of the story, I've skipped over an important element (one which a lot of current people also skip over in their rush to interpret this story as a condemnation of homosexuality, which I suppose it is, but only in one respect). Lot sees the angels as they enter the city and promptly asks them to spend the night at his house, which they do. That evening, displaying a hospitality definitely too barbarous to be credible, the author of Genesis claims that "all the men from every part of... Sodom" marched on Lot's house and demanded that he turn out the two angels so that they can be raped by the crowd. An increasingly frightened Lot is rescued when the two angels strike the crowd with blindness, allowing Lot and themselves to make good an escape.

Now, why the entire male population of Sodom should decide they want to sexually assault a pair of unidentified visitors is entirely unexplained. And technically, the crime here would not have been homosexuality, I assume: it would have been assaulting angels, messengers of God. As a matter of fact, no homosexual acts, and technically no attempted homosexual acts, are ever described as occurring in Sodom in the book of Genesis. The only crime that is actually attempted here is an assault upon angels. And I would assume that God would deal with attacks on his divine messengers very seriously. Is the attempt to abuse his angels, rather than any homosexuality, really the sin that is the downfall of Sodom?

But here's the part that seems to go unmentioned: Lot, the righteous one, commits in my mind the unpardonably egregious act of offering his daughters instead. You read that right: before the angels implement their own solution (mass blindness), Lot attempts to negotiate with the crowd by promising that he will give him his two virgin daughters, "and you can do what you like with them. But don't do anything to these men." Defending your visitors from an angry mob is admirable. Proposing a compromise by trading away your daughters to be sexually assaulted seems a little bit beyond the pale, however. Even the angels seem to agree. And under later Jewish law, what would have happened would still have been rape, because, as Genesis later explains, both girls are engaged to be married.

Such a thing, I imagine, would have been more acceptable in 1000 B.C. (when Israelite women were more or less legally limited to being property of men anyways) than it is today, when women have won their freedom and equality. So I'm fully prepared to accept that despite this despicable act on Lot's part, the author of Genesis really does intend this to be anti-homosexual propaganda.

I add the word "propaganda" for a reason, too. Are we seriously expected to believe that, at the very least, there's not a great deal of exaggeration here? The men of Sodom clearly don't realize that Lot's guests are angels -- usually the reaction to angels is fear and awe, not a desire to assault them. And clearly this can't be their normal habit of welcoming new guests into town, or they wouldn't have any guests at all. There is the further question of what has happened to some of the clearly more decent people in Sodom, such as the king himself, who once attempted to reward Abraham for rescuing Lot from his enemies. Is the king among the murderous crowd in the streets, too?

The angels don't engage in this sort of ethical reflection. Instead, they admit to Lot that they've come to herald the destruction of the city. On their orders, Lot flees immediately, after which "the Lord rained down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah" and in the process "overthrew those cities." ("Overthrown" seems to be a bit of an understatement and reflects the fact that I think the author is indulging in a great deal of hyperbole here in order to prove his point about the so-called "evils" of Sodom.)

In a strange afterword to this sad story, Lot's little family (now minus his deceased, faithless wife) resort to living in an isolated cave. His daughters reason that "there is no man around here to lie with us, as is the custom all over the earth," and therefore seduce their father after getting him drunk. This seems like a rather ludicrous thing to do, but perhaps they're mad at him -- he did, after all, propose throwing them out to a crowd to be assaulted, and he also failed to convince their fiances to flee Sodom with them. Both fiances must have perished in the flames.

Another oddity is the fact that Gomorrah was also destroyed. So far as we know from what is written in Genesis, God sent no representatives to Gomorrah to investigate the situation there. And we also do not know what sins the Gomorrhites might have been committing (the implication, I admit, is that they were homosexuals as well). God destroys that city, too, nevertheless. This is, perhaps, the beginning of a new theme, which will definitely be cropping up increasingly later on: sometimes, God punishes people for arbitrary reasons.

In the earlier acts of mass destruction - the Great Flood and the Tower of Babel (links go to my commentaries) - God did provide reasons for his actions. They were rather selfish ones - he was upset and feared or at least mistrusted the increasingly powerful humans - but they were reasons, nevertheless. The destruction of Gomorrah seems starkly unjustified. Sometimes, it seems, the world is a wicked place and God simply selects a few of the allegedly wicked people, more or less at random, and strikes them down to set an example.

And bad luck to you, if you happen to be one of the ones selected out for the smiting.

Read more of the "A Skeptic Reads the Bible" series, published on AssociatedContent.com:

"God Destroys the World, Part 1" (Genesis 5-9)

"An Insecure God Trashes the Tower of Babel" (Genesis 10-11)

"Abraham Lies, Cheats and Swindles His Way into Grace" (Genesis 12-25)

Check out the index to all published "A Skeptic Reads the Bible" commentaries.