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Context No. 520 of 4322 · Genesis

Context · Reflection

Genesis 19:23-28: in context

23The sun had risen on the earth when Lot came to Zoar. 24Then the LORD rained on Sodom and on Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the LORD out of the sky. 25He overthrew those cities, all the plain, all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew on the ground. 26But Lot’s wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt. 27Abraham went up early in the morning to the place where he had stood before the LORD. 28He looked toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and toward all the land of the plain, and saw that the smoke of the land went up as the smoke of a furnace.

Sodom and Gomorrah are being destroyed, sulfur and fire raining down, and Lot and his family have been physically dragged out of the city by angels who told them plainly not to look back, only to flee for their lives. Lot reaches the little town of Zoar as the sun rises and the cities behind him go up in smoke. And then, in a single devastating verse, we read: but Lot's wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt. She was almost out. She had been rescued, her feet were already on the road to safety, and she turned to look back at what she was leaving, and the look killed her, fixing her in place forever like a monument of salt on the plain.

The tragedy is that her body was being saved while her heart was still in Sodom. She was walking away from the city, but her longing was pulled backward toward it, toward the life and the things and the world she was being delivered out of, and that backward look revealed where her treasure really was. Jesus, centuries later, would say only three words about this, remember Lot's wife, using her as a warning to anyone tempted to cling to the old life at the very moment God is calling them forward. She is the picture of a person rescued in body but not in heart, led out of something while still yearning after it.

That is a searching image, because I know the backward look from the inside. God leads me out of something, a habit, a relationship, a way of living that was destroying me, and even as I go, my heart keeps turning around, longing for what I left, remembering it as better than it was, reluctant to let it burn. The deliverance is real, but my affection stays behind. When God is leading me out of something, is my heart moving forward with my feet, or am I, like Lot's wife, walking away while still looking back with longing at what I am being saved from?

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