The angels, the two men who had visited Abraham, reached Sodom.
There was Lot sitting in the gateway which suggests that he was known and respected there. He didn’t need to have his ears to the ground, it seems, to know about the goings-on in Sodom. Did his awareness prompt his hospitality to the strangers, insisting that they not spend the night in the city square, but rather, in his house?
Who was Lot, the people thought, to challenge Sodom’s ways of living, when he had come in as a stranger?
“This fellow came here as an alien, and he would play the judge! Now we will deal worse with you than with them.”
It was not one or a few men who confronted Lot.
But before they lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, both young and old, all the people to the last man, surrounded the house; 5 and they called to Lot, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us, so that we may know them.”
Lot had known better than do say, ‘When in Rome you do as the Romans’. He had not. He had his daughters brough up the traditional way, and their would-be husbands had already been selected. He was ready to violate their privacy to protect his guests from the inhospitality of Sodom. Or would that be violating them? In this man’s world, Lot could easily have determined who had intimate access to his daughters.
But alas, the men of Sodom wanted things their way. They would not give the men a break! I tell you,
“Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it” (Hebrews 13:2).
But those men had no idea know who they were dealing with. They persisted in their stance towards abusiveness to the two strangers, seeking to force their sexual preferences and practices upon them. That was their undoing. Or was it?
According to the two men, the angels, God had already had it with them.
13 For we are about to destroy this place, because the outcry against its people has become great before the Lord, and the Lord has sent us to destroy it.”
It would seem that Abraham’s plea for God to spare the city if ten righteous were found there, could not be honoured, which means that the whole lot of them were taken in with corruption.
Lot had lived and let them live. Now God was telling Lot, ‘It’s time to get out.’.
Lord, teach when the time has come for us to giving trying to fix things, to totally yield to your control and let you be the judge, in our situation, in every situation. Amen.