Her sin appears to be trifling to some. It says in verse 26 that she "looked back." It may seem little, but it reveals a great deal about her character. She directly disobeyed the clear command of God's messenger just given a few verses before that. We read it. I Samuel 15:22-23 says that "to obey is better than sacrifice . . and . . . rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft." She rebelled.
What was Lot's wife's sin? She did not believe. It is that simple. She died for her lack of faith which was revealed in her direct rebellion against the messengers of God in looking back. The root cause of her rebellion, of her worldliness, was her unbelief. Because of her unbelief, she was not prepared to leave Sodom. Because of her unbelief, she would not obey the command to leave. You can apply this to Lot. You can see that Lot was converted. We will see this a little bit more strongly when we go back to Genesis 19. But Lot was at least converted.
I wonder if you noticed in these verses, as compared with the rest of the story, that suddenly there is a change in the pronouns from plural to singular. Notice verse 17, "So it came to pass, when they had brought them outside, that he said." One of the messengers speaks. In verse 18 then Lot addresses him and it says in my Bible, "lords." Keil & Delitzsch Commentary says, "No, that word "Lord" is singular." Lord. Adonai - the name of God. Is it the name of Melchizedek? Was Melchizedek the one that was there to destroy the city? If it was not, why did he call him Lord, and why in verses 21 and 22 does He takes the authority to himself to destroy the city? "I cannot do anything until you arrive there. And then it says, "The Lord rained down . ." Is the Lord the same one who was the "I" of the previous verse?
Verse 26 is interesting: "But his wife looked back behind him, and she became a pillar of salt." According to quite a number of authorities, some of which I mentioned to you, The Jewish Publication Society, The King James Version, The Revised Standard Version, they all say that the correct wording is "she looked back frombehind him." She was not with him when they got to the city. Lot and his daughters made it to the city Zoar and she did not. It was not merely that Lot's wife looked back, but all along the way from Sodom to Zoar, she was dragging her heels, she was dawdling along, she was wasting time, and what she did in conducting herself in this way gave unmistakable evidence that her heart did not believe what the angel had said to her. God was not really going to destroy all of their possessions. And so she reluctantly left Sodom because she loved the world, and she loved the world because she did not have the faith.
Notice again, Lot’s approach at the very beginning, how he subtlety changed what he was told to do. The angels said, take them out! Now Lot changed that to preaching to them. I get the very distinct impression that they told him, “grabbed them by the hand and take them out.” It is a difference between come and go. That is, come with me. In the same way that the angels had to do with Lot. They did not preach to him. They grabbed him by the hand and yanked him out of town. That is what the angels expected Lot to do.
Apparently Lot thought that his preaching was going to have some good occur as a result of it, and yet there is a difference. He preaches to them “get out,” but what does he do? He lingers. Lot does not follow directions very well, does he?
You can see that Lot, though he was a man of great faith, there was not enough faith, not living faith, not faith that really trusted God, but faith that he equivocated all the time and interpreted what was said in way that he felt was best for himself.
Notice the difference in their prayers. Abraham appeals to God to spare the people of the city, Lot on the other hand, not considering the saving of his life is enough, request that he be able to continue to live in the valley, in the plain, and that they spare a small city. Would you call that trading on the mercy of God? Would you call that tempting God, pushing Him to the very limit? Well, I would. Abraham’s prayer was an appeal for mercy and grace for others. Lot’s is an appeal for self-indulgence. He pleads for his own way, right to the very end.
Now I do not know what it was that was motivating Lot. Maybe it was his feelings for his wife, because she, from every indication, was very deeply involved in the city, much more than Lot was. Whatever his motivations were, God is showing very clearly that they were not entirely devoted to God, and I think that we can say, that they were carnal.
The admonition to not look back is not to say that we are not to study history and learn from it, because those who fail to study history are doomed to repeat it; but rather the act of looking back or the practice or habit of looking back is an indication of the desire or the nostalgia for prior activities and lifestyles. This is what we have been called out of. It is not something that we should be gazing at longingly.
We see that the angel specifically instructs Lot and his family not to look back (verse 17). Looking back, he says, will destroy you. And then we saw that the destruction was greater than just the city. It was that city, the other cities of the plain, all the inhabitants of those cities, plus all that grew there in that area. So it was widespread destruction. It was more than just those cities specifically. It was the entire area of what we know as the southwest coast of the Dead Sea. So the whole place went up. Fire and brimstone everywhere.
And we also saw that it was repeated time and again, that God Himself was taking a personal hand in destroying the sinners, their lifestyles, and what they had built. Everything was to be razed to the ground.
So their destruction was divine judgment of sin, and He did not want Lot and his family pining for it, thinking about those good times that they might have had, or all the people that they had grown to know and even love that they had left behind. Because to God (when you think about it) those good old days that they were thinking about, and longing for were an offense to Him. These things were part of the reasons why He was judging those cities of the plain. Lot and his family may not have been involved in all those sins, but it was that general milieu that they had lived in that needed to be destroyed. And God did not want them looking back at it with any good feelings whatsoever.
Her sin appears to be trifling to some. It says in verse 26 that she "looked back." It may seem little, but it reveals a great deal about her character. She directly disobeyed the clear command of God's messenger just given a few verses before that. We read it. I Samuel 15:22-23 says that "to obey is better than sacrifice . . and . . . rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft." She rebelled.
Ominous - very ominous words. In terms of faith, what John said in that last paragraph puts this chapter into a very different perspective. Everyone hearing God's word is confronted with a choice: believe it and obey it, or take the chance of dying.
I wonder if you noticed in these verses, as compared with the rest of the story, that suddenly there is a change in the pronouns from plural to singular. Notice verse 17, "So it came to pass, when they had brought them outside, that he said." One of the messengers speaks. In verse 18 then Lot addresses him and it says in my Bible, "lords." Keil & Delitzsch Commentary says, "No, that word "Lord" is singular." Lord. Adonai - the name of God. Is it the name of Melchizedek? Was Melchizedek the one that was there to destroy the city? If it was not, why did he call him Lord, and why in verses 21 and 22 does He takes the authority to himself to destroy the city? "I cannot do anything until you arrive there. And then it says, "The Lord rained down . ." Is the Lord the same one who was the "I" of the previous verse?
Does that not indicate to you a separation? The godly are delivered from the trial that might indeed cause them a great deal of harm—maybe even take their lives—but they are separated away from those who are set for judgment.
And then Lot argued with them. "No, I don't want to go to a mountain, it's too scary there, let's go to this other place, this little city, Zoar." So the angel says, "Okay, hurry up."
So God yanked them out. Could God spare their lives in the midst of what appears to be something like an atomic, hydrogen destruction? Surely He could, but that's not what He wanted them to do. He wanted them to get out! Flee the area. He didn't expect them to live through that kind of destruction.
