Is it not interesting how many times it is mentioned that this destruction is from the Lord? This is total destruction.
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.
In this light, if we think of Lot’s wife’s looking back—she might have even turned back—there are some people who think that she did not just gaze back over her shoulder, but that she actually turned around going back in the other direction. Who knows why? Maybe because of her family she left behind—but whether physically or mentally she began to return.
Her actions may have become more a repudiation of God’s will, as if she could turn back God’s will by her own power. I do not know what she could have gained, because she was essentially committing suicide—either God would kill her, or she would kill herself in the destruction. What she was saying was that she loved that society rather than the will of God, which for her was to accompany Lot and her two daughters to a new place. So her turning back was actually a willful rejection of God’s instruction. She had turned aside, and left the way and so it was rebellion, pure and simple. In that sense, she deserved what she got. The instructions were clear. She disobeyed.
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.
We find in a previous verse, verse 23, the sun had risen upon the earth when Lot entered Zoar. The Lord did not rain down the fire and brimstone on Sodom until Lot was safely inside the city of Zoar. Where was Lot's wife? She was not with him. Where was she? She was still out on the plain.
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 from behind 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.
Now, this was not just a spur of the moment mistake to hear some noise and turn around in astonishment or surprise. No, no. Way before she had turned around, she had stopped moving forward. She did not want to leave in the first place. It likely started with maybe just a slightly slower pace as Lot and the two daughters kept moving on, but her pace slowed a little more. She had fallen behind a good ways and she was spiritually disoriented. Her brain was not functioning. She died because she had a longing to retain that life she had come from, that former life. She had grudgingly left in the first place, taken each step reluctantly, and she longed for her former life.
Said another way, she drew back from her relationship with God and His promise to save her. She had left behind her family and friends, she had left behind all her possessions, the amenities of a modern city. She had likely grown up in the city. It was probably all she knew and her reluctance to leave resulted in her being a good bit behind Lot and her daughters when that fire and brimstone came down and incinerated everything.
