ולוט יושב בשער סדום, “and Lot was sitting in the public square of Sodom.” He distanced himself somewhat from the residential areas of the born and bred Sodomites. Alternately, the Torah writes these words to forestall your asking how he managed to bring the angels to his home without being afraid of being seen. When the angels arrived they found him a good distance away from the local citizenry [it was evening, after all. Ed.] He was therefore confident that he would escape detection when bringing guests to his house.

הנה נא אדו-ני, “Look here, sirs;” a courteously phrased request. In other words, “seeing that my house is nearby, please honour me by visiting with me.”

והשכמתם והלכתם לדרככם, “you may rise early and continue on your way.” He was not going to detain them until the sun was shining. He hoped thereby to escape the watchful eyes of the Sodomites also in the morning. He was not worried that they would notice them at night, or, that they would consider these men as passing through without stopping in the town.

ויפצר בם מאד, “he urged them very strongly.” They had first refused, in order to increase his merit if he kept insisting to host them.

ונדעה אותם, “so that we can become intimate with them.” They meant to indulge in homosexual relations with these strangers. According to the plain meaning of the text, they wanted to examine if these men were spies.

הנה לי שתי בנות, “I have two daughters;“ whom I am willing for you to be intimate with.

אשר לא ידעו איש, “who have never yet been intimate with a man.” Actually, he should have phrased it as: ”with whom no man has as yet been intimate.” This was the phrase used in Genesis 24,16 (Rivkah) ואיש לא ידעה, “no man had been intimate with her.” The reason why he chose the phrasing he did was to hint (subconsciously) that eventually they would take the initiative in sleeping with a man, their own father. (Genesis 19,31-36)

אוציאה נא אתהן, “I will bring them outside.” While the Torah credits Lot with the extent to which he went to protect his guests from the local mob, we also hear about his moral depravity, i.e. that a father uses his own daughters as bargaining chips to trade one abomination for another. Clearly, casual sex, without the sanctifying element of marriage, was a minor misdemeanour in his eyes. Lot had been under the impression that his guests were men of flesh and blood. As soon as he became aware of their true identities, and that the reason they had come was to destroy the city on the one hand, and to save him at the same time, he did whatever the angels asked him to do.

ויפצרו באיש בלוט מאד, “they coaxed the man Lot urgently;” Nachmanides claims that the word ויפצרו, [i.e. the root פצר, Ed.] only occurs as having a positive meaning, i.e. an attempt to calm someone down, to reconcile one’s differences with a person. When Lot proved impervious to the Sodomites’ attempts to compromise with him, they set about breaking down his door. Alternatively, seeing that Lot stood firm in front of the door and they did not want to harm him personally, they told him to get out of heir way, גש הלאה, i.e. that he should go elsewhere.

עוד מי לך פה, חתן ובניך ובנותך, “who else belonging to your family is here; a son-in-law, your sons or your unmarried daughters?” According to Rashi, the word עוד means “apart from your wife who qualifies for being saved because she is part of you.” Although Lot did not have sons, only daughters, the angels asked in the manner ordinary people ask such a question, mentioning both sons and daughters. Ibn Ezra understands the word בנים as a question if Lot had sons-in-law who were as dear to him as sons would have been. Nachmanides presumes that it was quite likely that he had grown up sons who were married, however Lot spoke to his sons-in-law first as he was not sure they would heed his advice to flee. Concerning his sons, he was pretty sure they would heed him if he asked them to leave town immediately. When his sons-in-law laughed at him and time was being wasted in the meantime, dawn rose and there was no more time left, or he too would have been killed.

כי משחיתים אנחנו את המקום הזה, “for we are about to destroy this place.” Nachmanides comments that surely there are many nations whose citizens are evil, wicked, etc., and nothing even remotely as drastic seems to happen to them. What happened to the people of Sodom was linked to their being located in the Holy Land, a land that has less tolerance for wickedness than any other place on earth. In the course of history it has spat out many peoples who have made their home in that land because those peoples never adjusted their lifestyles to the higher standards for human behaviour which are standard requirement for a successful residence in that land over a period of time.

ויחזיקו האנשים בידו, “the men took hold of his hand, etc.” The plural mode of ויחזיקו is puzzling, seeing that only one of the angels had been charged with saving Lot, the other having been assigned the duty to bring about the destruction. Perhaps the involvement of the second angel in saving Lot was inevitable seeing that he was unable to commence with his task until Lot was clear of the city. In other words, saving Lot was part of the process of the destruction of Sodom. Interestingly, the Torah reverts to the use of the singular mode for the angel’s activities as soon as Lot was clear of the city. Compare verse 17 כהוציאם, ”when he had taken them out.” Seeing that Lot himself was not so clear about which angel had which function to perform, [they had said: “we are about to destroy,’ Ed.] he addressed the two angels in the plural mode when asking not to be made to climb the mountain to get himself into safety. Compare אליהם in verse 18, and “adonay” instead of “adoni.” On the other hand, seeing that one angel had proven to be the one who had saved him, he reverted to use of the singular mode when saying ותגדל חסדך, “your (sing.) kindness has been great.” (verse 19). Seeing that originally the angels had used the plural mode about their task, i.e. הנני משחיתים, the angel whose task it was to carry out the destruction, now responds to Lot saying that he could not begin his real task until Lot had reached safety.

ויחזיקו האנשים, according to Ibn Ezra these words prove that Lot had become immobilized from fright and that the angels had to help him to get moving. Nachmanides explains the verse as similar to Exodus 12,33 when the Egyptians urging the Israelites to get out of Egypt without delay, are described by the words ותחזק מצרים על העם למהר לשלחם. No doubt, the Egyptians did not literally take the Israelites by their hands and escorted them to the border.

בחמלת ה' עליו, “out of G’d’s pity on him.” Not because he had merits that would have entitled him to be saved. Alternately, the use of the word חמלה, “pity,” is to justify the angels grabbing him by the hand before G’d’s pity had expired and he would become a victim together with his townspeople.

אל תבט אחריך “do not look behind you!” So that you will not lose momentum in your flight and the destruction would catch up with you.

ותבט אשתו מאחריו, “His wife looked behind him.” According to Ibn Ezra, the suffix in the word מאחריו refers to Lot. Rashi claims that the suffix refers to her having ignored the angel’s command. In Pirkey de Rabbi Eliezer it is said that the angels said to both Lot, his wife and daughters, not to look behind, as the Presence of the Lord raining sulphur and fire on the Sodomites was descending on earth immediately behind them. Lot’s wife Iddit, who was concerned about the fate of her married daughters, ignored the instructions, and, as a result, was turned into a pillar of salt. According to this version, the masculine suffix in the word מאחריו would refer to the שכינה, the manifestation of G’d’s presence.

ותהי נציב מלח. “she turned into a pillar of salt.” Nachmanides (on verse 17) explains that mere looking at polluted air containing all kinds of harmful ingredients transfers such harmful images to the brain and thence to the rest of the body. The effect is liable to be lethal. [The Talmud claims that if one sees the reflection of a rabid dog in the surface of waters of, say a lake, the effect is also liable to be deadly. Ed.] Nachmanides speculates that the angel causing all this destruction had taken up position between the earth and the sky. An effective medication may be to isolate oneself so that one is no longer exposed to the harmful influences either visually or through inhaling them. This would explain what happened to the wife of Lot by attributing it to natural causes, rather than assuming that G’d performed a miracle in order to kill her. My sainted father, the רא'ש, was troubled about the timing of the death of Lot’s wife. From the plain meaning of the text it appears that the rain of fire and sulphur did not commence until Lot had safely reached the small town of Tzoar. This is also borne out by the description of the events in Pirkey de Rabbi Eliezer chapter 25. If the destruction did not commence until Lot was in Tzoar, why would his wife be punished more severely than the people in Sodom? Rabbi Ysrael answered my father by letter that there is no doubt that the destruction did not commence until Lot had reached Tzoar, and that his wife had lagged behind so that the sulphur and fire struck her. The Torah only revealed to us the reason why she had lagged behind; she was always trailing behind her husband, and the suffix מאחוריו describes that she was at all times behind him. The reason why she kept lagging behind was that she constantly looked backwards hoping that her daughters would join her. This also explains the angel saying: ”do not look behind you.” If correct, this means that he did not forbid her the looking behind per se, but warned her that her lagging behind due to her looking behind was liable to turn her into a victim of the destructive forces overtaking Sodom and that valley. If Nachmanides’ explanation were correct, i.e. that looking at the air behind her were to cause her lethal consequences, the angel should have said: “do not look behind you so that the harmful substances will not cling to you.” The fact that the angel added the words “do not stand still in the entire valley,” proves conclusively that time was of the essence, not what he or she would see when turning around. Lot followed the instructions of the angel, whereas his wife did not, with fatal results to her. The Torah reveals that Lot’s wife died as a result of disregarding the angel’s instructions. If not for this, she would have been saved, just as her unmarried daughters were saved. The whole story may have been related by the Torah to explain what prompted Lot’s daughters to sleep with him, i.e. the death of his wife.

בהפוך את הערים אשר ישב בהן לוט, “when He overturned the cities wherein Lot had dwelled.” The meaning is as if the Torah had written: “in one of which Lot had dwelled.”

כי ירא לשבת בצוער, “for he was afraid to dwell permanently in Tzoar. According to Rashi he was afraid to live in a town so close to Sodom. Nachmanides disagrees, writing that his fear was based on the fact that the decree of destruction had included Tzoar, though the timing had been amended. He felt that the angel would not extend the grace period much longer. This is also why the daughters were convinced that there would be no other men left on earth as possible marriage partners for them. (compare 31) Some say that Lot’s daughters definitely did not think that what had happened in Sodom had been worldwide. They only thought that there would not be any men willing to marry them, seeing they had been part of the condemned population of Sodom. They assumed that such men would feel they had been genetically harmed so that they could not bear healthy children, if at all. As a result, they would die without children unless they would be impregnated by their father.

לכה נשקה את אבינו יין, “let us give our father wine to drink preparatory to sleeping with him.” Even though, halachically speaking, it was permissible for a father to have sexual relations with his daughter, so that there was no legal impediment to their father marrying them, it had become a universally accepted norm after the deluge that fathers would not touch their daughters, sexually. The matter is discussed in Horiyot, where deviates were described as being guilty of committing an abomination.

ותקרא שמו מואב, “she named him Moav, (by my father.)” A most inappropriate name for a child, tainting him for the future. She was punished by the Torah for naming her son thus, by the Torah only forbidding the Israelites to oppress the Moabites and Ammonites and to wage war against them, but enslaving them was not forbidden. Even so, the sages say that the older daughter who initiated sleeping with her father a single night before her sister was rewarded by G’d in that from her issue Ruth joined the Jewish people, whereas Naamah from Ammon who became the wife of Rechavam, son of Solomon, did not join the Jewish people until four generations later. Still, this did not exonerate her from the shame of naming her son in such a way. (Bereshit Rabbah 51,10, and Midrash Hagadol on Genesis)