In the next, Genesis 19, the blow of judgment is seen to fall. The angels arrive at Sodom, and Lot shows himself a scholar in the same school of courteous grace as Abraham; but the men of the guilty city justify Jehovah in that unexampled dealing when the sun next went forth on the earth. Lot meanwhile was brought out, and his daughters without their unbelieving husbands; but his wife! – “Remember Lot’s wife” – his wife remains forever the most solemn instance on record of one who was personally outside, but in heart attached to the scene of evil.
Yet Lot delivered is nevertheless but half delivered; and here again we learn how the blessed written word sets forth in great facts the moral judgment of God before the time came to speak with unmistakenable plainness. We had seen sorrowful enough results in the case of Noah, who, drinking of the fruit of the vine to the dishonor of himself, pronounced a curse on a branch of his posterity, though not without a blessing on the rest. It was a curse not causeless but just: nevertheless what a sorrowful thing for a parent’s heart to utter.
So here with Lot, delivered of angels from the worst of associations, even after his deliverance by Abraham, brought out again, but as it were maimed and wounded, to be yet more dishonored. It would be painful if it were needful to say a word of that which follows. Yet was it not without moral profit for Israel to remember the source of a perpetual thorn in their side – the shameful origin of the Moabite and the Ammonite, two nations, neighbors and akin, notorious for continual envy and enmity against the people of God.
The only God marks all in His wisdom. Sin then as now produced a harvest, large and long-continued, if sovereign grace in some cases forbids that it should be a perpetual harvest of misery to those who indulged in it. “He that soweth to the flesh,” no matter who or where or when, “shall of the flesh reap corruption.”