Abraham did four good things for Lot: 1) “Abraham went and Lot went with him” (Genesis 12:4); 2) “Also Lot who went with Abraham had flocks, herds, and tents” (Gen. 13:5); 3) “Abraham brought back his kinsman, Lot, with his possessions” (Gen. 14:16); 4) “God remembered Abraham when he destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah; so he sent Lot from amidst the upheaval” (Gen. 19:29) (Bereishit Rabbah 41:36).

Because Lot practiced hospitality, he merited prophecy and escaped the destruction of Sodom (Otzar HaMidrashim 37).

“Lot’s wife became a pillar of salt” (Genesis 19:26) because she had sinned with salt the night the angels came to Lot (Bereishit Rabbah 51:5).

Abraham’s nephew, Lot, seems, throughout the pages of Israel’s destiny, a confused and passive figure. Indeed, without the protection of the righteous Abraham, who rescues Lot on numerous occasions, Lot most certainly would have perished with the evil-doers of Sodom and Gomorrah. However, Lot is saved from destruction and his story survives as one of the more instructive narratives in the book of Genesis.

Nowhere is Lot perceived, as Noah was earlier, as “righteous in his generations.” But he was the son of Abraham’s brother, Haran, who had died before Abraham and Sarah’s great journey to Canaan. Abraham took responsibility and had compassion for Lot, despite his nephew’s provocative and often immoral behavior, because Haran had been faithful to Abraham. But it was not an easy task. Because Lot, fitting a modern idiom to the Biblical text, was “all over the place.” He was with Abraham and Sarah at the beginning of the journey to Canaan; he accompanied his uncle and aunt to Egypt; he was given the plain of Jordan upon which to graze his flocks and pitched his tents as far as Sodom.

Ironically, it was in Sodom that Lot, perceiving true evil, reached his highest level of morality. Impervious to Uncle Abraham’s attempts to save that evil population from Divine destruction, Lot was hospitable to two angels who came to the gate of the city. Taking a chapter from Abraham’s book of etiquette, he fed the angels, again without knowledge that one angel had come to destroy Sodom and the other to save Lot and his immediate family. A curious and disturbing scene ensues. The Sodomites angrily intrude upon Lot’s graciousness, and Lot offers his daughters to them in order to protect his guests. Fortunately, the danger is averted, but Lot, his wife, and two daughters flee the doomed city. On the road, despite being commanded by the angel not to look back, Lot’s wife (she is forever unnamed) does, and is instantly salinized.

Lot seeks shelter in a cave with his two daughters, and becomes besotted. Slightly ignorant of their incestuous plan, he sires two children who are fated to become the progenitors of Israel’s national adversaries, Moab and Ammon. And yet despite Lot’s degradation, a divine spark remains hidden, to be rekindled many generations later in the person of Ruth the Moabitess, who counts King David as her most fabled descendant.