Lot’s Wife

Have you ever wondered why Lot’s wife turned and looked back after she had been told not to?

She isn’t mentioned in Genesis until after Abram and Lot went their separate ways because they each had so many cattle that they were having a hard time feeding them all. Abram gave Lot his choice of the land and Lot chose the Jordan Valley, because it was well watered. So Lot pitched his tent toward Sodom.

The next time we hear of Lot he had been taken captive by some foreign kings and Abram had to rescue him. But he went right back to Sodom because when we next read of him, Lot is there at the city gate, when the angels of the Lord show up.

By this time, Lot is married and has two virgin daughters and two sons-in-law who were engaged to the daughters. He must have married a woman from Sodom.

She was probably born in Sodom. Her mother and father, brothers and sisters, all her earthly possessions, were there in Sodom. I can hear her now. “Why are you making me leave my family? What about my mother’s china and crystal, and the embroidered tapestries that hang in my home? What about my lovely garden with roses and sweet vegetables?”
“Well, I don’t want to live like Abraham and Sarah, in a dusty tent, drinking out of goatskins. Why do we have to leave it all right now? I’ve got it all fixed up just the way I like it. Well, I might have to go, Lot, but I don’t have to like it.”
I can just hear her griping to Lot as they and their daughters leave Sodom. Then just as they got far enough away from the city to be safe, Lot’s wife just had to look back one more time. Yes, she heard the angels just as Lot did, but surely the angels didn’t mean her. Surely what they said didn’t apply to her. She didn’t intend to go back, she only wanted to see her home one more time but that final look back cost her life.

“What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?
Mark 8:36 NIV.

She loved it all too much. She paid with her life.