Here is one thought about why Lot's wife looked back:
The reason that Lot's wife turned back to Sodom was that she was a lost woman and saw only the material, only the hear-and-now. Her mind was not on God, her sin, or on the things of eternity. She therefore was not afraid of God, because God was not in her thoughts. It was the physical, the sensual, the emotional pleasures of this world that she was after. She wanted sin, not God.
It seems like her disobedience lasted only a split second for when Lot's wife looked back what she saw resulted in her physical change into a pillar of salt. So why a pillar of salt? Read on...
Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven;And he overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground.But his [Lot's] wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.
-- Genesis 19: 24-26 (KJV)
God has finally had it with Sodom, not to mention Gomorrah. But his confidant Abraham hopes to stave off the city's destruction, if only because his nephew Lot is still living there.
Applying all the rhetoric he can muster, Abraham persuades the Lord to spare Lot and his family, but not the city. So on the eve of destruction, the Lord dispatches two angels to get them out while the getting's good. But the angels attach a few strings to the rescue: "Escape for thy life," one says; "look not behind thee, neither stay thou in all the plain; escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed" (Genesis 19: 17).
So you can't say they weren't warned. On schedule, Yahweh rains down his famous "fire and brimstone" -- a phrase dating in English to a rendering of this passage circa 1300. But, if just to prove that warnings can backfire, Lot's wife lets curiosity get the better of her: looking back on the horrible destruction, she is instantly turned to a pillar of salt. And that's the last we hear of her.
Why salt? you ask. Why not look back? you might reasonably inquire. What the heck is "brimstone"? you've always wondered. Let's try answering these in reverse order.
"Brimstone," simply put, used to be the common name for sulphur, but its meaning was refined under biblical influence (the influence more of Revelation 19: 20, which speaks of a hellish "lake of fire burning with brimstone," than of this passage). The word is employed today almost exclusively in allusions to God's fiery wrath, especially when channeled by righteous mouthpieces. ("Fire and brimstone," by the way, is most likely a poetic way of saying "sulphurous fire," the translation given by The Anchor Bible.)
Why not look back? Well, why not eat of the tree of knowledge? Because God commands it. Furthermore, it seems that viewing the cities' destruction would be more than man or woman could bear -- turning to stone being perhaps a concrete metaphor for terror. (Compare the Greek myth of the Gorgons, and think of common metaphors like "scared stiff" and "petrified.") In short, as E. A. Speiser puts it, "God's mysterious workings must not be looked at by man."
Why a pillar of salt? Because mineral pillars abounded in the region around Sodom and Gomorrah, and (as we shall see in "The Salt of the Earth") salt was to the Jews a most notable mineral. In other words, J describes the origins of these strange pillars with a folktale related to other ancient myths in which various individuals turn to pillars of salt when they see a god.
-- Genesis 19: 24-26 (KJV)
God has finally had it with Sodom, not to mention Gomorrah. But his confidant Abraham hopes to stave off the city's destruction, if only because his nephew Lot is still living there.
Applying all the rhetoric he can muster, Abraham persuades the Lord to spare Lot and his family, but not the city. So on the eve of destruction, the Lord dispatches two angels to get them out while the getting's good. But the angels attach a few strings to the rescue: "Escape for thy life," one says; "look not behind thee, neither stay thou in all the plain; escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed" (Genesis 19: 17).
So you can't say they weren't warned. On schedule, Yahweh rains down his famous "fire and brimstone" -- a phrase dating in English to a rendering of this passage circa 1300. But, if just to prove that warnings can backfire, Lot's wife lets curiosity get the better of her: looking back on the horrible destruction, she is instantly turned to a pillar of salt. And that's the last we hear of her.
Why salt? you ask. Why not look back? you might reasonably inquire. What the heck is "brimstone"? you've always wondered. Let's try answering these in reverse order.
"Brimstone," simply put, used to be the common name for sulphur, but its meaning was refined under biblical influence (the influence more of Revelation 19: 20, which speaks of a hellish "lake of fire burning with brimstone," than of this passage). The word is employed today almost exclusively in allusions to God's fiery wrath, especially when channeled by righteous mouthpieces. ("Fire and brimstone," by the way, is most likely a poetic way of saying "sulphurous fire," the translation given by The Anchor Bible.)
Why not look back? Well, why not eat of the tree of knowledge? Because God commands it. Furthermore, it seems that viewing the cities' destruction would be more than man or woman could bear -- turning to stone being perhaps a concrete metaphor for terror. (Compare the Greek myth of the Gorgons, and think of common metaphors like "scared stiff" and "petrified.") In short, as E. A. Speiser puts it, "God's mysterious workings must not be looked at by man."
Why a pillar of salt? Because mineral pillars abounded in the region around Sodom and Gomorrah, and (as we shall see in "The Salt of the Earth") salt was to the Jews a most notable mineral. In other words, J describes the origins of these strange pillars with a folktale related to other ancient myths in which various individuals turn to pillars of salt when they see a god.
Perhaps then we can assess that in fact she saw God and it was too much for her physical body to take. Thus she was incinerated but turned into a pillar of salt as a testimony to the "justice" of God. So another thought, who in turn looked back at her and saw her turn into a pillar of salt? What are your thoughts on this one?
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