But Lot successfully
defended them. And in the morning the angels warned Lot to escape, but Lot
hesitated, though finally he did escape to Zoar.
"Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from
the Lord out of heaven."
"And Abraham gat up early in the morning to the place where he stood
before the Lord:
"And he looked toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and toward all the land of the
plain, and beheld, and, lo, the smoke of the country went up as the smoke
of a furnace."
We must always remember, in trying to reconstruct the past, that these
traditions were not matters of possible doubt to Moses, or indeed to any
Israelite. They were as well established facts to them as would be the
record of volcanic eruptions now. Therefore it would not have astonished
Moses more that the Lord should meet him on the slope of Horeb, than that
the Lord should have met his ancestor Abraham on the plain of Mamre.
Moses' doubts and perplexities lay in another direction. Moses did not
question, as did his great ancestress, that his god could do all he
promised, if he had the will. His anxiety lay in his doubt as to God's
steadiness of purpose supposing he promised; and this doubt was increased
by his lack of confidence in his own countrymen. The god of Abraham was a
requiring deity with a high moral standard, and the Hebrews were at least
in part somewhat akin to a horde of semi-barbarous nomads, much more
likely to fall into offences resembling those of Sodom than to render
obedience to a code which would strictly conform to the requirements which
alone would ensure Moses support, supposing he accepted a task which,
after all, without divine aid, might prove to be impossible to perform.
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