Lot's Daughters

This article appears in this week's Jewish Star

Parsha: What happens when we assume

Parshat Vayera

By Rabbi Avi Billet

Issue of November 6, 2009/ 19 Cheshvan 5770

I always thought the story of Lot’s daughters was not taught in grade school because the material is inappropriate for children.

Reading it again, the initial sentiment still holds true. But an even bigger problem exists: the story makes no logical sense. Zero.

Consider: two daughters escape the Armageddon of their time. According to Rashi (19:31) they thought the world had been destroyed and that they and their father were the only survivors.

Considering his age and that there seem to be no other men, they take matters into their own hands, quickly become pregnant through him and give birth to Moav and Ammon — the fathers of two nations who were so devastating to our people.

It would seem that because of his age they were concerned he would not father another child. So what? If they believed they were the only survivors in the world, their father’s inability to marry and have another child is irrelevant. Even if he could, the son their father might have would be their brother, making a future marriage to him impossible according to most rules of the world.

If they were right in assuming there were no other men in the world to whom they could be married, and that their father was the only option, their focus on his age indicates the necessity for expedience. But what was their long-term plan?

They both had boys. Were they planning to continue to reproduce with their offspring, assuming Daddy would kick the bucket before their children were old enough to become fathers? And what would they have done had they both had girls?

Ramban writes (19:32) that they hoped one would have a girl and the other would have a boy. This is sincere, almost admirable. What lovely intentions. Did they consider alternative possibilities should they not produce their desired gender outcome?

More likely they weren’t really thinking of different permutations. Considering the relationship that existed between Lot and these two daughters, along with the family history of living in Sodom, there were bigger problems than “what will happen to the children born from Daddy?”

Lot offered his daughters to a mob in Sodom in exchange for protecting his mysterious guests. Between them, there seems to have been no love lost over the demise of Lot’s wife. The city of Sodom seems to have been a breeding ground of sexual immorality in which about everything “went.” This is the background for our strange tale.

To their intellectual credit, the girls were pretty sure that in a sober state their father would never go along with their plan. Perhaps that is to Lot’s credit as well.

On the other hand, the Talmud (Nazir 23a) explains that the word “u’v’kumah” (“and when she arose”) — which appears in the context of Lot not knowing of his elders daughter’s deed neither when she went to sleep nor when she woke up — appears in the Torah with dots to indicate that he actually did discover her deed when she woke up. As such, he was at fault when he allowed them to get him drunk the following night, now having full understanding of their intentions.

Ramban records two points of note: a Talmudic opinion that a Noahide is permitted to marry his daughter (Sanhedrin 58b), and a Talmudic defense of Lot (Nazir 23).

But if the midrash is correct that the daughters of Lot felt the destruction was as devastating as the flood (Bereishit Rabba 51:8), making it their duty to repopulate the world, why did they not wait for Divine instruction? If they felt they had been chosen, and they modeled their story on that of Noach, wouldn’t they expect directions from G-d?

How Adam and Chava populated the world beginning with two sons is a topic of one discussion. That Noach had three married sons who could procreate after the flood is a different discussion.

Whether one looks at their intentions as honorable or otherwise, the outcome of their actions produced Ammon and Moav.

As much as we can, we are meant to seek Divine guidance through the Torah and the mesorah (heritage) available to us. When there is no guidance, or the script is not written, what do we do to move on with our lives?

Sometimes we need to do a lot of legwork to find an answer. Sometimes it requires leaving the cave, finding the right person who can help and guide us along the way. And sometimes it means really exploring to see if our assumptions were correct, or if the difficulty in our life was really limited to a small time and place, making it, in the scheme of things, much less of a big deal than we originally thought.

But if we jump to our own conclusions, even if we’re not literally guilty of bringing an Ammon and Moav into this world, we are at least guilty of the same kinds of behavior that lead to a devastation of our people.