Not a Moment Earlier

This can also be seen at the Jewish Star
Parshat Vayera

Avraham has three visitors. Two of them go on to Sodom to destroy the city and save Lot.

When their presence in Lot’s house is discovered, the townspeople come, per their Sodomite way, to “take pleasure” with the unwanted guests (19:5). Lot defends his visitors and even goes so far as to offer his daughters to the mob in order to save them.

Lot’s counteroffer is abhorrent, and the visitors grab Lot, bring him inside (19:10), while the mob outside is struck with blindness so they can do no harm (19:11).

Why were the people of Sodom struck with blindness? This is Sodom — a city that is going to be overturned in a short while, at which time, everyone, including the newly blind, will die.

Why not just kill them now? Get them out of the way, avoid the confusion and make the message clear to Lot’s family that the visitors are on a serious mission..

There are a number of reasons we can suggest why the provocateurs were not struck down at Lot’s doorstep.

Homiletically, we can quote the rabbinic dictum that “blind is considered dead” (Nedarim 64b). This can immediately be rejected, however, because when a person is to be punished with death, blindness is never another option to make it “as if the person is dead.” Tosafot says that the categories of people who are “like dead” are those who have more difficult lives, regarding whom the rest of us need to beseech G-d for mercy on their behalf.

The blindness the Sodomites received was what they were meant to receive  — which leads to our second suggestion. God’s modus operandi is “middah k’neged middah” — measure for measure. In this case, the people of Sodom looked at something they shouldn’t have: Lot’s guests. The people of Sodom then came to their abominable conclusion of how they’d treat Lot’s guests, and were punished by losing their sight, the sense that brought on their mob-mentality.

A third suggestion is that the blindness was incurred for a different reason of middah k’neged middah.

Sodomites were notorious for torturing those they considered “unwanted” before they died. The blindness the Sodomites suffered was torture before their death.

Perhaps the most suggestive perspective is that the Sodomites could not be killed because it was not yet their time to die. In other words, even in Sodom, even in a place that is doomed, every minute of life is precious.

The angels told Lot they could not overturn the city until Lot was safely out of it. Perhaps others might have had the opportunity to escape in this time, were they willing to contemplate the consequences of their staying put. Lot’s delay was a window for those on the fringes to be saved.

Perhaps for some people, teshuvah (repentance) was never taken off the table as a viable option, were they to merely consider it.

The people of Sodom, of course, could not change their ways. Their evil was too entrenched in their make up, too much a part of who they were, they could not imagine joining a normal society.

The blindness was indeed middah k’neged middah. A people who are so blind that they cannot see the evil of their ways will only merit blindness before the maelstrom hits.

At the same time, G-d’s ways are kindness. They were not meant to die yet. Because of this, their deaths did not come prematurely, at a moment when they were doing their final despicable act of immorality. It came the way it was meant to come, at the predetermined time, and not a moment earlier.