CONTENTS
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SODOM AND GOMORRA
REVISITED
Something about this story bothered me. It began to bother me when I first started doing research on the Bible and homosexuality. It probably bothered me earlier, on one of those occasions when I started to read the Bible through, but I was trying to be a good Southern Baptist back then and wouldn't recognize it. The something that bothered me was the way God was portrayed.
Now, I had come to know God in terms of the many "omni's." God is omnipresent, present everywhere at once; omniscient, meaning knowing everything; and so on. Then, there were the proof texts, such as Jesus' comment that God knows the number of the hairs on our head. However, the God portrayed in the story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorra didn't fit this description. This God had to come down from the heavens and visit Sodom and Gomorra to determine if the outcry against those cities was true. This meant that the God who destroyed Sodom and Gomorra was not omnipresent, nor omniscient. This God was limited by space and time and was limited in his knowledge.
The next thing that bothered me was the name of the city. I had already determined that the KJV word "sodomy" did not refer to homosexual congress in the Hebrew, but to male temple prostitution. I decided to check out the word "Sodom," or the name of the city. The name was pronounced similar to our "Sodom," which means that the KJV, or some previous version transliterated it, meaning created a word for the English language that was similar to the sound of the word being "translated." However, the meaning was different. "Sodom," in the Hebrew, means "the burnt place."
It took a while for this one to sink in. I was still bound by the Southern Baptist doctrine of an inspired Bible, one without error. But, eventually I realized the importance of this bit of knowledge. It means that the city of Sodom was named after her destruction, for the method of her destruction. It means that quite likely, the Israelites never knew the city, or why that city was destroyed. They possibly just knew that the city was destroyed by fire and brimstone, perhaps by a volcano.
There was yet one more piece of evidence, before the meaning of all this began to come clear. That piece of evidence was the name of Sodom's sister city, Gomorra. In the Hebrew, "Gomorra" is a place of habitation, a place of culture, and therefor a place of moral or ethical decay. Again, Gomorra is not a real city, one that was known and experienced. Instead, Gomorra would be a mythical city, one that was named for the sake of the story she was featured in. Perhaps Gomorra never existed, but was created just for the sake of that story.
What purpose would such a story serve?
Modern scholarship has determined that Genesis took its present shape during the Babylonian captivity. In that exile, the Jewish scribes combined the various myths and stories and wove them into a comprehensive whole. At that point, they might have included the story of Sodom and Gomorra's destruction for the sake of making an editorial statement about Lot. Lot was the nephew of Abraham who had separated from Abraham after they arrived in the "promised land." He moved toward Sodom, was captured and enslaved by that city, rescued by his uncle Abraham, and in spite of this, continued in his migration toward Sodom eventually becoming a citizen of that city. The city of Sodom became symbolic of backsliding, or falling away from the faith. Lot backslid so far that he ended his infamous life by becoming the father of the Ammonites and the Moabites, two tribes that were constant enemies of Israel. He became the father, or ancestor of these tribes by having incestual relations with his two surviving daughters.
However, the story existed long before it was woven into the story of Lot.
The purpose of this story appears to be to make a comment on the evil nature of the big city. We have seen this attitude throughout the history of Western Civilization. This attitude continues to exist today, in my home county, where the large county seat is seen as consuming all the tax dollars and leaving nothing for the rural towns and farmers that make up most of the rest of that county.
A very similar attitude existed in Israel, during the reigns of David and his son, Solomon. David created a new governmental seat in Jerusalem and made provisions for the central temple of the faith to be built there. Solomon carried out those plans. To accomplish this, he taxed the outlying farmers heavily and conscripted their strongest sons to be workmen. He also continued his father's policy, that the great ceremonies of the faith, Passover, Atonement, as well as the constant sacrifices for sins, could only be conducted in the central temple, which was in Jerusalem.
This placed an inordinate burden on the Northern tribes. If you think we complain about taxes now, consider the plight of the citizens of Israel. The money taken to build the new temple as well as the lavish palace left them with just enough to survive. Their sons, who were needed to work the fields, were also taken and forced into labor on these structures. The final insult was that if they wanted to be faithful, they had to journey, sometimes for weeks, just to practice their faith. The Northern Tribes were so outraged at this that they withdrew from the nation shortly after Solomon's death.
I believe that the story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorra was written during this time. The big city, Jerusalem, had caused much pain and suffering. They needed something, explaining how evil the big city, all big cities, would be. The story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorra appears to fit that need. If I am correct, this story was not written to condemn homosexuality. It would have been written to condemn the city. From that perspective, the expressed desire to rape the visitors was included as proof of the corruption of the city. However, that corruption, from the perspective of the writers, would include much more than that. In fact, their description of that corruption is included as the story opens, in the chapter proceeding the actual story of the destruction. The outcry of the oppressed was so great that God needed to leave His residence and come down to see for Himself.
From the perspective of the writer of this story, the city oppresses. This was enough reason for the Northern Tribes to bow out of the compact with Israel. Judah and Benjamin, the two Southern Tribes, could have their oppressive city if they wanted to. The ten Northern Tribes would exist without the city which stole their livelihood, conscripted their sons and dictated their faith. That way, they could follow God in the fashion they felt was best.
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