# Remember Lot's Wife: Why Jesus Told Us Not to Forget Her (Genesis 19)

**Author:** Garth Watson
**Published:** 2026-09-29
**Last updated:** 2026-09-29
**Canonical URL:** https://doxa.app/blog/daily-lift-34-genesis-19-15-29

![Dawn light over a pale salt plain with a lone column of white salt rock and a far line of smoking hills, no people, no faces, no text](https://doxa.app/images/blog/daily-lift-34-genesis-19-15-29-hero.jpg)

The sky over Sodom is only just turning grey when the angels start pushing. "Get up! Take your wife and your two daughters who are here, or you will be swept away in the punishment of the city" ([Genesis 19:15](https://doxa.app/bible/GEN/19#v15)).

Lot has known since last night; he carried the warning to his sons-in-law himself. Now it is morning, and he stands in his own house and stays where he is.

"But when Lot hesitated, the men grabbed his hand and the hands of his wife and his two daughters. And they led them safely out of the city, because of the LORD's compassion for them" ([Genesis 19:16](https://doxa.app/bible/GEN/19#v16)).

Four people leave Sodom each held by a stranger's hand. Genesis gives the reason in one plain phrase, the LORD's compassion, and says nothing about anything Lot did.

Jesus reaches out the same way. On a lake at night, Peter is sinking and cries, "Lord, save me!" ([Matthew 14:30](https://doxa.app/bible/MAT/14#v30)). "Immediately Jesus reached out His hand and took hold of Peter" ([Matthew 14:31](https://doxa.app/bible/MAT/14#v31)). Lot hesitated and Peter doubted, and in both stories the LORD's hand took hold of them before the fire or the water did.

## Why did Lot hesitate to leave Sodom?

Outside the gate the orders are short. "Run for your lives! Do not look back, and do not stop anywhere on the plain! Flee to the mountains, or you will be swept away!" ([Genesis 19:17](https://doxa.app/bible/GEN/19#v17)).

Lot argues for a town close by: "is it not a small place?" ([Genesis 19:20](https://doxa.app/bible/GEN/19#v20)). The angel lets him have it, and the town keeps his plea as its name, Zoar, *small*.

Years before, Lot had looked out over this plain and seen it "well watered like the garden of the LORD, like the land of Egypt" ([Genesis 13:10](https://doxa.app/bible/GEN/13#v10)), all the way to Zoar. He has chosen by what looked good ever since, and even now he wants to pick the place himself.

The sun is up when he reaches Zoar. "Then the LORD rained down sulfur and fire on Sodom and Gomorrah" ([Genesis 19:24](https://doxa.app/bible/GEN/19#v24)).

"But Lot's wife looked back, and she became a pillar of salt" ([Genesis 19:26](https://doxa.app/bible/GEN/19#v26)). She had been led out by the hand. She heard the same order as Lot, *do not look back*, and she turned toward the city anyway.

## What did Jesus mean by "Remember Lot's wife"?

Jesus used her to warn His disciples about the day He returns: "let no one in the field return for anything he has left behind" ([Luke 17:31](https://doxa.app/bible/LUK/17#v31)). Then three words: "Remember Lot's wife!" ([Luke 17:32](https://doxa.app/bible/LUK/17#v32)). And the reason: "Whoever tries to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will preserve it" ([Luke 17:33](https://doxa.app/bible/LUK/17#v33)).

He asks us to remember her. She heard what God said and kept her eyes on what she was leaving.

Someone else was looking at Sodom that morning. "Early the next morning, Abraham got up and returned to the place where he had stood before the LORD" ([Genesis 19:27](https://doxa.app/bible/GEN/19#v27)). The day before, on that ground, he had pleaded for the city and heard God answer him six times. He goes back there first, and from there he sees "the smoke rising from the land like smoke from a furnace" ([Genesis 19:28](https://doxa.app/bible/GEN/19#v28)).

Then Genesis says what had been true all night. "So when God destroyed the cities of the plain, He remembered Abraham, and He brought Lot out of the catastrophe that destroyed the cities where he had lived" ([Genesis 19:29](https://doxa.app/bible/GEN/19#v29)). Abraham had stood before the LORD and talked with Him, and God kept hold of the man and of everything said between them, which is what it means to know God and be known by Him.

So go back to the place where God has spoken with you. For most of us it is a page: a verse underlined in pencil, an encouragement someone shared that you wrote down with the date. Read it again this morning.

Where is the place you go back to, where God has spoken with you before?

Deeper study today in the Doxa Deeper Dive: the odd Hebrew word for Lot's lingering, the furnace smoke Israel saw again at Sinai, and what it meant to them that God remembered Abraham. [Read it here.](https://doxa.app/blog/daily-deeper-dive-34-genesis-19-15-29)