Lot and His Daughters: Why Their Sons Are in Jesus' Line (Genesis 19)

Lot does not stay long in Zoar. The small town he begged the angel for starts to frighten him, "for he was afraid to stay in Zoar" (Genesis 19:30), so he takes his two daughters up into the mountains, the same mountains he told the angel he could never reach, and the three of them live in a cave.

Not long ago he sat in the gateway of Sodom. Now he has a cave, two daughters and a supply of wine.

The older daughter does the thinking. "Our father is old, and there is no man in the land to sleep with us, as is the custom over all the earth" (Genesis 19:31). "Come, let us get our father drunk with wine so we can sleep with him and preserve his line" (Genesis 19:32).

These are the daughters Lot offered to the crowd at his door in Sodom.

What happened to Lot after Sodom?

Nobody in these nine verses asks God anything, and God is never named. Abraham, who had pleaded with the LORD for this family, was still in the land. The God who "led them safely out of the city, because of the LORD's compassion for them" (Genesis 19:16) had held their hands on the way out of Sodom. The plan gets made in a cave, out of fear, with that rescue not long behind them.

Twice Genesis says the same thing about Lot: "he was not aware when she lay down or when she got up" (Genesis 19:33). The Hebrew behind "was not aware" is lo yada, he did not know, the ordinary verb for knowing a person and the one Scripture uses for knowing God. The last thing Genesis tells us about Lot is that he did not know what was happening in his own family. Genesis records nothing more that Lot said or did.

Hold that beside a psalm. "O LORD, You have searched me and known me" (Psalms 139:1). "You know when I sit and when I rise" (Psalms 139:2). Lot slept through the lying down and the getting up. God is awake to every one of yours.

How does Genesis 19 connect to Jesus?

Two sons are born. "He is the father of the Moabites of today" (Genesis 19:37), and the younger's son "is the father of the Ammonites of today" (Genesis 19:38). Centuries later a widow from Moab named Ruth follows her Israelite mother-in-law home and says, "your people will be my people, and your God will be my God" (Ruth 1:16). Matthew puts her in the family of Jesus: "Boaz the father of Obed by Ruth" (Matthew 1:5). A few generations on, King Solomon's son Rehoboam is on the same list (Matthew 1:7), and "His mother's name was Naamah the Ammonite" (1 Kings 14:21). Each of the sons from the cave has a descendant in the line of the Messiah. A Moabite woman who chose the God of Israel was carried into His Son's own family tree.

That is the whole difference between Lot's end and Ruth's beginning. One family planned in the dark and forgot the God who had just rescued it. Ruth heard about Him, took Him as her God, and was known by Him. Knowing God and being known by Him is the reason we keep what He says.

So when you are frightened and it feels like there is no one left in the land, read back what God has already said to you before you settle the plan. Get out the verse you underlined, or the encouragement someone shared that you wrote down with its date, and read it over the thing you are about to do. Then ask Him about it.

What plan are you making this week that you have not yet set beside what God has said to you?

Deeper study today in the Doxa Deeper Dive: the one Hebrew verb that frames the whole chapter, the "way" the daughters followed, and how the first readers heard this story on the plains of Moab. Read it here.