This is a continuation of Blood of the Righteous Part 1.
Vayera "And appeared"
Genesis 18:1-22:4
2 Kings 4:1-37
Psalm 11
This week’s Torah portion Vayera gives insight to a city (actually five of them) cited often in Scripture, even in the New Testament. The infamous city is Sodom and its four satellite cities. This was often the case in ancient times: there was a main city, then it was surrounded by smaller satellite towns. In the case of Sodom, the wickedness of Gomorra, Zoar, Admah, and Zevoiim were simply on a smaller scale, but reflective of, the main city of the district. In fact, ancient districts were called a kikar, meaning round, like a kikar, a round loaf of barley. Sodom was likely the center of the round district, or at least the biggest and most influential. In terms of wickedness, Sodom set the example for the others. Lot chose to settle in Sodom even though he’d lived a nomadic life with Avraham and Sarah.
Oddly, Lot retained a modicum of “righteousness” even living in Sodom:
But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will also be false teachers among you, who will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves. Many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of the truth will be maligned; and in their greed they will exploit you with false words; their judgment from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep. For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to pits of darkness, reserved for judgment; and did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a preacher of righteousness, with seven others, when He brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly; and if He condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction by reducing them to ashes, having made them an example to those who would live ungodly lives thereafter; and if He rescued righteous Lot, oppressed by the sensual conduct of unprincipled men (for by what he saw and heard that righteous man, while living among them, felt his righteous soul tormented day after day by their lawless deeds), then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from temptation, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment, and especially those who indulge the flesh in its corrupt desires and despise authority. (2 Pe 2:1-21)
Most of us are thinking: “Ummm…righteous? Compared to what?”
And then we’re probably very thankful that Adonai doesn’t compare us when He judges us, that we have an advocate in Yeshua just as Lot had an advocate in Avraham who would pray for him and intercede. Avraham can possibly teach us something about how to intercede for those who have embedded and surrounded themselves in places of wickedness.
Peter gives us a clue about Lot. Lot benefited from living in Sodom, yet he hadn’t completely lost a sense of morality. The wickedness really did vex him day after day. The real question is why did Lot remain in such a wicked place? Why do any of us refuse to leave things from which we benefit, yet we know in our hearts that it is eaten up with immorality?
We can be a lot like Lot, surrounded by twisted thinking and sin, yet preferring to keep a low profile in order to derive a good income. Lot had held onto some shred of righteous behavior, and he tried to protect the angels by urging them to leave the city square where they would be vulnerable to sexual assault, robbery, torture, and murderous violence. He hadn’t forgotten Avraham and Sarah’s hospitality to strangers and a sense of responsibility to keep them safe.
Unfortunately,