Luke 17:32; Genesis 19:26
Remember Lot’s wife.
His wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.
C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892): It seems to me that Lot had married a heathen woman―Call your attention to her, who, in this case, is “his worse half.”
MATTHEW HENRY (1662-1714): She looked back from behind him. This seemed a small thing, but we are sure, by the punishment of it, that it was a great sin, and exceedingly sinful.
A. W. PINK (1886-1952): Though she had outwardly left Sodom, yet her heart was still there.
C. H. SPURGEON: Lot’s wife could not tear herself away from the world. She had always been in it and had loved it and delighted in it. Though associated with a gracious man, when the time came for decision, she betrayed her true character! Flight without so much as looking back was demanded of her, but this was too much—she did look back and thus proved that she had sufficient presumption in her heart to defy God’s command and risk her all—to give a lingering loveglance at the condemned and guilty world.
MATTHEW HENRY: Probably she hankered after her house and goods in Sodom, and was loth to leave them. Christ intimates this to be her sin; she too much regarded her stuff, Luke 17:31, 32.
C. H. SPURGEON: Lot’s wife had shared in her husband’s errors. It was a great mistake on his part to abandon the outwardly separated life, but she had stayed with him in it and perhaps was the cause of his so doing.
D. L. MOODY (1837-1899): Lot was one of those characters who are easily influenced―and I think, perhaps, that is just the key to his character…So long as he stayed with Abram he got on very well. His mistake was in leaving him.
C. H. SPURGEON: I should not wonder if Lot’s wife influenced him in that way. He was a man of weak mind and while his uncle had him under his wing, he was right enough, except that even then he had what a writer calls, “a lean-to religion”—he did not stand alone, but leaned upon Abraham. When he was married it is probable that his wife assumed the ruling place and guided the way of his life. She began to think that it was a pity that the family should live in such separation, so unfashionable, so rigid, so peculiar and all that.
JOHN ANGELL JAMES (1785-1869): How insidious is the influence of a husband or a wife in decoying the other from the paths of godliness—and into the ways of the world! And in some cases how systematic, persevering, and successful they have been.
C. H. SPURGEON: She tossed her head and cried, “Really! People must mix with society and not keep up old-fashioned, strait-laced ways! You might as well be dead as be shut out from life.” When her husband had an opportunity of getting out of that rigid style by leaving his uncle, she said she would like to go down Sodom way because it would be nice for the girls and give them a taste of something liberal and refined. The old style was all very well for such an antiquated couple as Abraham and Sarah, but Lot and herself belonged to a younger generation and were bound to get into a little society and find eligible matches for their young people. It would be well for them to dress better than they could learn to do if they always kept roaming about like gypsies. You see, Abraham’s people did not study the fashions at all and were a very vulgar sort of shepherds who had no ideas of refinement and politeness. And it was pity that people in Lot’s station in life should always associate with mere sheep-shearers, drovers and the like.
H. A. IRONSIDE (1876-1951): An imperious, dominating woman will drive her husband further from God instead of drawing him to Christ.
C. H. SPURGEON: Nag, nag, nagging, is very, very fagging.
MATTHEW HENRY: It is “a continual dropping,” that is, a continual vexation, Proverbs 27:15.
C. H. SPURGEON: If they got to Sodom there would be nice parties, dances and all sorts of things! Of course the people were a little loose and rather fast—they went to plays where modesty was shocked and gathered in admiration around performers whose lives were openly wanton—but then you see one must be fashionable and wink at a good deal! We cannot expect all people to be saints and, no doubt, they have their good points. By some such talk Mrs. Lot gained her husband over to her way of thinking. They did not mean to actually go into the worst society of Sodom, but they intended to make a careful selection and go only a little way.
R. C. CHAPMAN (1803-1902): It is the nature of sin to obtain great power by little beginnings.
C. H. SPURGEON: Surely they could be trusted to know where to stop. So they pitched the tent towards Sodom where it was within an easy walk of the town—a little separated, but not far. If anything did happen that was very bad they could move away and no harm would be done. It was no doubt wise, they said, to go and see Sodom and know the people, for it would be ridiculous to condemn what they had not seen! They would therefore try it and give the young people some idea of what the world was like.
THOMAS MANTON (1620-1677): Many think to stop after they have yielded a little; but when the stone at the top of a hill begins to roll downward, it is hard to stop it, and you cannot say how far you will go.
C. H. SPURGEON: I think I am not mistaken in the conjecture that Mrs. Lot’s influence brought her husband there and when there, introduced him to the best families and found suitors for the daughters who had been fully imbued with the liberal ideas of the place.
D. L. MOODY: You would have found Mrs. Lot, perhaps, and her daughters, at the theaters and in most places of amusement, and there is the family, just moving in the very highest circles in that city.
C. H. SPURGEON: Very sweet the city life became. The free and easy ways of Sodom came to be enjoyable. Not the gross part of Sodom life—Lot could not bear that—and it made Mrs. Lot a bit uncomfortable at times, but the liberal spirit, the fine free bearing of the people, their gaiety and artistic culture were quite to her mind and so she was right glad when her husband put away the old tent, had a sale of the sheep and lived as a retired grazier in the west end of the city.
A. W. PINK: Finally, we see him an alderman of Sodom, seated in its “gate,” and his daughters wedded to men of Sodom, Genesis 19:1 & 14.
C. H. SPURGEON: Lot ought to have been firmer, more steadfast, more thorough. He had no business going to Sodom―Lot was not to do evil to please his wife.
