Lot

Lot is the son of Haran and grandson of Terah, and therefore the nephew of Abram (Genesis 11:31). Scripture first names him among the household that Terah led out of Ur of the Chaldees toward Canaan and settled with in Haran (Genesis 11:31), and he is still travelling with Abram when Abram departs from Haran at seventy-five (Genesis 12:4).

The narrative turns on Lot's separation from Abram. When strife arises between their herdsmen, Abram appeals to their kinship and proposes they part (Genesis 13:8), and Lot lifts up his eyes and chooses the well-watered plain of the Jordan, which the text compares to the garden of Yahweh and to the land of Egypt (Genesis 13:10). The same passage notes that this was before Yahweh destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, and immediately adds that the men of Sodom were exceedingly wicked, sinners against Yahweh (Genesis 13:13) — the narrator's evaluation colouring Lot's choice. Later, when the men of Sodom demand that Lot bring out his guests to be sexually used (Genesis 19:5), and when the destruction falls, Lot is told to escape for his life, not to look behind him, and not to stay anywhere in the plain (Genesis 19:17). The text then states that when God destroyed the cities of the plain, God remembered Abraham and sent Lot out of the middle of the overthrow (Genesis 19:29) — Lot's rescue is attributed to Abraham's sake, not to Lot's own standing. Psalm 83:8 speaks of a coalition helping "the children of Lot," a designation in the Hebrew Scriptures for the peoples traced to Lot's line.

In the New Testament, Lot appears as a warning. Luke 17:29 sets the day Lot went out from Sodom alongside the rain of fire and sulfur from the sky, and Luke 17:32 adds the brief charge, "Remember Lot's wife!" — the two verses together used as a call to heed judgment and not to look back. Interpreters differ over how to weigh the figure. One common Christian reading treats Lot as a cautionary example of the believer drawn by what looks fertile and secure into a wicked city, and of a rescue that is barely escape (Genesis 13:10-13; 19:17). Another reading, stressed in traditions that appeal to Lot's later description as righteous, treats him instead as a picture of divine deliverance granted for the sake of another — here, Abraham (Genesis 19:29) — so that the emphasis falls on God remembering his covenant rather than on Lot's compromise. Both readings appeal to the same passages, and the text itself gives no final verdict on his character.

AI-generated reference entry, grounded in the passages where this term appears — history and Scripture stated as such, interpretation labeled as interpretation. Not a substitute for the text itself.