The Duality of Lot
The character of Lot is a subject of much discussion among the commentators. As Rabbi Eliyahu Dessler in Michtav M'Eliyahu explains in his essay on Lech Lecha, there are Midrashim which are glaringly contradictory in their description of him. He is portrayed in some as tzadik gamor and in others as a rasha. This dichotomy emerges from the Chumash and Meforshim.
Parshas Lech Lecha introduces Lot as a loyal and devoted nephew of Avram (later Avraham). Although it was Avram who received the commandment from Hashem of “lech lecha,” Lot chooses to follow his uncle to an uncertain destination. While Avram had received promises from Hashem to counteract the impoverishing and debilitating effects of travel into an unknown land, and to him the command of “lech lecha" was a nisayon, to Lot, who received no such reassurances from Hashem, his decision to follow his uncle must be seen as an act of miseras nefesh. In fact, the HaEmek Davar states that Lot’s decision entitled him to receive a share of Avraham’s portion in Eretz Canaan.
Soon after their arrival in Canaan, the land is stricken with famine. As a result, Avram decides to dwell in Egypt, where there is an abundance of food. Lot now has an additional reason to return to his homeland in Ur Chasdim. Egypt is a dangerous place for Avram. If the Egyptians discover that the beautiful Sarai is Avram's wife they will kill him so she could marry the Pharoah. As a male member of Avram's party, and a possible defender or avenger of Avram, Lot's life is also in danger. Yet, Lot chooses to follow Avram there.
It is in Egypt that Lot earns his merit to be saved from the destruction of Sodom by demonstrating his great loyalty to Avram and his pity on him by not revealing to the Egyptians that Sarai was really Avram's wife and not his sister, a lie that Avram had urged her to maintain. One may ask: "What great loyalty or expression or pity was it for Lot not to reveal this secret? It doesn't appear to have cost Lot anything to have kept quiet?" But upon reflection one can see that this is not the case.
With his childless uncle dead, Lot, as his closest male relative would inherit not only Avram's substantial material wealth, but also his right to ownership of Eretz Yisroel. As someone drawn to materialism, this realization assuredly did not escape Lot. Despite the strong pull that instant wealth must have had on Lot, he resisted it. Furthermore, with his uncle dead, Lot would then inherit the mantle of leadership of the Monotheistic movement started by Avram. HaEmek Davar says that in Egypt Lot became Avram's main disciple and acted as his go-between for the masses of people who came to Avram to seek his advice and wisdom. As a result of his shimush, he too grew in wisdom and was asked by many people for his guidance. In fact, according to one source, Lot, in Egypt, became even more successful than Avram in winning converts to the idea of Monotheism. As a person who greatly desired k'vod, as we shall see later, it must have taken a good deal of self-restraint on the part of Lot not to reveal this information. We see from here an indication of Lot's struggles with his yetzer hora and his mastery over it earning him the title of tzadik gamor.
Upon Lot's leaving Egypt with Avram and journeying with him to Canaan, we see other positive aspects of his personality and good reason to think him a tzadik gamor - an objective tzadik, as opposed to a tzadik relative to the people around him. Lot's yetzer hora for illicit relations was a major factor in his decision to move to Sodom. It would be logical to assume then that Lot also must have been attracted to Mitzraim, which was a land steeped in immorality. Yet the Torah relates that when Lot left Egypt with Avram he went imo ( with him), signifying that he went wholeheartedly.
This same event, Lot's leaving Mitzraim with Avram, is used by one commentator to illustrate Lot's lofty spiritual madrega. Even though Eretz Caanan was still in the midst of a famine and Egypt was a very rich and lush country, Lot chose to leave with Avram rather than stay. This is especially significant when seen in light of his decision to separate from Avram and to settle in Sodom because of its material richness and immorality. We clearly see that from the moment he is introduced until his departure from Egypt with Avram, Lot is shown as a tzadik gamor and worthy successor to Avram in all aspects.
After Lot settles in Sodom, one sees in the Torah's description of the events following the arrival of the malochim (angels) to that city, other positive aspects of Lot's character. The Torah relates that Lot had just been appointed a judge in that most wicked city in the world. From the derision with which the men of Sodom treat Lot in his later attempt to protect his guests, one could conclude that Lot was a serious judge who intended to pervert justice as little as possible under the circumstances. Despite his own wife's inhospitality to guests, Lot persisted in echoing the praiseworthy mitzvah of hachnosas orchim as he had seen practiced in Avram's house. As Michtav M'Eliyahu points out, by the Torah's describing his importuning of the malochim to come to his house for food and shelter as m' od (great), it must mean that Lot insisted to a degree approaching force. Under the laws of Sodom, which meted out the death penalty for the “crime” of giving food to a stranger, the behavior of this newly appointed judge was certainly praiseworthy.
Indeed, we soon see that Lot risked his life for his guests. When the wild and perverted mob of Sodomites practically broke down his door in their attempt to do violence to them, Lot went outside to confront the mob and attempted to dissuade them from their evil purpose. Although they threatened Lot with a fate worse than that which they proposed for his guests, he still refused to hand them over.
We also see that Lot had apparently imparted to his children the importance of the mitzvah of tzedaka. Rashi quotes a Gemara in Sanhedrin (109b) about a certain girl who had given food to a poor man and as a punishment had been tortured by the Sodomites by being smeared with honey, tied to a rooftop and stung to death by bees. According to a number of sources, this was Lot's daughter.
As positive as those aspects of his personality were, the Torah shows us many negative aspects as well. Michtav M'Eliyahu quotes a Medrash which states that the famine which befell Canaan was a direct result of Avram's decision to bring Lot with him to that land. An indication of this is seen in Lot's name. Lot in at-bash (a reverse alphabetical method of finding hidden meaning in the written Torah) is cafan, which means famine. Likewise, as Rashi says on the posuk "And Hashem spoke to Avram after Lot separated from him ... " - that as long as that rasha (Lot) was with him, the Shechinah failed to appear to Avram.
Indeed, Lot's decision to agree to separate from Avram and his subsequent continued residence in Sodom shows his baser motivations very clearly. The posuk describing his decision: "And Lot lifted up his eyes, and beheld all the plain of the Jordan, that all of it was well-watered ... like the garden of Hashem, like the land of Egypt," indicates that Lot was motivated by materialism. After residing in Sodom for a period of time, Lot is captured in war and is only saved by the efforts of his uncle Avram. Instead of reflecting on the reason for his capture (his living in Sodom), and drawing the rather obvious conclusion that not only was living in Sodom bad for one's spirit but was also physically dangerous, he nevertheless elects to return to that capital of iniquity. He did not leave after his daughter was killed by the Sodomites because of her righteous behavior. And when he narrowly escaped death at the hand of the mob and was warned that the city and all its inhabitants are going to be destroyed, he still had to be dragged away by the malochim. Even at the very end of the episode describing the destruction of Sodom, while fleeing the burning cities of the plain, he yet begs that a remnant of his worthless lifestyle be preserved by asking that Tzoar, the last surviving city of the Sodom Metropolitan Area, not be destroyed. He failed to do teshuvah even then. And in Lot's last appearance in the Torah, we see the level to which he has fallen. He lets himself get involved in arayos, forbidden sexual relations, with his daughters. The fault was entirely his. His daughters acted out of praiseworthy motives - preservation of the human race. They thought that the whole earth was being destroyed, as it was in Noah's time, and that their father was the last man on earth. Lot knew the truth. The malochim had told him that only the cities comprising the Sodom Metropolitan Area were being destroyed for their wickedness, but he did not relate this fact to his daughters.
What underlies this dichotomy in Lot's character? What led to his decision to separate from Avram? Why does the Torah bother to tell us his story at all? What lessons are we to learn from Lot?
To begin, it is instructive to look at the posukim describing the actual separation. The Torah relates that because both Avram and Lot were so rich, the land could not support them both. As a result, disputes arose between their respective shepherds. But, it was not competition for pastureland that was their only point of contention. Rashi, on the posuk describing their separation (Bereshis13-11), cites a Medrash which states that Lot wanted neither Avram nor his
Lot was now in a situation in which psychologically he was forced to justify these innermost thoughts with his conscious self-image, as a follower of the belief that Avram taught. Otherwise, how could he abandon his Rebbe, Avram, and go off to live in an environment so obviously materialistic and immoral? In a brilliant psychological insight, Michtav M'Eliyahu maintains that Lot went to Sodom thinking of himself as a kiruv worker, trying to reform a wayward population. Given such an image of himself, Lot could now vicariously indulge in the immorality of Sodom while at the same time scolding its depraved behavior. Since he himself didn't realize his true motivations, he could rise to seemingly great levels of mesirus nefesh as he did in his importuning and then protecting the melochim or educating his daughter to be charitable to the poor. Yet the true measure of these acts is noted by the Torah's failure to mention any reward received for them. This behavior, it seems, is motivated rather by Lot's yetzer hora eager to pull the wool further down over his eyes. The falsity of Lot's surface level motivation is apparent from the fact that the only one who appears to have changed in Sodom is Lot himself, who has sunk so low that he ends up having relations with his daughters. The Sodomites remained unchanged.
Therefore, according to this analysis, one reason for Lot's separation from his uncle was his inability to reconcile his desire to live in Sodom with the teachings of Avram. By leaving Avram he removed himself from both his teacher and his teacher's conception of the Divine. Thus, he no longer was constantly reminded of his inconsistencies and shortcomings. He is the very prototype of the man "that does right in his own eyes." When we see this phrase in the Prophets, as we do many times to describe people who make up their own rules and disregard Hashem's commandments, the Torah is not just euphemizing, but, is actually describing the state of mind of man's attempt to justify his behavior to himself. Man can easily live a lie, but he has great difficulty living with discordancy. If he removes himself from the source of his discomfort he can easily forget about the niggling questions that bother him and pursue a life style driven by his baser desires and justify them to himself as part of his "philosophy". This is what Lot sought.
As the Torah continues its narrative, we can now see clearly how dwelling in Sodom has affected Lot. While protecting his guests even at the cost of his own life, he was willing to give his two remaining daughters - his only remaining children - to a rampaging mob “to do with them as they pleased.” The Medrash Tanchuma (Vayera 12) states that a normal man would risk his life to save the chastity of his daughters and wife, yet Lot volunteered them to a sadistic mob. We also see from the incident with his daughters in the cave, this major character defect. As previously mentioned, the fact that upon leaving Sodom, Lot did not reveal to his daughters that those cities had been destroyed for their wickedness and that the rest of the world was not affected, was the cause of his daughters' error and resulted in them believing that they were performing a mitzvah by perpetuating their father's seed.
As stated earlier, Rav Dessler indicates that his reason for staying in Sodom was one that he himself couldn't see. As the Sages tell us in Pirkei Avos, three things remove a person from the world. kinah, taivah and kavod. These same factors blinded Lot to the truth.
His jealousy of Avram’s wealth and his love of immorality and materialism caused him to dwell in Sodom and not leave even when it was objectively clear that it was causing his own downfall. Because of his desire for kavod, he wanted his daughters to think that he was the only human in the world worthy of being saved, making him comparable to Noah, on one level, and, by surviving even Avram, raising his status to that of the greatest tzadik the world had ever seen. The desire for kavod would also explain his securing a position as a judge in a city where justice was totally perverted. Any truly righteous person, had he been asked to enforce their uniformly unjust laws, would have declined the position and its accompanying honor. Lot accepted.
A question that arises from all this is - What was there in Lot that Hashem saw fit to have Moshiach descended from him? Although we see that Lot himself brought about his own embarrassment by concealing from his daughters the knowledge that he was not the last man on earth, the Medrash says that wine had been prepared in the cave for the purpose of getting Lot drunk so that his daughters could cohabit with him and beget Moshiach. The daughters must also have taken the presence of the 'wine in the cave as a miraculous occurrence placed there Providentially to aid in the propagation of humanity. Rav Zev Leff sees in Lot the epitome of the Two Thousand years of Tohu v'Vohu, which ended with Avraham Avinu, who ushers in the Two Thousand years of Torah. Lot in many ways is the embodiment of Tohu v'Vohu. He's a mixture of good and evil, undirected mitzvahs, kindness without propriety. That is why Avraham had to part from him. As Avram tells him, they must separate "because we are brothers.” We look the same on the outside, but on the inside we are different. Because of that, Avram sees in Lot a danger that no one else in the world presents. Lot is by his very being a misrepresentation of Avram. He is, in a sense, a prototype Avraham from a different generation. For this reason, neither Avraham nor the Shneinah cannot abide his presence. Lot represents what Avraham had as his mission to correct. The mixing of good and evil in man. That which had as its starting point the eating of the Etz Hadas needs to be corrected so that the world can return to its ideal state. It took someone of Avraham's stature to begin the breakout from the state of Tohu v'Vohu and to create the Jewish People through which the world will eventually have its Tikun. But, inherent in the mission of the Moshiach is the message that everything that happens in the world is good. Therefore, there is good in Tohu v'Vohu. To illustrate Hashem's presence even in that cloudy and murky area, Hashem saw fit to bring Moshiach - the embodiment of the ultimate of human good from the epitome of that confused epoch - Lot.
