In judging Lot, many have been led astray by the passage
in 2 Pet. ii. 7. This passage takes cognizance rather of his
ideal than of his historical character. It refers less to Lot as
an individual than as a type, as a representative of those who
are preserved by God amid judgments on a sinful world ; a
mode of explanation which must also be applied to what is
said of Esau in the Epistle to the Hebrews. To be both
type and representative, he must bear in himself essential
characteristics of his counterpart. This is shown by the fact
of his being saved. ' If there had been no good germ in him,
if he had stood quite on the same level with the Sodomites, his
personal relation to Abraham alone would not have availed
to save him. His conduct distinguished him from the
Sodomites; his noble hospitality, the sacrifice to protect his
guests, his obedience to the angels, while his sons-in-law
mocked the announcement of the divine judgment. What the
Sodomites say of Lot, Gen. xix. 9, " He must needs be a judge,"
leads to the inference that formerly he had frequently testified
against the prevailing corruption. But near the light there is
also great shadow. We have already seen how the choice of
his abode showed that he did not possess a proper horror of sin,
and was therefore himself strongly infected by it. And the
fact that we find him sitting in the gate tells against him ; it was



HISTOKY OF ABRAHAM. 153

the place where the whole city life was concentrated, and where
much that was new was to be heard and seen, but at the
same time much that was bad. He also appears to disadvan-
tage in having betrothed his two daughters to inhabitants of
the town of Sodom. We cannot agree with Chrysostom,
Homil. 43 in Gen., and with Ambrose, i. 1, De Abr., in praising
him for having offered to give up his daughters instead of the
strangers ; yet we may give him the benefit of Augustine's
excuse, that the sight of the great danger had put him so
beside himself that he did not know what he was doing.
