They say I looked back out of curiosity.
But I could have had other reasons.
I looked back mourning my silver bowl.
Carelessly, while tying my sandal strap.
So I wouldn’t have to keep staring at the righteous nape
Of my husband Lot’s neck.
From the sudden conviction that if I dropped dead
He wouldn’t so much as hesitate.
From the disobedience of the meek.
Checking for pursuers.
Struck by the silence, hoping God had changed his mind.
Our two daughters were already vanishing over the hilltop.
I felt age within me. Distance.
The futility of wandering. Torpor.
I looked back setting my bundle down.
I looked back not knowing where to set my foot.
Serpents appeared in my path,
Spiders, field mice, baby vultures.
They were neither good nor evil now – every living thing
Was simply creeping or hopping along in the mass panic.
I looked back in desolation.
In shame because we had stolen away.
Wanting to cry out, to go home.
Or only when a sudden gust of wind
Unbound my hair and lifted up my robe.
It seemed to me that they were watching from the walls of Sodom
And bursting into thunderous laughter again and again.
I looked back in anger.
To savor their terrible fate.
I looked back for all the reasons given above.
I looked back involuntarily
It was only a rock that turned underfoot, growling at me.
It was a sudden crack that stopped me in my tracks.
A hamster on its hind paws tottered on the edge.
It was then we both glanced back.
No, no. I ran on.
I crept, I flew upward
Until darkness fell from the heavens
And with it scorching gravel and dead birds.
I couldn’t breathe and spun around and around.
Anyone who saw me must have thought I was dancing.
It’s not inconceivable that my eyes were open.
It’s possible I fell facing the city.
Poem written by Wislawa Szymborska.
Why does Lot’s wife look back? Commentators and preachers alike have been trying to answer this burning question for eons. The text certainly doesn’t tell us, there’s only one line about this “wife of” woman and it isn’t full of character details. We know that she shows up one other time, in the Gospel of Luke when Jesus uses her as a warning – simply saying “remember Lot’s wife.”
Is disobedience the only reason that Mrs. Lot looked back to the city they had lived in and were now fleeing? Condemnation can’t be the only reason for her salty transformation. Luckily for us and for Mrs. Lot, the poets have her back. Poets like Wislawa Szymborska and Gary J. Whitehead, Natalie Diaz and Anna Akhmatova along with numerous other poets with serious credentials (like Nobel Prizes and Pulitzer Prizes) have written works that try to revamp and repair the interpretive damage done until Mrs. Lot is more than just a cautionary tale.
Why did Lot’s wife look back? It seems like a simple, child-like question asked almost instinctively after hearing the story read aloud. Its born of the realization that things were missing from the story and “inquiring minds want to know.” Not a surprising turn of events, honestly, because scripture does this all the time. It’s the gaps that naturally lead to the questions, the problem is that adult readers may not take the time to actually ask them. Adults ask the question: “why did Mrs. Lot turn into a pillar of salt?” which lends itself to a answer that comes straight from the scripture itself – “because she looked back and she wasn’t supposed to.” Dust off hands and move on to the next thing – problem solved.
But why?? That’s a question that requires imagination because the answer isn’t in the scripture. Which, as Anna Carter Florence says, “is puzzling to a six year old, who has already learned that when children do what they’re not supposed to do, adults always ask why.” And kids usually have an explanation which the adult takes into consideration when deciding on consequences.
The poets argue that when it comes to Lot’s wife, we make assumptions while ignoring the questions that matter. This had led to centuries of negative speculation – intentional disobedience, longing for what was, preference for life in Sodom, weak character. She hasn’t been made out to be the nicest person… after all, she lived in Sodom, was unwelcoming to God’s messengers, fond of gossip… at least that’s what the theories have said about her. The poets on the other hand ask why we assume the worst about her instead of her innocence, or her humanness.
We’ve only heard a small part of the larger story surrounding Sodom and Gomorrah. It is an unsettling story and had it been written nowadays, it would have come with a trigger warning for mod violence, attempted rape, and incest. Not light topics by any means. Let’s take a quick overview look at the story that leads us to our scripture today…Mrs. Lot and her family (Lot and two daughters) lived and worked in the city of Sodom. They moved to this city in the plain of Jordan when Lot and his uncle Abraham had decided to go different ways. Abe chose the land of Canaan while Lot et al moved to the wealthy plain locale. Unfortunately, because Sodom and it’s sister city Gomorrah had such affluence and prestige, greed and pride blossomed within the population. God hears the cries of the victims of the injustice and greed, the vulnerable harmed by the economic and power imbalance. Angered by this, God makes the decision to destroy both Sodom and Gomorrah completely. God tells Abraham of the plan and Abe convinces God to allow Lot and his family, and any other righteous person found within the city walls, to live. Unfortunately for the cities, only Lot, Lot’s wife, and their two daughters are rescued. Even the daughter’s betrothed husbands to be did not believe Lot when he told them they needed to leave.
The two messengers are sent to Sodom to get the Lot family… when they arrive, Lot shows them hospitality, inviting them to come in for food and to stay overnight. They try to decline but Lot is insistent. Not long after, a mob of angry men come to the door, demanding for the strangers to come out, ready to storm the house if they aren’t given what they want. Because they know the messengers are there with bad news and judgment for the inhabitants of the city. They want Lot to give them over so they could deal with them as they see fit. Poet Padraig O Tuama, in his Poetry Unbound Podcast, reminds us that this scene “is one we see over and over again: angry men whose response to a message they don’t want to hear about the injustice they don’t want to see is to brutalize the messenger for daring to confront them.” [1] Lot, in his effort to protect the two messengers does the unthinkable: he offers his two daughters instead – in the name of hospitality and preserving the honour of his guests. His two innocent daughters for the mob to do with as they please. “The scene is brutal and ugly, and we never hear what Lot’s wife and daughters through or said about any of it. Scripture is completely silent on the matter.” We can only hope and pray that the mob denies the daughters and they escape with their physical and emotional well being intact.
The next day, the messengers take the Lot family by the hand and lead them quickly out of the city. They are told to get out, and keep running without looking back on the disaster that is going to take place behind them… their home, their city, their friends, their loved ones all in a city that would burn to the ground. We know that Lot’s wife is the only one who stops mid escape to take one last look behind, only to be frozen in place in salt.
Why did Lot’s wife look back?
This is where we circle back to the poets, for they challenge us to image possible responses. Carter Florence reminds us “human beings look back at all kinds of things all day long. Historians look back at events. Detectives look back at clues. Therapists look back at childhoods…and even if we don’t look back for a living, we all look back as part of daily living.”[2] And we do all this looking back for good reasons… to ensure we’ve locked the door, check for cars as we cross the street, to wave goodbye…they all have purpose and impact. There are always reasons, and if we can’t come up with any for why she looked back (or if the only one “we can think of is that she must have been a Very Bad and Disobedient Person), the poets have ideas to spur our imagination. Like Natalie Diaz who wrote: Of Course She Looked Back
You would have, too.
From that distance the shivering city
Fit in the palm of her hand
Like she owned it.
She could have blown the whole thing –
Markets, dancehalls, hookah bars –
Sent the city and its hundred harems
Tumbling across the desert
Like a kiss. She had to look back.
When she did, she saw
Pigeons glinting like debris above
Ruined rooftops. Towers swaying.
Women in broken skirts
Strewn along burned-out streets
Like busted red bells.
The noise was something else-
Dogs wept, roosters howled, children
And guitars popped like kernels of corn
Feeding the twisting blaze.
She wondered had she unplugged
The coffee pot? The iron?
Was the oven off?
Her husband uttered Keep going.
Whispered stay the course, or
Baby, forget about it. She couldn’t.
Now a bursting garden of fire
The city bloomed to flame after flame
Like hot fruit in a persimmon orchard.
Someone thirsty asked for water.
Someone scared asked to pray.
Her daughters or the crooked legged angel,
Maybe. Dark thighs of smoke opened
To the sky. She meant to look
Away, but the sting in her eyes,
The taste devouring her tongue,
And the neighbours begging her name.
It could have been any of us. It might still be any of us. And looking back that the burning ruins, at destruction, looking back at what we loved as it is utterly destroyed is never weakness, but resistance; never sin, but benediction: a way to bless and then go, so we can honour what we leave behind.
Why did Lot’s wife look back?
For the same reasons we look back, and we understand that we look on Mrs. Lot with empathy rather than derision. We see her utterly human response to her world being turned upside down. We look back so that we can move forward, and to possibly move on. To be the ones alive, to imagine a future at all, is sacred. To ask the questions that might lead us to such a place is a privilege. Sometimes we need to look back, regardless of the orders, in order for us to move into a future that allows us to thrive.
[1] Quote found in A is for Alabaster by Anna Carter Florence, p. 78
[2] P.79
