Genesis Vol 3.pdf - College Press

LOT’S LAST DAYS 19~1-38
commission of incest with their own father. But this first
impression will soon be corrccted or removed by the recol-
lection that those young women, though living in the midst
of a universally corrupt society, had yet maintained a
virtuous character (v. 8); and therefore it must be pre-
sumed that it was through the influence of some strong,
overpowering motive they were impelled to the adoption
of so base an imposture. It could not be, as has been
generally supposed, that they believed themselves to be the
sole survivors of mankind; for they knew that the in-
habitants of Zoar were still alive, and if they were now
residing in a cave in the Moabite mountains, they must
have seen multitudes of laborers working in the vineyards
with which those heights were extensively planted. They
could not be actuated, therefore, with the wish to preserve
the human race, which, in their view, was all but extinct.
Their object must have been very different, and most
probably it was this. Cherishing some family traditions
respecting the promised seed, and in expectation of which
Abraham, with Lot and others, had migrated to Canaan,
they brooded in despondency over the apparent loss of that
hope-since their mother’s death; and believing that their
father, who was descended from the eldest branch of
,Terah’s family, and who was an object of God’s special
charge to the angels, had the best claim to be the ancestor
of the distinguished progeny, they agreed together to use
means for securing the much-longed-for result. This view
of their conduct is strongly confirmed by the circumstance
that, instead of being ashamed of their crime, or concealing
the origin of their children by some artfully-contrived
story, they proclaimed it to the world, and perpetuated the
memory of it by the names they bestowed upon their chil-
dren; the eldest calling her son Moub” (meaning, “from my
father”) , “and the younger designating her son Bewammi”
(“son of my people”). It is evident from the text that
these sexual relations of Lot’s daughters with their father
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