BIBLE PEOPLE | LOT

1. Bible People

a) The Bible is an historic record of real people and places. 

b) Here is a brief biography of such a person during Bible times.

2. Lot

a) He was the nephew of Abraham. After his father, Haran, died in Ur, lot traveled with his grandfather Terah, and his uncle Abraham, to Canaan. They settled in a place called Haran until the death of Terah. Then Lot and Abraham continued on to Canaan. 

b) After a famine hit, they continued on to Egypt, and later returned to Canaan. Eventually their herds grew so large, Lot and Abraham had to separate to find new pasturelands. Abraham gave Lot his choice of land and Lot picked the Jorden River Valley. He settled in the city of Sodom. When the Elamite king Chedorlaomer invaded Canaan, Lot was taken prisoner. But Abraham mustered up an army of 318 men, attacked and routed the invaders, and rescued his nephew Lot. Later, two angels were sent to Sodom to save Lot and his family before the destruction of the city. The men of Sodom seeing the two angels, desired to have sexual relations with them. 

c) They wanted the strangers brought out of the house "that we may know them" (Genesis 19:5). But the two angels struck the Sodomites blind, and got Lot, his wife and two daughters out of the city. The city was destroyed by "fire from the Lord out of heaven" (Genesis 19:24). Lot's wife did not follow the angels orders and looked back at Sodom, and because of her disobedience, turned into a "pillar of salt" (Genesis 19:26). 

d) Note: there at least two people who wrote about seeing that pillar of salt many years later. Lot then lived in a cave near Zoar with his two daughters. The two women got their father, Lot, drunk and had relations with him, because "there is no man on earth to come into us as is the custom of all the earth" (Genesis 19:31). Each daughter had a son out of the union, Moab, and Ben-Ammi, who became the ancestors of the Moabites and the Ammonites. These two countries became enemies of Israel.