Parshat Vayeira
There is so much going on this week. First the three angels come to Abraham’s house and tells him he’s going to have a baby with Sarah. Then there is all that drama with Sodom where Abraham pleads with G-d to save the city. The city gets destroyed anyway but at least Abraham’s nephew Lot is saved. His wife isn’t, though. She gets turned into salt. Then there is that whole big bit about the king stealing Sarah. Then we can’t forget the birth of their son Isaac. At the tail end of the portion Abraham almost sacrificed his own son until G-d stopped him.
What I want to focus on today though is the whole Sodom bit. Abraham begs and bargains with G-d to try to get him to save the city of Sodom, where Abraham’s nephew lives. The agreement was that if G-d found 10 righteous people the city would be saved. Although G-d does not find even 10 good people, he takes pity on Lot’s very righteous family and decides to save them. He sends 2 angels to Lot. They lead Lot and his family out of Sodom right as G-d’s destruction starts. The only thing they need to do is not look back. Someone ends up looking back. Go figure. The looker backer is Lot’s wife. When she looks back she gets turned into a pillar of salt. The main thing here is a question of faith. Look at this from the wife’s point of view. These so-called angels are leading her away from the only place she’s ever known as home. They’re saying the city is going to get destroyed. All her friends are going to die. Imagine all your friends are gonna die and you don’t even get a last look at them before they die. When you factor all that in it seems pretty normal for the wife to want to get a last look at her previous life. But, because of her last act, we will always remember her as the pillar of salt who disobeyed G-d and not Lot’s very righteous wife. So next time you’re in a very tempting situation, remember what happened to Lot’s wife when she gave in to her temptation. If you do it, chances are you wouldn’t get turned into a bunch of salt, but it probably wouldn’t end well.