The men at Lot's door
Sight taken for a time. Blind for a time. Genesis 19:1-11.
What led up to it
Two angels arrive in Sodom in the evening and Lot takes them into his house. The men of the city surround the house and demand that the visitors be handed over to them.
What happens
Lot goes out and pleads with the crowd. They turn on him and press in to break down the door. The visitors pull Lot inside and strike the men at the entrance with blindness, so that they wear themselves out trying to find the door.
In their shoes
This is blindness used as a shield for the people inside, not as a description of anyone's life. It is worth noticing what the men do: they keep groping for the door. The sudden loss of sight does not change what they want.
The place and the time
What the old books and the archaeologists can add. Each paragraph names its source.
Smith's sets Sodom as the chief of four cities in the plain of the Jordan, which from the hills near Bethel looked like one great oasis, "a garden of Jehovah," with the cities standing in the middle of it. That is the view before the destruction, as Genesis 13 describes it.
Source: Smith's Bible Dictionary (1884 edition), entry "Sodom."
Josephus describes the city of Lot's day as grown proud on its riches, unjust toward men and impious toward God, and says its people "hated strangers." The night at Lot's door is, in his telling, a rich city's hostility to two visitors.
Source: Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews (Whiston translation), Book I, chapter 11.
The passage
Genesis 19:1-11
1 Now the two angels arrived at Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting in the gateway of the city. When Lot saw them, he got up to meet them, bowed facedown,
2 and said, “My lords, please turn aside into the house of your servant; wash your feet and spend the night. Then you can rise early and go on your way.” “No,” they answered, “we will spend the night in the square.”
3 But Lot insisted so strongly that they followed him into his house. He prepared a feast for them and baked unleavened bread, and they ate.
4 Before they had gone to bed, all the men of the city of Sodom, both young and old, surrounded the house.
5 They called out to Lot, saying, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Send them out to us so we can have relations with them!”
6 Lot went outside to meet them, shutting the door behind him.
7 “Please, my brothers,” he pleaded, “don’t do such a wicked thing!
8 Look, I have two daughters who have never slept with a man. Let me bring them to you, and you can do to them as you please. But do not do anything to these men, for they have come under the protection of my roof.”
9 “Get out of the way!” they replied. And they declared, “This one came here as a foreigner, and he is already acting like a judge! Now we will treat you worse than them.” And they pressed in on Lot and moved in to break down the door.
10 But the men inside reached out, pulled Lot into the house with them, and shut the door.
11 And they struck the men at the entrance, young and old, with blindness, so that they wearied themselves trying to find the door.