As Sodom is about to be destroyed, an angel tells Lot to flee for his life and not to look back. Interestingly, the command is addressed to Lot, in the masculine singular. But as his wife, I’m taking it as read that she heard it herself.
But despite the instruction from the angel, she disobeys and does look back. And she becomes a pillar of salt.
I know I spend way too much time looking back. I’m fascinated by my family’s Litvak past. I imagine what it was like for my grandfather to leave his mother behind in Latvia and to never see her again. But I was a child when my grandfather died, and I never thought to ask him about that. We just never did in Cape Town. When I became interested in the subject, I remember my father being very angry with me, for asking so many questions. I guess he didn’t like to look back, and I spend too much time looking in that direction. I am fascinated and perhaps frozen by my past, to the detriment of spending time and energy on building a future for myself.
For generations, our commentators have explained what Lot’s Wife did wrong that merited such a punishment. The torah itself is silent on the subject but I think it’s useful to look at rationales they provide.
Let’s look at Rashi first, the 11th century CE commentator from Northen France.
This is Rashi on the verse AND SHE BECAME A PILLAR OF SALT. He says — By salt had she sinned and by salt was she punished.
Rashi is quoting a measure for measure punishment, inflicted on her because she was reluctant to show hospitality to the visiting angels.
This is the Rashi: He (Lot) said to her once: “Give a little salt to these strangers” and she answered him, “Do you mean to I introduce this bad custom, also, into our city?”
Rashi is taking this Midrash from Genesis Rabbah 50:4. Bereishit Rabbah is a fifth-century collection of rabbinic Midrash from the Land of Israel. This source understands Lot’s wife to be a very bad woman indeed. She must have done something awful to deserve such a punishment, and it fills in details of her wickedness.
Firstly, Lot’s Wife is being punished for her lack of hospitality. And secondly, it blames her (in 51:5) for revealing the presence of the angels to the nasty locals by borrowing salt from them for the meal she has to cook for them.
‘Rabbi Yitzḥak said: This was because she sinned with salt on that night that the angels came to Lot. What did she do? She went to all her neighbours and said to them: ‘Give me salt, as we have guests,’ and her intention was that the residents of the city should become aware of them. That is why “she became a pillar of salt.”
A bad woman, clearly.
Approximately 300 to 400 hundred years later, in a different collection of Aggadic midrash also written in the Land of Israel, Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer gives a much kinder reason for lot’s wife backwards look. It also gives her a name.
This is Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer, 25:11.
‘The pity of 'Edith the wife of Lot was stirred for her daughters, who were married in Sodom, and she looked back behind her to see if they were coming after her or not. And she saw behind the Shekhinah, and she became a pillar of salt. This midrash gives a more compassionate reason for looking back. Her married daughters are still in Sodom, and she turns to see whether they are following. She is waiting for them.
But the midrash also gives the glance back a second meaning. As she looks back, she sees the Shekhinah, God’s Presence, which has descended to bring about Sodom’s destruction. She has become a pillar of salt because she has seen God.
Let’s go forward in time and look at Abarbanel, the 15th century Portuguese Jewish statesman and biblical commentator, who gives us a fifth reason she was turned into a pillar of salt. He says she was looking back at the possessions that she had left behind. Perhaps to rescue them from destruction.
A sixth reason…Let’s go forward another 400 years to Rabbi Naftali Herz Wessely, an 18th-century German-born Jewish scholar. His explanation of Lot’s wife’s punishment was for her lack of faith. She looked back because she did not believe the angel’s warning and wanted to see whether Sodom would really be destroyed.
These are all looks by male commentators…
Let's move forward several centuries, to a sunny garden in Finchley, five years ago, where my brilliant chavruta Rina made me see Lot's wife in an entirely different light.
Rina had come across a work by the contemporary South African artist Diane Victor, called Lot's Wife. It evokes the experience of people forcibly removed from their homes under apartheid. Here was a woman looking back not at a wicked city, but at the home and the life she had lost. Rina reminded me of the Midrash about Lot's married daughters, left behind in Sodom. Rina said the daughters were probably buried there. Of course they were, buried under all that salt and fiery brimstone. While Lot’s wife was saved, her daughters were damned. Of course, she looked back.
Lot’s Wife wasn't looking back out of disobedience, or greed, or disbelief. Another mother would understand that she was looking back at the place where she raised her children and where they were now buried.
It's particularly poignant that Rina was looking at what would be lost. She knew she was not going to see her children’s lives unfold. Lot's Wife is a touchstone for people who carry unbearable loss. How can we not look back as we move forward? While Lot’s Wife is frozen by her grief, it’s easy to say that we are still alive, and we can still walk onto the next chapters of our lives.
When I first left South Africa, I went without a backwards glance to my parents whom I was leaving behind. My children similarly don’t look back at me as they move on with their lives. My father has died in the interim and now I wonder if he was right, that I spend too much time sifting through the details of the past. But I can’t help myself. When I leave South Africa now, I take one last glance at the mountains and the sky and the light. I take a moment looking back, before going into the tunnel that takes me to the plane that will fly me back home London.
And then I turn around, walk down the aisle and find my seat.
