Lot’s choice and Sodom

Lot lifted up his eyes and saw all the kikkar of the Jordan (BSB “plain of the Jordan”), that all of it was a well-watered place, like the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt, as you come to Zoar. BSB moves “all the way to Zoar” forward and sets the destruction clause last, in parentheses; in the Hebrew that clause precedes the garden comparison. The destruction clause is prolepsis, looking ahead to Genesis 19 from the narrator’s day; Sodom, the plain, and Zoar are real places, though identifications and dates are not settled here. Skinner holds that the clause “might very well be a gloss”; that view is his. Lot chose the whole kikkar and set out miqqedem: from the east, as the Greek and as the Targum, “Lot journeyed from the east”, or eastward, as Skinner, who writes that “the only possible sense here is” eastward; BSB has “toward the east.” No ruling is given. Calvin finds “the inconsideration of Lot” deserving of censure. 2 Pet 2:7–8 calls Lot righteous; see Gen 13:12–13 → 2 Pet 2:7–8. How the choice is to be judged is open. The verse says the plain was well watered; no further unnamed view is built from that fact. No verdict is given. See The kikkar of the Jordan and Lot’s choice and The plain of the Jordan, Sodom, and Mamre: places in Genesis 13.