Lot's Older Daughter

The story of Lot's daughters has always been one that made me a little queasy. It's just - gross.

But my husband wrote a poem from the perspective of the older daughter, and it really got me thinking. Lot had thrown her and her sister to a crowd of lusting, raging, neighbors who were demanding/begging access to the angels in Lot's house. They admitted that they knew their plans were horrible (or at least unpleasant for the recipients) and didn't hesitate.

And Lot offered his daughters to them.

What does that say to those girls? What would the older daughter have been thinking? Feeling? To have been offered up to that mob like something so disposable? These two guys - visitors - needed to be protected but Lot's own daughters didn't need that same protection? Sure, the visitors were angels, but c'mon dad, isn't there another option? One that doesn't involve gang rape?

I still think that having sex with her father was weird and icky, but I'm beginning to think that she may have just learned to see sex in a very different way. The story says the crowd did not want the girls, but I don't know whether or not the girls suffered any harm. The angels reached outside to pull Lot back in, but were the girls out there too? Or did they never leave the house to begin with? If they had been thrown out there, even for a short period, that mob would have left some serious physical and emotional scars. If they had never been pushed out of the house, they still would have been changed forever.

[Genesis 19]