l its importance and worth.

Lot went out and shut the door after him. Then he rebuked his neighbors
for desiring to do "so wickedly," and immediately made them an offer
which he seems to have thought perfectly fair and square. "Behold, now,"
he said, "I have two daughters which have not known man; let me, I pray
you, bring them out unto you, and do ye to them as is good in your eyes:
only unto these men do nothing; for therefore came they under the shadow
of my roof." The laws of hospitality are sacred, and Lot did well to
maintain them; but he had no right to sacrifice to them a still more
sacred law. Instead of strenuously opposing the committal of one crime,
he proposes another as heinous.

The Sodomites scorned his offer. They had a _penchant_ for a different
pleasure. Ravishing virgins was not in their line. So they reviled Lot
for setting himself up as a judge amongst them, called him "fellow,"
threatened to deal worse with him than with the strangers, and actually
pressed so sore upon him that they "came near to break the door."

Then the strangers manifested their power. They "put forth their hand,
and pulled Lot into the house to them, and shut too the door. And they
smote the men that were at the door of the house with blindness, both
small and great; so that they wearied themselves to find the door."
However blind they were surely they might have found the door by feeling
for it. Kalisch makes this episode more reasonable by substituting
"blind confusion" for "blindness."

The angels continued to act promptly. They informed Lot that they
intended to destroy the place because of its sin, and told him to
gather all his family together and leave at once. Lot spoke to his
"sons-in-law, which married his daughters," but they appear to have
thought him daft. Early in the morning "the angels hastened Lot" who
still lingered. They laid hold of his hand, his wife's, and his two
unmarried daughters', led them outside the city, and said, "Escape now
for thy life; look not behind thee, neither stay thou in all the plain;
escape to the mountains lest thou be consumed." Lot did not relish this
prospect of a hard climb. He therefore asked the angels to let him flee
unto the city of Zoar, because it was near and "a little one." That
is what the servant girl said to her mistress when she produced an
illegitimate child, "please 'm its only a very little one." She thought
that a small illegitimate baby wasn't as bad as a bi