Examining Incest in the Bible: Lot and His Two Daughters

Do you ever think about this?

In the beginning, God could have created many human beings at once, but why did he create only Adam and Eve and increase mankind through sex?

As men and women form a family in the covenant and give birth to children through sex, God chose to increase His children.

Due to man’s sinful nature, God’s gift of sex has been altered. In particular, today’s topic, incest.

God banned incest for two reasons.

Is there a reason why the Bible prohibits incest? Matthew Henry argues that God banned incest for two reasons.

• First, marriage is when a man and a woman leave their parents and become one flesh. Before they left their parents, they were one body. Therefore, incest cannot serve God’s purpose in marriage.
• Second, couples are treated equally in marriage. Incest, however, is a different story. Do men and women hold equal status or authority in that relationship? This isn’t true, is it? There are some who have superior status and authority, while there are others who have inferior status and authority.

Matthew Henry said the following on this topic in his book.(If you click this link and make a purchase, we earn a commission from Amazon Affiliate at no additional cost to you)

Therefore, if those who before were superior and inferior should intermarry (which is the case in most of the instances here laid down), the order of nature would be taken away by a positive institution, which must by no means be allowed. The inequality between master and servants, noble and ignoble, is founded in consent and custom, and there is no harm done if that be taken away by the equality of marriage; but the inequality between parents and children, uncle and nieces, aunts and nephews, either by blood or, marriage, is founded in nature, and is therefore perpetual, and cannot without confusion be taken away by the equality of marriage, the institution of which, though ancient, is subsequent to the order of nature. No relations that are equals are forbidden, except brothers and sisters, by the whole blood or half blood, or by marriage; and in this there is not the same natural absurdity as in the former, for Adam s sons must of necessity have married their own sisters; but it was requisite that it should be made by a positive law unlawful and detestable, for the preventing of sinful familiarities between those that in the days of their youth are supposed to live in a house together, and yet cannot intermarry without defeating one of the intentions of marriage, which is the enlargement of friendship and interest. If every man married his own sister (as they would be apt to do from generation to generation if it were lawful), each family would be a world to itself, and it would be forgotten that we are members one of another. It is certain that this has always been looked upon by the more sober heathen as a most infamous and abominable thing; and those who had not this law yet were herein a law to themselves. The making use of the ordinance of marriage for the patronizing of incestuous mixtures is so far from justifying them, or extenuating their guilt, that it adds the guilt of profaning an ordinance of God, and prostituting that to the vilest of purposes which was instituted for the noblest ends. But,

Uncleanness, committed with any of these relations out of marriage, is likewise, without doubt, forbidden here, and no less intended than the former: as also all lascivious carriage, wanton dalliance, and every thing that has the appearance of this evil. Relations must love one another, and are to have free and familiar converse with each other, but it must be with all purity; and the less it is suspected of evil by others the more care ought the persons themselves to take that Satan do not get advantage against them, for he is a very subtle enemy, and seeks all occasions against us.

 The relations forbidden are most of them plainly described; and it is generally laid down as a rule that what relations of a man’s own he is bound up from marrying the same relations of his wife he is likewise forbidden to marry, for they two are one. That law which forbids marrying a brother’s wife had an exception peculiar to the Jewish state, that, if a man died without issue, his brother or next of kin should marry the widow, and raise up seed to the deceased, for reasons which held good only in that commonwealth; and therefore now that those reasons have ceased the exception ceases, and the law is in force, that a man must in no case marry his brother’s widow. That article which forbids a man to take a wife to her sister supposes a connivance at polygamy, as some other laws then did, but forbids a man’s marrying two sisters, as Jacob did, because between those who had before been equal there would be apt to arise greater jealousies and animosities than between wives that were not so nearly related. If the sister of the wife be taken for the concubine, or secondary wife, nothing can be more vexing in her life, or as long as she lives.

Matthew Henry

Incest in the Bible: Lot and her two daughters

Lot’s incest with her two daughters is one of the most famous incest stories in the Bible.

As Lot and his wife and daughters escaped from Sodom, Lot’s wife looked back without listening to the angel and became a salt pillar.

Lot escaped to a place called Zoar, but he and his two daughters went up the mountain and into the cave because they were afraid of a sulfur fire.

Sodom and Gomorrah are destroyed by sulfur fire, and the daughters have a strange idea that they should have children through their father.

Lot’s eldest daughter suggested something to her younger sister. Even if the old father dies quickly, they will not be able to have children, so let’s have sex right away with him.

Thus, Lot’s daughters drank and had sex with him. He wasn’t aware that his daughters were lying down and waking up because he was drunk.

When she saw Sodom and Gomorrah being destroyed by sulfur fire, Lot’s eldest daughter said, ‘There is no one to be a husband in this land.’ Did she believe all men were dead?

In their minds, their father and themselves were the only ones left in the world to give birth to descendants? In contrast to Sodom Gomorrah, the Zoar they’ve experienced has not been judged on sulfur fire.

Therefore, their actions are not innocent. Lot’s daughters have blurred their sense of good and evil as a result of the corrupt Sodom culture. Incest between father and daughter may have been openly practiced in Sodom.

Whatever the reason, Lot was assaulted and abused by her daughters in the end. It is also frightening to read the Bible because it records this shameful truth that you want to hide.