Sodom’s sin is not what you think.
This is the third in a series of four posts: (1) Sourdough bread: Flour and water. That’s it. (2) Abraham and his guests (3) Hospitality in ancient times (4) Deuteronomy has no interest in an afterlife.
Welcoming visitors, strangers, providing them food and perhaps overnight accommodations — hospitality — was held as an important and high virtue in ancient times, far beyond anything Americans would recognize today. There was no hospitality industry — no hotels or motels — and so the best a traveler could hope for was to be received into someone’s home. And it was held as a high duty to provide for such persons.
On the one hand, Americans have long ago forgotten whatever customs, manners and etiquette pertained to living as a guest in someone else’s home. On the other hand, as for welcoming some stranger to stay in my house overnight, I’m probably not alone in anxiety that the person might steal from me.
Nor can I believe that classist distinctions did not apply — that one would welcome someone who looked like a vagrant or an escaped slave, the same as one would someone who was better-looking. The three men who appeared to Abraham must have been singularly magnificent in appearance, for him to welcome them the way they did. And that would have befit who they were, two of them apparently being angels, and the third being God.
And the two went on from them to Sodom, while Abraham was left to plead with God for the lives of his nephew Lot and Lot’s family.
Now, what was the problem with Sodom?
From the outstanding abnormality portrayed in the Bible text, many people have concluded that Sodom’s problem was homosexuality. A different angle that also appears in the Bible text, is the inhospitability the town showed towards visitors and guests, even the guests that someone (Lot) welcomed into his own home. This — the hostility — was the city’s real crime. From Messiah Truth, I have learned that that is how Sodom is viewed among Jews. Jewish tradition includes many accounts of the town’s abusiveness toward guests, and some of them are pretty extreme.
Hospitality likely has like importance today, as it did in ancient times, in Third World nations. Recently, Americans had exposure to or involvement with Afghanistan, the principal people of which are the Pashtun; and they hold hospitality to be extremely important, on the one hand.
Related: Wikipedia: “Pashtunwali”
On the other hand, other prominent features of Pashto culture include pederasty and the mutilation of enemy dead.
What happens if a person does obtain strangers’ hospitality under false pretenses? An imposter is one who imposes. There is the remarkable story of one such person, Mary Baker, also known as Princess Caraboo.
Related: Wikipedia – Princess Caraboo
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