How could Lot’s daughters justify incest with their father? (Genesis 19:31–32)
Genesis 19:30 - 38
ESV - 30 Now Lot went up out of Zoar and lived in the hills with his two daughters, for he was afraid to live in Zoar. So he lived in a cave with his two daughters. 31 And the firstborn said to the younger, "Our father is old, and there is not a man on earth to come in to us after the manner of all the earth.
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Asked September 15 2021
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Jack Gutknecht
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Tim Maas
Since God had already preserved Lot and his daughters through miraculous intervention when Sodom was destroyed, it should have given Lot's daughters faith with regard to God being able to "work out" any seemingly adverse circumstances or contingencies related to their situation after Sodom was destroyed. However, I would say that, as Lot's older daughter expressed it in the cited chapter, the death of all the people of Sodom (where Lot had been living), as well as of Gomorrah, coupled with Lot's subsequent isolated flight to the neighboring mountains, left the daughters (in their worldly view) with no potential for being betrothed and married in the normal fashion of the times. They therefore resorted to incest with Lot (after making him drunk so that he would not be able to deter them) to conceive a child, in order to preserve the family line; to avoid the cultural shame associated with childlessness; and also to have someone to care for them when the child would have grown to adulthood, when Lot might no longer be present. Also, as unnatural as the behavior of Lot's daughters might seem, I do not recall any Biblical mention of a formal restriction (either from God, or as a human custom) to that point in time (prior to the giving of the Law) against daughters bearing their father's children.
Jack Gutknecht
They had bad or corrupted consciences (just by living in the Sodom environment)-- Titus 1:15-16 See also Genesis 6:5; Exodus 7:14; 8:15; Jeremiah 6:15; 17:9; Acts 5:2; Romans 2:5; Ephesians 4:19; 1 Timothy 1:19; 4:2 --"...having their conscience seared as with a hot iron" (Jubilee Bible 2000 (JUB) We must realize the mindset of the daughters, knowing that there was no way to continue the family line. Being in the land of Canaan, with no family, it meant the end of their family name. Thus, living among the Sodomites and their debased way of thinking had influenced them to the point that they so easily came up with such a scheme. --Christian Publishing House Blog
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