Lot's Inferiority Complex
“Rabbi Ḥiyya bar Abba said that Rabbi Yoḥanan said: Any person who is arrogant is as though he worships idols…" (Sotah 5a)
“Arrogance is the mother of all sins, for it causes a person to exalt himself above others and take pleasure in their subjugation to his honor.” (Mesilat Yesharim)
As dawn broke, the messengers urged Lot on, saying, “Up, take your wife and your two remaining daughters, lest you be swept away because of the iniquity of the city.” Still he delayed. So the agents seized his hand, and the hands of his wife and his two daughters—in the Lord’s mercy on him—and brought him out and left him outside the city. When they had brought them outside, one said, “Flee for your life! Do not look behind you, nor stop anywhere in the Plain; flee to the hills, lest you be swept away.” But Lot said to them, “Oh no, my lord! You have been so gracious to your servant, and have already shown me so much kindness in order to save my life; but I cannot flee to the hills, lest the disaster overtake me and I die. (Genesis 19:15-19)
I CANNOT FLEE TO THE HILLS. Whilst I was with the people of Sodom the Holy One, blessed be He, compared my deeds with the deeds of the people of my city and I seemed to be righteous and deserving to be saved. When, however, I come to the righteous man I must be regarded as wicked. (Rashi)
Why was Lot so reluctant to leave Sodom and Gemorrah? After all, this was a place where its inhabitants sought to violate his guests, and where he was compelled to offer his own daughters as their substitute. Shouldn’t he have relished an opportunity to relocate, a reckoning for his wicked neighbors? Lot delayed leaving. He had to be carried out like a drunk. That passivity recurs as a leitmotif at the end of his story when his daughters take advantage of him in his sleep. Lot is a disassociated figure. Noah, before him, also took psychological refuge in inebriation. And like Noah, this “checking out” benumbs him to the violence in his midst.
Lot’s reluctance to leave parallels the reluctance of the Israelites who failed to smear lamb’s blood on their lintels, as well as the reluctance of those who, in the desert, longed to return to Egypt, because the food (the bread of affliction, presumably) was better. A macro-point here is that switching costs are high and anchoring bias and loss aversion make all change difficult. But Rashi takes us under the hood of why Lot might have been reluctant to leave Sodom and Gemorrah, a place of primal depravity, and it’s not what we’d have thought. Lot doesn’t miss the food, the sounds, the sights. He’s not sentimental. Rather, Lot enjoys hiding among wicked people. We know this, Rashi proposes, from the fact that Lot prefers to go to Tzoar than to head back to Abraham in Mamre. Lot doesn’t want to pale in comparison.
Lot’s sin is not the wickedness of moral depravity, of violence and bestiality, but a unique transgression: a need to feel superior to others. He prefers to surround himself with inferiors to look good rather than seek a more absolute ideal and a more intrinsic perspective. Lot doesn’t live in Sodom in spite of the evil, but because of it. It gives him something to point a finger at while falsely viewing himself as a saint. With the destruction of his hiding place, and the bursting of his bubble, he must briefly acknowledge that he is not only mediocre, but insecure. This affords us another angle on the Israelites who choose to stay in Egypt: could it be that remaining victims of oppression also enables them to dodge responsibility for becoming agentic? If anyone has an excuse to maintain a victim mentality its a real victim. Lot’s ability to point to Sodomite misconduct redirects from the more interesting question, resurfaced by Rashi, who would choose to live there?
The window in Noah’s ark, the famed Tzohar looks and sounds like Tzoar, the site to which Lot retreats. Does Noah look through the window and feel above his drowning peers as Lot looks out from Zoar at the destroyed Mesopotamian cities? Or perhaps the reverse: Noah looks out through a window, but Lot has no window, the hay in his Tzoar is absent, stopped by a silent ayin at the back of the throat. Lot is a coward.
Lot’s insecurity and cowardice conceptually rhyme with several other Biblical figures: from arch villains like Pharaoh and Haman to internal anti-heroes like Korach and Cain. Here is Haman speaking, as presented by the Talmud:
”All my wealth is meaningless to me, nor is all my honor worth anything, so long as I see Mordechai.” (Megilla 12b)
Haman’s need for relative status powers his animosity not just of Mordechai, but of Mordechai’s people. Haman hates Jews because he hates God. He hates God because he compares himself to God and cannot stand to lose on a relative basis. His insecurity is also arrogance, for presuming that being on par with God was ever in his opportunity set. The inverse of Lot, who compares himself to Abraham, is Abraham, who compares himself to himself. “Lech l’cha”—go to or for yourself is the call not to compare, to undertake value creation not because it is marginally better than someone else’s path, but because it is your own. Korach declares war on Moses, because he envies his authority, yet Moses is described as a leader of consummate humility. Humble people seek to be surrounded by those who are better. They don’t feel inferior through comparison, but elevated and motivated to become better versions of themselves. They know that greatness is not the rejection of influences, but the cultivation of them.
Lot’s tale is cautionary and exemplary for those of us who are neither Abrahamic saviors nor brutal terrorists. His world did not end, but his own daughters thought that it had ended, because he preferred to be number 1, on a relative basis, than the best person he could be on an intrinsic basis. Let us remember that Abraham’s faith was not only abstract and theological, but also psychological, bringing with it a confidance to be himself and none other.
Shabbat Shalom,
Zohar Atkins