Lot, who went with Abram, also had flocks and herds and tents, so that the land could not support them staying together; for their possessions were so great that they could not remain together. And there was quarreling between the herders of Abram’s cattle and those of Lot’s cattle.—The Canaanites and Perizzites were then dwelling in the land.—Abram said to Lot, “Let there be no strife (meribah) between you and me, between my herders and yours, for we are kin. Is not the whole land before you? Let us separate: if you go north, I will go south; and if you go south, I will go north. (Genesis 13:5-9)
They provoked [God] at the waters of Meribah, and it went ill with Moses because of them.” (Psalm 106:32)
These are the waters of Meribah, where the Israelites quarreled with the Lord... (Numbers 20:13)
Lot is the first hostage in the Torah. Abraham joins a complex geopolitical war to save his nephew, even joining sides with the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah, whose wicked cities will be obliterated later in the parasha. Abraham puts his purity of means aside to achieve a requisite outcome. He makes political alliance with one evil to fight another. He joins Sodom to save his family member, but he doesn’t condone Sodom. Abraham takes to heart Hannah Arednt’s warning that realism can become a slippery slope to callousness: “If you are confronted with two evils, the argument runs, it is your duty to opt for the lesser one, whereas it is irresponsible to refuse to choose altogether. Its weakness has always been that those who choose the lesser evil forget quickly that they chose evil.”
Abraham and Lot are closest when the former is a savior and the latter a victim. But when they both grow wealthy, and Lot becomes closer to Abraham’s peer, their camps quarrel. Lot’s pursuit of wealth to the detriment of peace is particularly shocking given that he owes his life to Abraham. It’s not prosperity alone that sours their dynamic, but ingratitude.
Their personal differences scale and become cultural challenges—the quarrel is ultimately between their camps, not between them. Abraham proposes a separation. Ironically, Lot settles near Sodom, the very same civilization that Abraham joined in the war to save Lot. In other words, he chooses to settle in a place of wickedness because the economics—in his calculus—are preferable. He volunteers to join a culture that Abraham was willing to tolerate only out of dire necessity.
We can’t fault Lot. Perhaps he is even traumatized as a prisoner of war and simply seeks a return to normalcy and dependable cash flow. His settling in Sodom needn’t be read as an endorsement, so much as an expression of his priorities. “It’s the economy, stupid.” But the separate paths Lot and Abraham take become decisive, not just in their own lives, but for generations. Without Isaac or Ishmael yet born, Lot was the presumptive heir. Lot’s choice to settle in Sodom—his choice to let a quarrel over real estate come between him and his uncle—sets him up as the spiritual path not taken. Abraham is the father of many—Av hamon. Lot is part of this multitudinous lineage, but he cannot be the b’chor, the chosen one. The vignette we read in this parasha explains why.
The language used to describe the quarrel between Lot’s and Abraham’s herders is meribah. This same word recurs throughout the Torah. The people quarrel with Moses at the waters of Meribah. Moses loses his temper there and cites this moment as the reason he was not allowed to enter the Promised Land. The Torah sets up a parallel: Moses and the people : Abraham and Lot. But with a twist: Abraham settles in Canaan, Lot in Sodom. In Deuteronomy, it is the people who settle in Canaan, while Moses remains on the other side of the Jordan. Thus, geographically, Moses corresponds to Lot, the people to Abraham. How to make sense of this chiasmus? In the case of Lot and Abraham, the physical separation corresponds to a spiritual separation. In the case of Moses and the people, their separation corresponds to a spiritual continuity. It is as if Moses takes the place of the people, saying to God, “Take me, instead. I’ll settle here, so they can settle there. Let the covenant continue with them.” Moses’s antidote to a quarrel that would have spelled the end of Israelite continuity was a kind of self-sacrifice. Moses dies so the people can enter the land.
Moses said before the Holy One, Blessed be He: ‘Master of the Universe, if You will not allow me to enter the Land of Israel, at least let me be like a bird that flies just outside but sees within…’ The Holy One, Blessed be He, responded, ‘Enough for you.’ Moses replied, ‘Master of the Universe, if that is so, then let Moses die, but let Israel live and enter the Land.’ (Midrash Tanchuma)
The Torah sets up another paralle between Abraham and Lot in the figure of Ruth, a descend of Moab, and Naomi. The Moabites descend from Lot via his relationship with his daughters (undertaken when they assumed they were the last people on earth). This taboo relationship provides the “Just so” explanation for why the Moabites are particularly anathema to Israelites. And yet, Ruth proves to be an exception to this rule, and in turn, the great-grandmother of King David. Said differently, Ruth completes the karmic path of Abraham and Lot, reunifying their split. How does she do it? By telling Naomi, “Where you go, I will go.” This sentiment is the precise opposite of the one we find in Lech L’cha, in which Abraham effectively, says “Wherever you go, there I will not go.” While Naomi turns her daughters-in-law away, Ruth refuses this rejection, a Tikkun or rectification of Lot’s response to Abraham’s rebuff. While the people of Sodom and Gemorrah were associated with a culture of selfishness, economics to the detriment of derekh eretz (basic dignity), Ruth exemplifies a culture of Hesed (loving-kindness), incidentally the trait Jewish tradition associates with Abraham.
”Rabbi Zeira said: This scroll (the Book of Ruth) contains neither [laws of] impurity nor purity, neither prohibition nor permission. So why was it written? To teach you the great reward given to those who perform acts of kindness.” (Ruth Rabbah 2:14)
“Abraham is Hesed, and every act of Hesed is on his account, and from him flows all kindness in the world.” (Zohar, Lech L’cha)
This is not to say that Abraham and Ruth are effective (or ineffective) altruists, but that they are animated by a sense of personal mission and purpose. Hesed, as I have come to understand it, means a twinkle in the eye. Those whose eyes twinkle give the ultimate Hesed in conveying this sense of something more than meets the eye. Those who lack this twinkle and operate under conditions of fear, take refuge in an externalized pursuit of what they think is self-interest: more stuff, more status, which, it turns out, is never enough. Ruth’s journey is itself a repetition of Abraham’s Lech L’cha, following the place that Naomi will show her. She reverses the trend begun by Lot of seeking to settle in the place of superficial comfort and false stability, rather than finding security in the journey and making a spiritual home in the midst of volatility itself.
While a basic reading of Abraham and Lot casts Abraham’s path as prudent and Lot’s as premature, the Kabbalistic and Hasidic renderings of the story present Lot’s deviant itinerary through Sodom, and his forked lineage into Moab, as fundamentally redemptive. After all, without this error, there would be no Ruth, and thus, no King David. Someone must descend into realms of darkness to transform them—that is hard and undesirable work, work that is simply too much for the pure and sensitive, but it is the work that compliments the path of Abraham. While Abraham converts and teaches, Lot descends to see reality as it is. Abraham recruits the most motivated and elevates the most ambitious, but Lot tarries with the wretched. He is not strong enough to change human nature, in its basest forms, but his own spiritual lineage is stronger for it. Lot is not the paragon, but as a minor character, he represents another route. Abraham’s choice to save Lot proves prescient in the long-run, even as Lot disappoints in the short-run. When we save a life, we save a lineage.
Abraham saves Lot’s life—gives Lot life—but he also respects Lot’s choice to settle in Sodom. Without a covenant in place, Lot is a free man to do as he pleases. He is not bound by Lech L’cha, he’s simply missing out. As he is not an Israelite (an anachronistic concept), he is permitted to be a Gentile. Abraham is father to all people, not just to Israelites, and Lot expresses Abraham’s diverse reach. He maintains a relationship with Lot based on kinship despite differences in spiritual attitude. Abraham’s Hesed is evident in his ability to “let Lot be Lot,” to let Lot fail and learn, even as he knows that Lot’s priorities are “basic.” Abraham can show another way, but he can’t change Lot’s psychology or spiritual destiny.
It is ironic Abraham was able to teach and convert many students—according to the Midrash—yet unable to maintain a spiritual influence on Lot. Still, Abraham doesn’t go to war for anyone else. The Torah offers us a complex and real picture of influence and lineage. While Lot appears to deviate from Abraham’s values, he also extends them to places Abraham cannot go. Even in his separation from Abraham, Lot proves Abraham to be a progenitor of cultural variety, a variety that we saw was mandated as a post-Babelian principle. Abraham’s twinkle is preserved and spread throughout generations, culminating in the Davidic line, and ultimately the messianic line. It is the twinkle that says, “Today,” yet is patient enough to wait through millennia of detour.