And it came to pass, when they had brought them forth abroad, that he said: 'Escape for thy life; look not behind thee, neither stay thou in all the Plain; escape to the mountain, lest thou be swept away.' Genesis 17Penelope wrote:It is fascinating to speculate on these bizarre Bible stories. I always thought that Lot's wife had a raw deal. She would probably look back with longing rather than curiosity, I think, since it was her home.
No kidding, Penny, I guess poor old Lot’s wife was being made into a rather unfortunate example of disobedience but this seems really unjust. Reading Genesis makes me wonder if she deserved her fate. The ‘he’ in Genesis 17 is an angel, not God, so it's not really orders from the very top, at least not directly. And the idea of ‘escape for your life’ easily flows to ‘look not behind thee’, perhaps because looking back will slow you down or because you might not like what you see, not necessarily because you miss your place. There are 4 ‘orders’ in Gen 17 of which ‘look not behind thee’ appears to be the least consequential. So I agree with the poem's logic, there are many reasons to look back. In any case, there is no mention in Genesis of any sanction for looking back that I can see, so I guess she was rather surprised when she started turning into a pillar of salt. Maybe he could have afflicted her with something nasty but not fatal, like a bad case of warts. Actually, I would have thought the Lord was too busy smoting and burning and destroying Sodom and Gomorrah to bother with a quick glance back by Lot’s wife, but I guess not.
I enjoy reading poetry and fiction from cultures and languages other than my own. It brings freshness, different perspective, values and thought patterns, so thanks Milan for posting these Serbian poems and please post more!
And I say bring on Milan Kundera in the Fiction thread. The Unbearable Lightness of Being is a great book IMO and I’d be interested in reading it on BT or another Kundera. I looked through the list of books that have been done on BT and I didn’t see Lightness of Being, although the list is long and the print tiny and in order that they were read not alphabetical, so I may have missed it.