{"author":null,"canonical_references":[],"database_sha256":"8cfbe7284c6936871d57c02dc6aa63ebbdfd4722422d539dd9f716e46e91112e","date_end":null,"date_start":null,"edition_year":null,"id":"sermonindex-ecf-5757","native_reference":{"book_number":10,"chapter_from":19,"chapter_to":19,"system":"MyBible module coordinates (mapping unverified)","verse_from":26,"verse_to":26},"public_import_allowed":false,"record_kind":"verse-keyed-module-record","review_required":["English edition and exact text","author/work attribution","dating","verse mapping and citation kind","reuse and attribution","split author quotations and deduplicate"],"review_status":"unreviewed","source_html":"<p><b>Bede</b>: And his wife, looking back, was turned into a pillar of salt. This indeed must be believed to have happened literally. Finally, Josephus reports that even up to his time the same pillar of salt had endured at the gates of the same city. And indeed, the wife, out of fear due to her feminine frailty at the sudden clamoring of the perishing and the crashing of the flames falling from the sky, looked back; but it nonetheless holds their figure in this infirmity, who, once renouncing the world and beginning the arduous journey of virtues, suddenly return with an unstable and almost feminine heart to the desires of the world they had forsaken; about whom the apostle Peter says: \"It would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than after knowing it to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them\" (2 Peter 2:21); as, conversely, Lot, who left behind everything he possessed that was destined to perish with the sinners, suggests those who truly renounce the world, and regret not their renunciation; those whom also the blessed Noah, who left behind all his possessions to be destroyed by the floods with the reprobates, just as [Lot] did with the fire, clearly denotes; but the fact that the wife of Lot, when she turned away from the path which the Lord showed, perished and was turned into a pillar of salt; aptly signifies that those who deviate from the way of truth by returning to sins perish in their own depravity; yet by the example of their perdition they leave behind, as it were, a seasoning of wisdom for others, so that those remembering their destruction may guard themselves more cautiously and circumspectly in the purpose of righteousness they have taken up. Finally, the Lord, warning the faithful not to abandon the path of faith they have begun, employs for them, as it were, a rock of salt that they may more sweetly savor His words, when He says among other things: \"Remember Lot's wife\" (Luke 17:32). Therefore, anyone who desires to escape the fire of vices, which is the final judgment, must forget what is past and always strive towards the joys of divine promise that lie ahead.<br/><i>— Commentary on Genesis (Hexaemeron)</i></p><p><b>Clement of Alexandria</b>: For God looks closely at the actual inner purpose, as when Lot's wife was the only one to turn of her own free will toward the wickedness of the world. He left her insensible, giving her the likeness of a pillar of salt and leaving her without the power of forward movement, a statue, yet not one without a useful message but one intended to season and salt the person capable of spiritual perception.<br/><i>— The Stromata Book 2</i></p><p><b>Origen of Alexandria</b>: But let us return to Lot, who, fleeing the destruction of Sodom with his wife and daughters, having received from the angels the command not to look back, was making his way toward Segor. But his wife becomes forgetful of the precept, \"she looks back,\" she breaks the law imposed upon her, \"she is made a pillar of salt.\" Do we suppose there was so much wickedness in this deed committed, that, because the woman looked back after herself, she incurred the destruction which by the divine favor she seemed to have escaped? For what great crime was there, if the anxious mind of the woman looked back to where she was terrified by the excessive crackling of the flames? But because \"the law is spiritual\" and the things that befell the ancients \"befell them as a figure,\" let us see whether perhaps Lot, who did not look back, is the rational sense and the manly spirit, while the wife here holds the image of the flesh. For it is the flesh that always looks back to vices, which, when the spirit strives toward salvation, looks back and seeks after pleasures. Hence indeed the Lord also said: \"No one putting his hand to the plow and looking back is fit for the kingdom of God,\" and he adds: \"Remember Lot's wife.\" And that \"she is made a pillar of salt\" seems set forth as an indication of her folly. For salt is put in place of prudence, which she lacked. Lot, therefore, pressed on to Segor, and there, having for a little while gathered the strength which he could not have in Sodom, he ascended into the mountain and dwelt there, as Scripture says, \"he and his two daughters with him.\"<br/><i>— HOMILIES ON Genesis 5.2</i></p><p><b>Philoxenus of Mabbug</b>: Remember Lot's wife, who, because the love of her kinsfolk and the outcries of her beloved ones constrained her, turned and looked back behind her, and became a pillar of salt, even as is written concerning her; and because her soul had not been salted with the fear of the Highest she became a destructible salted thing. Remember then this woman who was in doubt, and who perished, and be thou not in doubt like unto her, and turn not thyself backwards, lest thou remain in the place where thou art. For the soul that turneth and looketh backward after it hath gone forth on the journey in this path becometh a senseless pillar, and as the wife of Lot ceased from bodily feeling, and thereby became a pillar of salt, even so also here the mind, which looketh behind it always at corruptible things, ceaseth to feel, and becometh stupefied at spiritual things; because the remembrance of the world maketh us to possess dulness of heart, and it defileth the purity and innocency of the soul.<br/><i>— 13 Ascetic Discourses, Discourse 9 -- Second Discourse on Poverty</i></p>","source_html_sha256":"e74d6dfa9a4b88c445b8bd338bb39e29e0ae8bb7c4784ca9e786e3a94c7b9d6f","source_module":"ECF","source_row_id":5757,"source_url":"https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/ecf/","text_sha256":"96a0ca5f60bf963528620cfa157dc1d7ad3a62f03505966dc0ed0921da7451e7","translator":null,"work":null}