CHAPTER SEVEN

DON’T LOOK BACK: FROM THE WIFE OF LOT TO AND

One of the most striking scenes of the Sodom and Gomorrah episode in the Old Testament is the metamorphosis of the wife of Lot into a pillar of salt. Yet the scene occupies only one verse in the whole of Genesis’ account: “But Lot’s wife, behind him, looked back, and she became a pillar of salt” (Genesis 19.26). It is rather surprising to observe that the scene has attracted very little attention from biblical scholars. Of the two recent monographs on the episode, one manages not to say anything, whereas the other observes only: it “may have been an etiological element which explained some bizarre fi gure in the rock formation near the Dead Sea”, and “the injunction not to look back . . .” is a widespread motif found often in folklore of widely differ- ing cultures”. Lot’s wife meets her end because of “her own, individual transgression of the express command given in verse (Genesis 19.17)”, and it concludes that “if human beings are punished by Yahweh, it is because of their own fault, not because of that of a community”.1 This interpretation is hardly persuasive, since the whole of Sodom and Gomorrah is destroyed, whereas there must have been people in those cities, for example women and children, who had not participated in the attempt to violate the angels visiting Lot’s house (Genesis 19.1–11). The episode does not fare much better in the two most recent authoritative commentaries on Genesis. Horst Seebass passes over the episode and Claus Westermann comments only: “ein Mensch darf dem Vernichtigungsgericht Gottes nicht zusehen” and “dieses Gebot begegnet häufi g und ist weit verbreitet, z.B. Orpheus und Eurydike”.2 Yet in the case of Orpheus there is no destruction by God, and the examples are therefore hardly comparable in this manner. The fullest

1 W.W. Fields, Sodom and Gomorrah: history and motif in biblical narrative (Sheffi eld, 1997); J.A. Loader, A Tale of Two Cities (Kampen, 1990) 41 (quotes), who refers to the studies by Dillmann, Gunkel, Von Rad and Harland. 2 C. Westermann, Genesis II (Neukirchen-Vluyn, 1981) 371 (quotes), 375; H. Seebass, Genesis II/1 (Neukirchen-Vluyn, 1997) 148. 118 chapter seven attempt at explanation is perhaps that by the polymath Theodor Gaster (1906–1992), who noted: Within the dramatic context of the story this means, of course, that they must set their faces hopefully toward the future, not nostalgically toward the past. This, however, is simply a clever “literary” twist to an element of the older folktale which really had its origin in magic and in religious convention, for it is a common rule in ancient rituals that one must not turn one’s gaze backward.3 Although there is some truth in these words, we must point out that Gaster’s older folktale is not attested at all and neither can we state that in ancient rituals it was ‘a common rule’ that people should not look back. These few comments seem to confi rm the words of Anna Akhmato- va’s famous poem Lot’s Wife (§ 7): “Who will grieve for this woman? Does she not seem too insignifi cant for our concern?” Yet in itself it is not that strange that scholars and commentators on the Old Testament are a bit at a loss as to what to make of the episode of Lot’s wife. It is not referred to elsewhere in the Old Testament and is mentioned only once in the New Testament (§ 7). Moreover, there is no other paral- lel in the Bible for the prohibition on looking back and neither does the theme seem to occur in the literature of the Ancient Near East,4 although it may be attested once in Hittite ritual: after an exorcism of demons, the witch “goes away [and while walking off ] she does not turn around”.5 On the other hand, the prohibition is quite widespread in Greco- Roman antiquity with its most famous example being, of course, the already mentioned case of . It might therefore be useful to try to achieve greater clarity in this area and to take a closer look at the classical examples, even though in that fi eld the theme has also received little attention until now.6 Most studies think it suffi cient to

3 Th. Gaster, Myth, Legend and Custom in the Old Testament, 2 vols. (New York, 1969) I.159–60, 366 at 159. 4 With thanks to Marc Linssen and Martin Stol. 5 Gaster, Myth, I.159, who manages to misquote both the reference and translation of Keilschrifturkunden aus Boghazköi XXVII.67.iv.3 (tr. A. Goetze) in ANET 348. However, J.V. García Trabazo, Textos religiosos hititas (Madrid, 2002) only sees “[. . .] regres[a . . .]”. 6 The only detailed discussion: M. Teufel, Brauch und Ritus bei Apollonius Rhodius (Diss. Tübingen, 1939) 171–85, to whose collection of passages I am much indebted, but see also Frazer on Ovid, F. 6.164; Pease on Cic. Div. 1.49; Gow on Theocr. 24.96; West on Hes. Th. 182 and Bömer on Ovid, F. 5.439.