Karl Knausgaard - A Time for Everything

If the angels’ mission with Abraham was unclear, it gets more obvious and more decisive here: they are to sort sinners from nonsinners, and then wipe Sodom from the face of the earth. However, for the first and last time in the Bible the angels don’t follow the prearranged plan. The idea was that they were to be out on the streets at night, and from the moment they change their minds and go home with Lot instead, what is for them an unprecedented improvisation begins.

But why?

The text says that Lot was very insistent, and if Lot had been a person of some standing, someone who was viewed with respect and reverence, it might be thought that they agreed simply to honor him, just as earlier that day they had honored Abraham with a visit. But Lot is no such man. His doglike character makes him one of the Bible’s most unlikely heroes. Lot is Abraham’s nephew, but possesses little or nothing of his uncle’s courage and righteousness. Abraham is brave, he argues with the Lord and gets him to promise that Sodom and Gomorrah will be spared if ten good men can be found there, and Abraham is almost grotesquely loyal, willing to execute his own son for the Lord’s sake. But Lot? When he prays for a city to be spared, he does so because he’s frightened of dying in the mountains and needs a secure place to live when he flees Sodom. Lot is selfish, Abraham unselfish, and this is clear from the very first moment Lot appears in the Bible, when he arrives at Bethel with his uncle. They divide the area between them, but Lot isn’t content and soon begins to quarrel with Abraham, who wisely and gently offers to go in the opposite direction to Lot no matter where he decided to settle. Lot chooses the Plain of Jordan and settles in Sodom. However, there he soon finds himself in trouble again. An invasion force that has defeated the five kings of the plain takes Lot prisoner and abducts him with all his goods. It’s Abraham, naturally, who extricates him from this predicament. Together with all his people, three hundred and eighteen trained men, he goes after them, wins the ensuing battle, and frees Lot.

Lot chose first, went down to the Plain of Jordan and settled in Sodom. If he felt any freedom it was illusory. He was still in his uncle’s shadow. If things turned out well for him there, he would be beholden to Abraham, if badly, he would have only himself to blame, as Abraham had given him every advantage. His dependence was further increased when Abraham saved him, his family, and servants from captivity, and made sure that he got back all his flocks and possessions. The really annoying thing must have been that Abraham behaved impeccably on both occasions. Giving Lot the right to choose was a good deed; bringing him out of captivity was a good deed. Lot could do nothing. Was he to accuse Abraham of helping him in a patronizing way? That was impossible, in a sense he was caught up in Abraham’s mesh of righteousness. At the same time there is reason to believe that he derived advantage from the relationship. Two verdicts are passed on Lot’s character in scripture; one direct and the other indirect. The direct one is made when Lot comes out of his house to meet the people of Sodom, who say this of him: This man has come and settled here as an alien, and does he now take it upon himself to judge us?

The meaning is obvious. Lot thinks he’s better than them. The claim is made in anger and is clearly there to tell things as they are. No more courteous phrases, no more dissimulation and false friendship: this is the truth about Lot. He thinks he’s better than them.

The other judgment of Lot’s character is implicitly provided by his prospective sons-in-law. The angels tell Lot to warn those close to him that Sodom will be annihilated, so that they can get away while there’s still time. This shows amazing faith in Lot, as the angels say nothing about how those he warns must be righteous or free from sin; it’s enough that he vouches for them. However, Lot doesn’t warn any of his neighbors or friends, but selects his sons-in-law, who just think he’s joking. This is normally interpreted as meaning that the sons-in-law have no respect for the Lord. But it isn’t the Lord they lack respect for. It’s Lot. He ’s the one they don’t believe. He ’s the one they laugh at. That these future sons-in-law do not take him seriously, engaged as they are to his daughters, shows quite clearly that Lot lacks any authority whatsoever.

In Sodom, Lot is the kind of man people laugh at. One might argue that this says more about the citizens of Sodom than about Lot. But for the fact that Lot actually lived there. Would any man of substance have let himself be used in that way? Either he would have allowed his actions to speak for him, so that no one would dream of despising him, or he would have left the place. God’s judgment over Sodom is also a judgment on Lot, who remained.

It is against this background that one must see Lot’s eagerness to have the angels as guests. It would rehabilitate him. Then he would be better than his neighbors.

Naturally the angels know all this. They know about his relationship with Abraham, and they know only too well what his canine fawning means, what he wants. That’s why they turn down his invitation. And that’s why it is so sensational, indeed literally unique, that they nevertheless allow themselves to be persuaded . It goes against everything we know about the angels’ character.

So what has caused this odd behavior in them?

According to Bellori, there’s no doubt at all that it’s to do with their very lengthy presence on earth. The foot washing and food with Abraham indicates that they’d been traveling for some time. Now it’s evening. They’ve been walking for a whole day, and what to begin with was vague and variable, almost weightless around them, must gradually have materialized with what, until then, was an unguessed-at precision and solidity. Not just sand dunes that take on ever new formations according to the way the wind blows, unceasing in movement, but the gentle slope that rises at the side of the road, where the soft, golden surface of the sand is now and then broken up by a scanty, chalky-white rock, and where every elevation throws a shadow precisely in accordance with its particular shape and the height of the sun in the sky. The sandal straps pressing against naked feet. The sand grains that rub between the soles and the skin beneath the feet. The sun beating down on the neck. Not just trees that shoot up and break down, or vegetation that spreads out and retreats in wavelike movements, according to the changes occurring in the environment that they’re part of, but the orange tree in the grove in front of them, the pattern of veins dividing in its thin leaves, the puff of wind that makes the boughs lift, the round fruits gleaming orange in among all the green. The weight of them in the hand. The taste of the juice which just seems to explode in the mouth as the teeth pierce the thin membrane.

Or the hollow splash as the bucket hits the surface of the water far below in the depths of the well. The rope that cuts into the palm as it gradually overturns and fills with water, the knockings of wood against stone each time it hits the side on the way up, the sand darkening with the spilled water as it’s placed on the ground. How the water caresses the hot hands that slip into it and cup themselves into the shape of a bowl and suddenly changes color when it is lifted up, from the bucket’s shady green to the light pink of the hands. The feeling of well-being that spreads through the body as the cool water courses down the burning throat. The glances they send each other when they’ve finished.

Ah, yes.

They drink like calves, and when they continue their journey, the atmosphere among them is high-spirited and joyful. Normally they have to force themselves to stop time and enter the moment, which lets itself be conquered only through a huge effort of will, but now, having journeyed for several hours, it’s as if the opposite happens: suddenly it’s time that has become active, and the moment that is entering into them. It no longer costs them anything to be there. The world has opened itself to them.