Don't Look Back! Genesis 19:24-29

May the mumbling commence!

Change your life for God.  Don’t look back.  Judgment is not pretty.  Read from Peterson’s The Message:

Then God rained brimstone and fire down on Sodom and Gomorrah – a river of lava from God out of the sky! – and destroyed those cities and the entire plain and everyone who lived in the cities and everything that grew from the ground.

But Lot’s wife looked back and turned into a pillar of salt.

Abraham got up early the next morning and went to the place he had so recently stood with God.  He looked out over Sodom and Gomorrah, surveying the whole plain.  All he could see was smoke belching from the Earth, like smoke from a furnace.

And that’s the story: When God destroyed the Cities of the Plain, he was mindful of Abraham and first got Lot out of there before he blasted those cities off the face of the Earth.  (Genesis 19:24-29)

Now read the same passage from the NIV translation:

Then the Lord rained down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah – from the Lord out of the heavens.  Thus he overthrew those cities and the entire plain, including all those living in the cities – and also the vegetation in the land.  But Lot's wife looked back, and she became a pillar of salt. 

Early the next morning Abraham got up and returned to the place where he had stood before the Lord.  He looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah, toward all the land of the plain, and he saw dense smoke rising from the land, like smoke from a furnace. 

So when God destroyed the cities of the plain, he remembered Abraham, and he brought Lot out of the catastrophe that overthrew the cities where Lot had lived.  (Genesis 19:24-29)

The differences between the NIV and Peterson’s work are mostly surface ones.  Both recognize that human sin affects the entire ecosystem.  Both recognize the downfall of looking back on our old lives when God has called us to leave them behind.

If I were to pick one fault with Peterson in this passage, it would be with the difference between “being mindful of”  (Peterson) and “remembering” (NIV).  I do not like the connotations of being mindful… almost like the Lord is beholding to Abraham.  To be remembered is enough… especially being remembered by the Lord of all creation as a lowly part of creation.

Let’s remember the Lord of all creation, just as he has mercy and remembers us.  Let’s leave all sin behind and not look back.

Enough mumbling for now…

Peace Out