The Harlot by The Side of The Road: Forbidden Tales of The Bible Read Free Page B

daughters in my house,” cried Lot, raising both hands in a gesture of prayer. “Both of them virgins!”
    And Lot went out unto them to the door, and shut the door after him. And he said: “I pray you, my brethren, do not so wickedly. Behold now, I have two daughters that have not known man; let me, I pray you, bring them out unto you, and do ye to them as is good in your eyes; only unto these men do nothing; forasmuch as they are come under the shadow of my roof.”
    — GENESIS 19.6-8    
     
    And they said: “Stand back.” And they said: “This one fellow came in to sojourn, and he will needs play the judge; now will we deal worse with thee, than with them.” And they pressed sore upon the man, even Lot, and drew near to break the door. But the men put forth their hand, and brought Lot into the house to them, and the door they shut. And they smote the men that were at the door of the house with blindness, both small and great; so that they wearied themselves to find the door.”
    — GENESIS 19:9–11    
     
    A murmur rolled through the crowd, and the younger daughter shivered.
    “I beg you to let me bring them out to you,” Lot continued, “and you can do what you want with them …”
    Yes, that’s right
, the younger daughter later told her incredulous sister, not once but many times,
that is exactly what our father said
.
    “… do whatever pleases you with my daughters, I beg you,” Lot repeated pleadingly, “but do not touch the strangers who have sought shelter under my roof!”
    If the prospect of having their way with two young virgins was appealing to the men in the crowd, they gave no sign of it. Indeed, Lot’s offer seemed to stir them to an even hotter rage than before.
    “Out of our way,” one of the men shouted at Lot.
“You
are a stranger, too! And now you set yourself up so high and mighty—you think you can tell us what to do? Out of our way,
stranger!”
    “Or,” another man took up, “we’ll bugger
you
instead of them!”
    The crowd surged forward, and Lot’s daughter feared that her father would be crushed and dragged away. But then she saw the front door fly open, and the light from the lamps inside the house fall on the faces of the crowd. The two strangers reached out from the doorway, clapped their hands on Lot’s shoulders, and yanked him back inside the house so suddenly that he seemed to disappear.

     
    The crowd lingered outside the house, calling out and pounding on the door, but she could tell that their bloodlust had begun to ebb. A few men drifted away, laughing and singing bawdily, and the ones who remained were content to pass around flasks from which they occasionally took a long pull. Now and then, Lot’s daughter heard the sound of shouting and cursing, but the words were directed from one man in the crowd toward another; they seemed to have forgotten about the strangers—and the young women—inside the house. Now and then, she heard a
thunk
and then a cry of pain—
“Owww!”
—as one of the men, blind drunk, bumped into a wall or a corner of the house. Before long, the stalwarts who lingered outside Lot’s house were so drunk that they could not have found the front door if they tried, and even they began to stagger off in one direction or another.
    But there was still a quiet commotion in Lot’s house, and his youngest daughter positioned herself at the top of the staircase so she could hear the words that her parents were whispering to one another in such urgent tones.
    “Who
are
these strangers?” demanded Lot’s wife, looking to the corner next to the hearth where the two figures, wrapped in their long cloaks, appeared to sleep. “And why have you brought them here to afflict us?”
    “As I have told you, they are angels! They are messengers of the Lord who have come to bestow some gift upon us, which is what I have predicted many times, if you will recall,” Lot said solemnly. “I could do no less than welcome them into our