The Rape Of Lot By His Daughters

The account lead up to and following the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah is widely misunderstood in my encounters with people who call themselves Christians.  After Lot offers his daughters to be raped instead of male-presenting angels to appease a crowd of wicked men, the angels help him, his wife, and his daughters flee, though his wife perishes due to her own stupidity (Genesis 19:1-29).  The surviving trio eventually lives in a cave.  In Genesis 19:30-38, Lot's daughters plot to get him drunk, have sex with him, and preserve their family line.  They take turns raping him across two consecutive nights while he is intoxicated and dissociating to the point of not experiencing the assault.  From their rapes come Moab and Ben-Ammi, from whom in turn come the Moabites and Ammonites of later Biblical narratives.  Some people claim that their rapes were done as "justice" because the Bible ostensibly teaches "measure-for-measure" penalties in all things, while others do not even call it rape as opposed to incest, probably because the story features two female perpetrators and a male victim who is also older than them.  The Biblical punishment for rape is absolutely not related to Lex Talionis as will be thoroughly addressed below, and only a very stupid and by Biblical standards evil person would ever suppose a thing.  Unfortunately, when people in my country trivialize rape or encourage it as some sort of supposed justice, they are often sexist against men as well, which compounds their errors.  Now, to refute the crucial falsities I have heard people espouse regarding Lot, his daughters, and Biblical law.

First, Lot did not rape his daughters, as he only offered them to be sexually abused by other people, which did not actually even happen.  This could not be "measure-for-measure punishment" as it is, which the Bible already plainly condemns except in the case of assault resulting in permanent physical injuries (Exodus 21:23-25, Leviticus 24:19-21), because it is not what Lot did.  What are some examples, however, of the Bible contradicting this utter misconception of "eye for eye"?  Kidnapping with or without any associated injury is punished with death, not kidnapping and injury (Exodus 21:16, Deuteronomy 24:7), for instance, so anything else would by necessity be injustice.  Assault with non-permanent injuries (Exodus 21:18-19, 22), attacking one's parents with any level of brutality (Exodus 21:15), and permanent physical injuries inflicted on a servant (Exodus 21:26-27) do not receive "eye for eye" punishment.  Neither does the sexual assault described in Deuteronomy 25:11-12 or any similar sexual assault receive mirror punishment.  Now, what of rape, the worst kind of sexual sin?  I will also point out the simplest summary of what the Bible says about incest.

Leviticus 18:6--"No one is to approach any close relative to have sexual relations."

Deuteronomy 22:25-26--"But if out in the country a man happens to meet a young woman pledged to be married and rapes her, only the man who has done this shall die.  This case is like that of someone who attacks and murders a neighbor,"

The punishment for incestuous or any other rape, clearly, is death only for the rapist.  Incest of various kinds is a capital sin on its own (Leviticus 20:11-12, for instance), but Lot did not consent to the incest and, according to the literal words of the text, did not even perceive that sex of any kind was occurring on either night (Genesis 19:33, 35).  Though it could still be deduced from the nature of rape and what the Bible says about incest--for a rape victim has no choice even if the sex they are an unwilling participant in would otherwise be immoral--Deuteronomy 22:25-27 does say to only kill the rapist.  In addition to not saying anything that contradicts gender equality in handling rape, and it is the case that women can and do commit sexual assault (and thus would have to deserve the same penalty), the text also says rape is like murder.  In light of this, all of the verses in the Bible condemning murder at least indirectly also condemn rape, as Deuteronomy treats rape as at least as terrible (and it can be far worse, since the victim of murder has no more pain in this world, but this is not the case for a surviving rape victim).  However, just to emphasize the severity of murder as another capital sin and the explicit gender equality in how the Bible handles murder and thus rape, see the following verses in Exodus alone:

Exodus 20:13--"You shall not murder."

Exodus 21:12, 14--"Anyone who strikes a person with a fatal blow is to be put to death . . . But if anyone schemes and kills someone deliberately, that person is to be taken from my altar and put to death."

Exodus 21:20--"Anyone who beats their male or female slave with a rod must be punished if the slave dies as a direct result,"

Exodus 20:13 condemns all murder of and by all people.  Nothing qualifies it as pertaining to one gender or the other, and even if it did, verses like Genesis 1:26-27 and 5:1-2 would still necessitate that according to the Bible, not just independent logical necessity, the murder of or committed by a man or woman is of equal weight--and the same is true of the Biblical stance on rape, though if the Bible denied such a thing, it could not possibly be true on this issue since it would contradict the necessary truths of logic.  Genesis 9:6, Exodus 21:12-14, like Numbers 35:16-21, 30-31, and Deuteronomy 19:11-13 say that all murder is to be punished with death.  Exodus 21:20 explicitly mentions that perpetrators who unjustly kill male and female slaves are to face the aforementioned punishment, which would left to itself require the same of murdering free men and women even aside from all the other sexist logical and Biblical errors here.  Of course, other assaults and deaths are treated identically for male and female victims even on the level of explicit wording (as in Exodus 21:15, 26-27, 28-32, Deuteronomy 12:31, and 18:10).  

Even if Lot himself had raped his daughters, and no one does this in the story, he could not deserve rape himself because no one does according to the very same Bible that in a highly different, extremely limited context prescribes "eye for eye" punishment.  He is also of course not to be neglected as a rape victim on the basis of his gender and that of his rapists.  The Bible not only does not say anything that discriminates against male victims of sexual assault, including rape enacted by women, and it not only says things that explicitly affirm overarching gender equality (Genesis 1:26-27) and gender equality in particular cases of sin (such as Exodus 21:26-27, Leviticus 20:15-16, and Deuteronomy 12:31), but it also gives an example of women raping a man very early on.  Lot might be a terrible person, just not as bad as the people around him who are killed by God in Sodom and Gomorrah or the daughters who rape him, but he is also an example of how the Bible does not shy away from women who commit rape or other forms of sexual assault against men (see also Genesis 39:6-12 and Deuteronomy 25:1-12).  His incestuous rape was rape, it was not justice, and it deserved the death of both daughters according to the Bible's direct moral doctrines.

Logic, people.  It is very fucking helpful.