Text Summary:

Abraham’s nephew Lot moves his daughters from Zoar to live in a cave.  The daughters get him drunk and have intercourse so they can have children since they believe there are no other men in the world.  Their sons are the ancestors of the Moabite and Ammonite tribes.

My Thoughts:

Incest is Not Right: The incest in this story does not sit well with me.  It makes you wonder though, if the rest of the world blew up, would you agree to incest to keep the human race going or let it end with you?  Theoretically, we are all related either through Adam and Eve or, as science would say, though Mitochondrial Eve, the mother of all modern humans that lived in Africa about 200,000 years ago (Wikipedia story).

The daughters obviously knew incest was wrong or they would not have gotten Lot so drunk that he never knew what happened.  Lot likely thought God miraculously blessed his daughters with pregnancies.

Holes in the Story: It’s strange that the daughters thought no men were left on earth. Yes, they watched all the men blow up in Sodom and Gomorrah, but wouldn’t there have been men in the small town of Zoar?

The title of this section in my Bible is The Origin of the Moabites and Ammonites.  I think this was more of a fanciful story made up to explain the origins of these tribes, back to Lot’s daughters.  Not being of direct descendants of Abraham, these tribes were likely looked down upon by the author, so the incest was added as a derogatory jab at them.