[Avodah] The Delet Hakodesh and Lot

[Rena Poppers]

Date: Wed, 4 Nov 2020 14:34:34 -0600
From: Brent Kaufman <cbkaufman at gmail.com>

> Regarding the narrative of Lot, I have 2 questions:

> 1) the door of Lot's house is mentioned 3 (THREExxx) times. That in itself
> is unusual, but the second time, when Lot is between the mob of thousands
> and the door, the mob is pushing soo hard that the Torah tells us that they
> were about to break down the door. Anyone have an obvious question?
> Before they even get to the door, they would have had to completely crush
> Lot to death, but the Torah is more concerned to tell us about the poor
> door that almost broke. What?s up with that?
...

To respond to the first question...

Last year a friend and I learned this parsha about Lot and we had the
same question about the door being mentioned so much, but I don't think
we found an answer. We did learn that regarding the apparent pushing
very hard against Lot - according to Malbim, when pasuk 9 says that they
pressed against Lot, it means that they were verbally "pressing" against
Lot, whom they now considered as only an ordinary person (an ish) and
not worthy of being a judge (as he had been appointed). This explains
the language of "va'yifztiru b'ish b'Lot". Also, Malbim's opinion
is that the mob pushed Lot aside from where he stood next to the door
(rather than crushing him).

Further support for the understanding of "va'yifztiru" as being pressuring
with words is the word "va'yiftzar" in pasuk 3, when Lot pressures the
malachim to stay as his guests - clearly a verbal pressuring. Also,
in Vayishlach, when Yaakov pressures Eisav to take his gifts (Genesis
33:11), "va'yiftzar" is used. (At the time, I think we looked this
word up in the concordance but I didn't write down if this word occurs
in any other places.)