Lot’s disproportionate zeal to care for his guests led him to surrender his daughters, and in the end he is known not for his generosity and compassion, but for the immoral acts he committed in a drunken stupor.
We read in Parashat Vayera of how the townspeople of Sedom surrounded Lot’s home and demanded that he surrender to them the two mysterious visitors whom he had welcomed and hosted. Lot, astonishingly, attempts to protect his guests by offering the townspeople his two daughters in their place: “Look here – I have two daughters who had never been intimate with a man; I will bring them out to you so you can do with them whatever you like, but do not do anything to these men, once they have entered the shade of my walls” (19:8).
The Midrash (Tanchuma, Vayera 12) comments:
Ordinarily, a person surrenders himself to be killed for the sake of his daughters and wife, and either kills or is killed, but this person [Lot] surrendered his daughters to be defiled. The Almighty said to him: By your life, you are keeping them for yourself, and in the end, schoolchildren will mockingly read, “Lot’s two daughters became pregnant from their father.”
Chazal here draw an association between Lot’s unseemly proposal to the people of Sedom, and the incident told later where Lot impregnated those same two daughters. Lot offered his daughters to the men of Sedom, when in reality he ended up “keeping them for himself,” earning the scorn and jeers of the children who read of Lot engaging in relations with his two daughters.
The Midrash here perhaps views Lot’s conduct as a classic example of misplaced piety. Lot likely felt he was doing something noble and heroic by surrendering his daughters for defilement for the sake of protecting his two guests. Often, people resort to unreasonable, extreme measures for the sake of an inherently worthwhile cause, which brings gives them a gratifying feeling of altruism. Chazal thus observe how in the end, Lot became associated with drunkenness and incest. He saw himself as a righteous hero, but in reality he was immoral.
If so, then the Midrash alerts us to the need for balance and proportionality as we aspire to live a life of morality and avodat Hashem. Extreme piety in one area poses the risk of illegitimate compromises in others. Lot’s disproportionate zeal to care for his guests led him to surrender his daughters, and in the end he is known not for his generosity and compassion, but for the immoral acts he committed in a drunken stupor. His example should warn us of how measures of extreme piety do not always reflect genuine piety, as they may reflect instead a lack of balance and proportion, and an attempt to ease the pangs of conscience for failings in some areas by resorting to extreme measures in another.