We find in Parashat Vayera the peculiar story of Lot’s daughters, who escaped with their father from the destruction of their city, Sedom (19:30-38). After fleeing the city, Lot and his daughters found a cave where they lived, and the older daughter said to the younger, “Our father is aged, and there is no man in the land to have relations with us…” The daughters therefore had their father drink wine to the point of intoxication on two successive nights, and on each night one of them slept with him and conceived. These incestuous unions produced Amon and Moav, who founded nations that settled in the region of Trans-Jordan, east of Eretz Yisrael.
Many commentators, including Rashi, Ibn Ezra, Rashbam, Abarbanel and, more recently, Rav Shimshon Refael Hirsch, explained that Lot’s daughters were under the mistaken impression that the entire world suffered the same fate as Sedom and its neighboring cities. They assumed that the heavenly fire and granite that annihilated their city represented a new “flood” that God brought upon the earth. Seeing themselves as the lone surviving people in the world, they saw it as their duty to procreate, even if this required cohabiting with their father.
The Radak challenges this approach, noting that immediately after Sedom’s destruction, Lot and his daughters temporarily stayed in the nearby city of Tzoar, which was spared the fate of Sedom (see 19:19-22). Thus, the daughters saw with their own eyes a city that continued to exist even after the fall of Sedom, and they therefore had no reason to presume that God had destroyed the entire earth. Abarbanel also raises this question, and answers that although Tzoar was spared, Lot feared that it, too, would eventually meet the same fate as the neighboring towns. He figured that the angels were capable of temporarily delaying the fall of Tzoar, but could not spare the city permanently. He therefore convinced his daughters to leave Tzoar and settle in the Judean Hills to the west. Understandably, then, Lot’s daughters assumed that they were humanity’s lone survivors.
In any event, the Radak explains that Lot’s daughters were driven by a different concern, namely, that nobody would agree to marry a refugee from Sedom. They feared being stigmatized as a result of what happened to their city, such that they would be unable to marry. They also realized that Lot, in his advanced age, would unlikely beget more children. The daughters therefore felt compelled to resort to drastic measures to ensure the perpetuation of their father’s legacy.
Shadal suggests a different interpretation, explaining that the daughters were concerned due to their isolation and the unlikelihood of their resettlement in a populated area. As Lot had already grown old, they felt he would not go through the trouble of integrating into a new community, and would instead remain in isolation in the cave. Their only hope for begetting children, then, was to sleep with their father.
One question that remains is why the Torah found it necessary to relate this incident. Of what relevance is this story to Benei Yisrael? The Radak and Abarbanel explain, quite simply, that this narrative provides the background for the commandment which appears later, in Sefer Devarim, to respect the boundaries of Amon and Moav. God sought to ensure the safety and territorial integrity of these nations due to the close relationship between their ancestor, Lot, and Avraham. The Torah therefore related the story of Amon and Moav’s birth, to explain why these nations’ lands were off-limits to Benei Yisrael.