Why did Sodom deserve to be completely destroyed?
Because, writes Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch, every segment of its population was evil. “Both young and old, all the people from every quarter” (Bereishis 19:4) surrounded Lot’s home, demanding that the two guests within be handed over so they could “know them” (i.e., rape them).
Rav Hirsch writes that youth, while “generally…susceptible to sexual excess, as a rule has a humane feeling heart which revolts against cruel mishandling of people.” Similarly, the “so-called lower classes may well be inclined to low, coarse gross sexual immorality, but, being themselves oppressed, generally are on the side of other persecuted people and revolt against the mishandling of helpless unfortunates.”
On the other side of the equation, older people may “have become hardened by the toll of the experiences of their lives, but, having ‘sown their wild oats,’ will not tolerate sexual excesses in the youth.” And the upper classes, while perhaps lacking compassion for their inferiors, will “put a stop to public coarse scandals of immorality” – if not for moral reasons, then out of “a sense of decency and respectability.”
Thus, in any other society, Lot’s guests would have been safe. “Against the inhumanity, the youth would have combined with the ‘common people,’ and for upholding public decency, the older people would have joined the upper classes.”
But Sodom was different. The mob outside Lot’s home comprised both old and young, rich and poor. None protested the call for merciless rape. Indeed, they unanimously sought it. And that “clinched the sentence of death over the ‘men of Sodom.’” Such men – “ra’im v’chata’im to the highest degree” – could not be allowed to live on this earth.
Sodom’s population no longer exists, but judging from the videos filmed on October 7 – of the barbaric murders and the jubilant reactions of Gaza’s residents – another population seems to have taken their place. And none of the Gazans have protested.
Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch (1808-1888) – head of the Jewish community in Frankfurt, Germany for over 35 years – was a prolific writer whose ideas, passion, and brilliance helped save German Jewry from the onslaught of modernity.
Elliot Resnick, PhD, is the host of “The Elliot Resnick Show” and the editor of an upcoming work on etymological explanations in Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch’s commentary on Chumash.