Bible Synapse
Why did Lot’s daughters think there was no man left on earth, when Zoar had been spared?
Hard question · Creation, the flood and the patriarchs · raised by 1 of the lists sceptics circulate
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At Lot’s request the angel agrees not to overthrow the little city of Zoar, and Lot reaches it as the sun rises.
And he said unto him, See, I have accepted thee concerning this thing also, that I will not overthrow this city, for the which thou hast spoken. Haste thee, escape thither; for I cannot do any thing till thou be come thither. Therefore the name of the city was called Zoar. The sun was risen upon the earth when Lot entered into Zoar.
Lot, afraid to stay in Zoar, goes to live in a cave in the hills with his two daughters; the elder says, “there is not a man in the earth to come in unto us after the manner of all the earth”.
And Lot went up out of Zoar, and dwelt in the mountain, and his two daughters with him; for he feared to dwell in Zoar: and he dwelt in a cave, he and his two daughters. And the firstborn said unto the younger, Our father is old, and there is not a man in the earth to come in unto us after the manner of all the earth:
The objection
God spared the town of Zoar at Lot’s request, and Lot fled there (19:21–23). Yet soon afterwards Lot’s elder daughter says that “there is not a man in the earth” to marry them (19:31). Critics ask how she could think no men were left, when a whole town nearby had been spared.
The answer
Genesis does not say that the daughter was right. It reports what she said, and the report is true whether or not her words were. A faithful record of someone’s mistaken or loose words is not a contradiction in the text.
Her words need not mean that she thought mankind had perished. The Hebrew erets means both ‘earth’ and ‘land’, and the BSB renders the verse, “there is no man in the land to sleep with us, as is the custom over all the earth”. By then the family had left Zoar, for Lot “feared to dwell in Zoar” (19:30), and they were living alone in a cave in the hills. Keil takes her meaning to be, not that the human race had died, but that no man would now marry them, the only survivors of a country struck by God’s curse. Zoar itself belonged to the doomed plain, spared only because Lot asked (19:20–21), and Clarke suggests that the daughters would not think of marrying among its people.
Whatever she meant, the plan she made is not approved. Genesis tells it plainly and moves on to its fruit, the fathers of Moab and Ammon (19:36–38). Scripture reports many speeches that it does not endorse.
Other answers Christians give
They thought the world had ended
Gill thought the daughters may really have believed that the whole earth had been destroyed by fire, as it had once been by water, and that the fire had reached Zoar too. If so, they were wrong, and Genesis records their error, not its own.
No man of their own kin
Clarke and Gill also suggest that they meant no man of their own family or kindred within reach: they may not have known where Abraham’s household was, and they would not marry the men of Zoar, who were as wicked as those of Sodom.
Still open
The text does not say how much the daughters knew or how literally the elder meant her words, and interpreters differ. On every reading Genesis records her words without approving them or her plan.
From the classic commentators
Not that they imagined the whole human race to have perished in the destruction of the valley of Siddim, but because they were afraid that no man would link himself with them, the only survivors of a country smitten by the curse of God.Keil & Delitzsch, Commentary on Genesis 19:30–35