Genesis 19:38

And the younger, she also bare a son, and called his name Benammi: the same is the father of the children of Ammon unto this day.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

19:30-38 See the peril of security. Lot, who kept chaste in Sodom, and was a mourner for the wickedness of the place, and a witness against it, when in the mountain, alone, and, as he thought, out of the way of temptation, is shamefully overtaken. Let him that thinks he stands high, and stands firm, take heed lest he fall. See the peril of drunkenness; it is not only a great sin itself, but lets in many sins, which bring a lasting wound and dishonour. Many a man does that, when he is drunk, which, when he is sober, he could not think of without horror. See also the peril of temptation, even from relations and friends, whom we love and esteem, and expect kindness from. We must dread a snare, wherever we are, and be always upon our guard. No excuse can be made for the daughters, nor for Lot. Scarcely any account can be given of the affair but this, The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? From the silence of the Scripture concerning Lot henceforward, learn that drunkenness, as it makes men forgetful, so it makes them to be forgotten.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

The descendants of Lot. Bewildered by the narrowness of his escape, and the awful death of his wife, Lot seems to have left Zoar, and taken to the mountain west of the Salt Sea, in terror of impending ruin. It is not improbable that all the inhabitants of Zoar, panic-struck, may have fled from the region of danger, and dispersed themselves for a time through the adjacent mountains. He was now far from the habitations of people, with his two daughters as his only companions. The manners of Sodom here obtrude themselves upon our view. Lot's daughters might seem to have been led to this unnatural project, first, because they thought the human race extinct with the exception of themselves, in which case their conduct may have seemed a work of justifiable necessity; and next, because the degrees of kindred within which it was unlawful to marry had not been determined by an express law. But they must have seen some of the inhabitants of Zoar after the destruction of the cities; and carnal intercourse between parent and offspring must have been always repugnant to nature. "Unto this day." This phrase indicates a variable period, from a few years to a few centuries: a few years; not more than seven, as Joshua 22:3; part of a lifetime, as Numbers 22:30; Joshua 6:25; Genesis 48:15; and some centuries, as Exodus 10:6. This passage may therefore have been written by one much earlier than Moses. Moab afterward occupied the district south of the Arnon, and east of the Salt Sea. Ammon dwelt to the northeast of Moab, where they had a capital called Rabbah. They both ultimately merged into the more general class of the Arabs, as a second Palgite element.

- Abraham in Gerar

2. אבימלך .2 'ǎbı̂ymelek, Abimelekh, "father of the king."

7. נביא nābı̂y' "prophet," he who speaks by God, of God, and to God, who declares to people not merely things future, but also things past and present, that are not obvious to the sense or the reason; related: "flow, go forth."

13. התעוּ hı̂t‛û is plural in punctuation, agreeing grammatically with אלהים 'ĕlohı̂ym. ו(w), however, may be regarded as the third radical, and the verb may thus really be singular.

16. נכהת nokachat an unusual form, either for נכחת nokaḥat the second person singular feminine perfect or נכחה nokeḥâh the third person singular feminine perfect, from a verb signifying in hiphil, "make straight, right."

17. אמה 'āmâh "hand-maid," free or bond. שׁפחה shı̂pchâh "bond-maid" 1 Samuel 25:41.

The concealment of his relation to Sarah calls to our mind a similar act of Abraham recorded not many pages back. We are to remember, however, that an interval of twenty-four years has elapsed since that event. From the present passage we learn that this was an old agreement between him and his wife, while they were wandering among strangers. It appears that Abraham was not yet conscious of anything wrong or even imprudent in this piece of policy. He therefore practises it without any hesitation. On this occasion he appears for the first time as a prophet. He is the first of this order introduced to our notice in the Old Testament, though Henok had prophesied at an earlier period Jde 1:14, and Noah's benediction was, at the same time, a prediction.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

29. when God destroyed the cities, &c.—This is most welcome and instructive after so painful a narrative. It shows if God is a "consuming fire" to the wicked [De 4:24; Heb 12:29], He is the friend of the righteous. He "remembered" the intercessions of Abraham, and what confidence should not this give us that He will remember the intercessions of a greater than Abraham in our behalf.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

Called his name Ben-ammi, i.e. the son of my people, or kindred, not of the cursed race of the Sodomites, where I was to be married. This is something more modest than the other in the name she gives, but both impudently glorying in their sin and shame, of which they should have bitterly repented.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

And the younger, she also bare a son, and called his name Benammi,.... That is, "the son of my people", being the son of her father; which though it does not so manifestly appear in this name, as in the other, yet there is some trace of it; and she would have it be known by this, that he was not the son of a stranger, but of a relation of her own: some attribute this to her being more modest than her elder sister; but it looks as if neither of them were sensible of any crime they had been guilty of, but rather thought it a commendable action, at least that it was excusable:

the same is the father of the children of Ammon unto this day; a people that lived near their brethren the Moabites, and were both enemies to the people of God; they quickly falling into idolatry, and whose names we often meet with in the sacred writings; and of these two sons, Josephus says (x), the one begat the Moabites, being still a great nation, and the other the Ammonites, and both inhabit Coelesyria; they are both called the children of Lot, Psalm 83:8. After this we hear no more of Lot in this history; and it is remarkable, that there never was, as we know of, any town or city that had in it any, trace of his name; but we are not from hence to conclude that he was a wicked man, whose memory perished with him; for mention is made of him in the New Testament, where he has a very honourable character, and is called "just Lot", 2 Peter 2:7.

(x) Antiqu. l. 1. c. 11. sect. 5.

Geneva Study Bible

And the younger, she also bare a son, and called his name {t} Benammi: the same is the father of the children of Ammon unto this day.

(t) That is, son of my people: signifying that they rejoiced in their sin, rather than repenting of it.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

38. Ben-ammi] “The son of my people”; or “the son of my father’s kin”; see Genesis 17:14. “Unto this day,” cf. Genesis 26:33, Genesis 32:32, Genesis 35:20, Genesis 47:26 (J).

There is no need for us to regard this repulsive story as literal history. It should be included among the popular narratives which grew up round the traditional origin of proper names. It has been held that the tradition may have had a local Moabite origin connected with some famous cavern, and that the people of Moab and Ammon may have had an old belief that their races arose in prehistoric times from the same ancestor, in accordance with this tale. Undoubtedly, there were ancient Eastern peoples to whom the incest here described would have seemed in no way atrocious.

It is, of course, also possible, that the story, as we have it in Gen., reflects the feelings of bitterness and hatred which were felt among the Israelites towards their neighbours on the east side of the Jordan. The antipathy expressed in Deuteronomy 23:3 and Nehemiah 13:1-2 may well account for the circulation of traditions concerning the parentage of these two peoples, combining a popular explanation of their names with contumely and reproach as to their origin.

Again, it is conceivable that this story may contain a fragment of a tradition, Moabite and Ammonite in its derivation, which recorded some stupendous catastrophe, from which, through the favour of the Deity, only Lot and his daughters, out of all the inhabitants of the world, were saved. The story may then have been regarded as reflecting not ignominy, but honour, upon those who were the means of preserving the whole human race from the peril of extinction. There is plausibility in this theory of Gunkel’s. The words of the elder daughter, “there is not a man,” seem to imply that all the inhabitants of the earth had been annihilated. Our ignorance of Moabite early traditions forbids us to go further than to admit the possibility of some such explanation.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 38. - And the younger, she also bare a son, and called his name Ben-ammi. I.e. son of my people (LXX., Jerome, Augustine), meaning that her child was the offspring of her own kind and blood (Rosenmüller), or the son of her relative (Kalisch), or of an unmixed race ('Speaker's Commentary'). The same is the father of the children of Ammon - an unsettled people who occupied the territory between the Yabbok and the Arnon, from which they had ejected the Rephaims or Zamzummims (Deuteronomy 2:22), and in which they possessed a strong city, Rabbah (2 Samuel 40:1); in their habits more migratory and marauding than the Moabites (Isaiah 15, 16; Jeremiah 48.), and in their religion worshippers of Molech, "the abomination of the Ammonites" (1 Kings 11:7) - unto this day.



Genesis 19:38

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

But Lot's daughters had so little feeling of shame in connection with their conduct, that they gave names to the sons they bore, which have immortalized their paternity. Moab, another form of מאב "from the father," as is indicated in the clause appended in the lxx: λέγουσα ἐκ τοῦ πατρός μου, and also rendered probable by the reiteration of the words "of our father" and "by their father" (Genesis 19:32, Genesis 19:34, and Genesis 19:36), as well as by the analogy of the name Ben-Ammi equals Ammon, Ἀμμάν, λέγουσα Υἱος γένους μου (lxx). For עמּון, the sprout of the nation, bears the same relation to עם, as אגמון, the rush or sprout of the marsh, to אגם Delitzsch). - This account was neither the invention of national hatred to the Moabites and Ammonites, nor was it placed here as a brand upon those tribes. These discoveries of a criticism imbued with hostility to the Bible are overthrown by the fact, that, according to Deuteronomy 2:9, Deuteronomy 2:19, Israel was ordered not to touch the territory of either of these tribes because of their descent from Lot; and it was their unbrotherly conduct towards Israel alone which first prevented their reception into the congregation of the Lord, Deuteronomy 23:4-5. - Lot is never mentioned again. Separated both outwardly and inwardly from Abraham, he was of no further importance in relation to the history of salvation, so that even his death is not referred to. His descendants, however, frequently came into contact with the Israelites; and the history of their descent is given here to facilitate a correct appreciation of their conduct towards Israel.