“Whoever,” says Mr. Carne, in his Letters from the East, “has seen the Dead Sea, will have its aspect impressed upon his memory. It is, in truth, a gloomy and fearful spectacle. The precipices, in general, descend abruptly to the lake, and, on account of their height, it is seldom agitated by the winds. Its shores are not visited, by any footstep, save that of the wild Arab, and he holds it in superstitious dread. On some parts of the rocks, there is a thick, sulphureous incrustation, and, in their steep descents, there are several deep caverns, where the benighted Bedouin sometimes finds a home. The sadness of the grave was on it and around it, and the silence also. However vivid the feelings are, on arriving on its shores, they subside, after a time, into languor and uneasiness; and you long, if it were possible, to see a tempest wake on its bosom, to give sound and life to the scene.”
“If we adopt,” says Chateaubriand, “the idea of Professor Michaelis, and the learned Busching, in his memoir on the Dead Sea, physics may be admitted, to explain the catastrophe of the guilty cities, without offence to religion. Sodom was built upon a mine of bitumen, as we know from the testimony of Moses and Josephus, who speak concerning wells of bitumen, in the valley of Siddim. Lightning kindled the combustible mass, and the cities sank in the subterranean conflagration.” In Calmet’s Dictionary of the Bible, vol. iii., article Lot, it is stated, that the Mahometans have added many circumstances to his history. They assert, that the angel Gabriel pried up the devoted cities so near to Heaven, that the angels actually heard the sound of the trumpets and horns, and even the yelping of puppies, in Sodom and Gomorrah: and that Gabriel then let the whole concern go with a terrible crash. Upon this, Calmet remarks—“Romantic as this account appears, it preserves traces of an earthquake and a volcano, which were, in all probability, the natural secondary cause of the overthrow of Sodom, and of the formation of the Dead Sea.” Lot’s wife in my next.
No. XXXVI.
The conversion of Lot’s wife into a pillar of salt has given rise to as much learned discussion, as the question, so zealously agitated, between Barcephas and others, whether the forbidden fruit were an apple or a fig. But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt. Gen. xix. 26. Very little account seems to have been made of this matter, at the time. The whole story, and without note or comment, is told in these fifteen words. It would have seemed friendly, and natural, and proper, for Abraham to have said a few words of comfort to Lot, on this sudden and singular bereavement; but, instead of this, we are told, in the following verse, that Abraham got up, next morning, and looked, very philosophically, at the smoke, which went up from the cities of the plain, like the smoke of a furnace. This neglect of Lot’s wife is, too frequently, a wife’s lot. Some of the learned have been sorely perplexed, to understand, why this unfortunate lady has not long since melted away, under the influence of the rains; for a considerable quantity of water has fallen, since the destruction of Sodom. But they seem to forget, that there is no measure of limitation, for a miracle; and that the salt might have been purposely designed, like caoutchouc, to resist the action of water. The departure from Sodom was sudden, to be sure; but the lady was clothed, in some sort, doubtless; yet nothing has been said, by travellers, about her drapery, and whether that also was converted into salt, or cast off, by the mere energy of the miracle, is unknown.
This pillar of salt Josephus says he has seen; and, though he does not name the time, it is of little consequence, as, in such a matter, we can well afford to throw in a century or two; but it must have been between AD 37, and a point, not long after the 13th year of Domitian. Such being the term of the existence of Josephus, as nearly as can be ascertained. The cities of the plain were destroyed, according to Calmet’s reckoning, 1893 years before Christ; therefore, the pillar, which Josephus saw, must have then been standing more than nineteen centuries. These are the words of Josephus: “But Lot’s wife, continually turning back, to view the city, as she went from it, and being too nicely inquisitive what would become of it, although God had forbidden her so to do, was changed into a pillar of salt, for I have seen it, and it remains at this day.” Antiq., vol. i. p. 32, Whiston’s translation, Lond. 1825. The editor, in a note states, that Clement of Rome, a cotemporary of Josephus, also saw it, and that Irenæus saw it, in the next century. Mr. Whiston prudently declines being responsible for the statements of modern travellers, who say they have seen it. And what did they see?—a pillar of salt. This is quite probable. Volney remarks, “At intervals we met with misshapen blocks, which prejudiced eyes mistake for mutilated statues, and which pass, with ignorant and superstitious pilgrims, for monuments of the adventure of Lot’s wife; though it is nowhere said that she was metamorphosed into stone, like Niobe, but into salt, which must have melted the ensuing winter.” Volney forgets, that the salt itself was miraculous, and, doubtless, water proof.
Mr. Stephens, in his Incidents of Travel, though he gives a description of the Dead Sea, in whose waters he bathed, says not a syllable of Lot’s wife, or the pillar of salt.
Some of the learned have opined, that Lot’s wife, like Pliny, during the eruption of Vesuvius, was overwhelmed, by the burning and flying masses of sulphur and bitumen; this is suggested, under the article, Lot’s Wife, in Calmet. “Some travellers in Palestine,” says he, “relate that Lot’s wife was shown to them, i.e. the rock, into which she was metamorphosed. But what renders their testimony very suspicious is, that they do not agree, about the place, where it stands; some saying westward, others eastward, some northward, others southward of the Dead Sea; others in the midst of the waters; others in Zoar; others at a great distance from the city.” In 1582, Prince Nicholas Radziville took a vast deal of pains to discover this remarkable pillar of salt, but all his inquiries were fruitless. Dr. Adam Clarke suggests, that Lot’s wife, by lingering in the plain, may have been struck dead with lightning, and enveloped in the bituminous and sulphureous matter, that descended. He refers to a number of stories, that have been told, and among them, that this pillar possessed a miraculous, reproductive energy, whereby the fingers and toes of the unfortunate lady were regenerated, instanter, as fast as they were broken off, by the hands of pilgrims. Irenæus, one of the fathers, asserts, that this pillar of salt was actually alive in his time! Some of those fathers, I am grieved to say it, were insufferable story-tellers. This tale is also told, by the author of a poem, De Sodoma, appended to the life of Tertullian. Some learned men understand the Hebrew to mean simply, that “she became fixed in the salsuginous soil”—anglice, stuck in the mud. If this be the real meaning of the passage, it must have been some other lady, that was seen by Josephus, Clement, Irenæus, and Lieut. Lynch.
Sir Thomas Browne, credulous though he was, had, probably, no great confidence in the literal construction of the passage in Genesis. In vol. iii. page 327, of his works, London, 1835, he says—“We will not question the metamorphosis of Lot’s wife, or whether she were transformed into a real statue of salt; though some conceive that expression metaphorical, and no more thereby than a lasting and durable column, according to the nature of salt, which admitteth no corruption.” This is evidently the opinion of Dr. Adam Clarke. In other words, God, by her destruction, while her husband and daughters were saved, made her a pillar or lasting memorial to the disobedient. In this sense a pillar of salt means neither more nor less than an everlasting memorial. Salt is the symbol of perpetuity; thus Numbers xviii. 19. It is a covenant of salt forever: and 2 Chron. xvii. 5, the kingdom is given to David and his sons forever, by a covenant of salt. If this be the true construction, those four gentlemen, to whom I have referred, have been entirely misled, in supposing that any one of those masses of salt, which Volney says may be mistaken, for the remains of mutilated statues, has ever, at any period of the world, been the object of Lot’s devotion, or the partner of his joys and sorrows.
In vol. ii. page 212, of his Incidents of Travel, New York, 1848, Mr. Stephens, referring to an account, received by him, respecting what he supposed to be an island in the Dead Sea, writes thus—“It comes from one who ought to know, from the only man, who ever made the tour of that sea, and lived to tell of it.” If Mr. Stephens