When my husband came home with a cough the other day, I felt badly for him, but I was anxious to test the claim that pineapple juice is more effective than cough syrup. You can be my guinea pig, I told him.
Then my brain started whirling. What if someone stumbled upon that phrase a few-hundred years from now, or a thousand, should the Lord tarry? Would they have any idea what that expression meant to our generation? Would they debate its meaning the way folks sometimes do with some of the archaic expressions in the Bible, like turning into a “pillar of salt,” for example?
Some believe that Lot’s wife literally became a giant block of salt. The historian Josephus made the fantastic claim that the salty form of Mrs. Lot still stood in his day, some two-thousand years after her demise, and claims to have personally seen it himself. There are natural salt formations in that region, so it isn’t too far-fetched to believe that Josephus, with a little imagination, might just have fancied one of those to have been Mrs. Lot.
Whereas I can see his enthusiasm for the literal rendering of the biblical account, I would like to think that if I ever saw a pillar of salt, even an oddly shaped one, I would merely accept it as a giant “cow lick,” as we call it in my neck of the woods, or perhaps a “camel lick” in those parts. Do camels even lick salt blocks, I wonder? But I digress.
There is another explanation for Lot’s wife turning into a big salt lick as well. Some bible scholars teach that “turning into a pillar of salt” was an ancient Hebraic idiom, meaning that one had a heart attack or stroke. If this understanding is correct, the Scripture is merely informing us that Mrs. Lot was so frightened at seeing her town destroyed, loved ones and all, that she dropped dead on the spot from a coronary or brain aneurysm. I tend to agree, but I doubt anyone could ever know for certain.
Whatever happened to this frightened woman, it was tragic and I certainly don’t want to make light of it, but I do find it humorous that some people still claim, to this very day, to have seen the salty form of Mrs. Lot also; her frozen glare fixed upon the spot where Sodom once stood. To me, that would be akin to someone reading this post some four-thousand years from now and thinking that my husband really turned into a guinea pig at my suggestion, and that they had recently seen him squeaking his way around town. That just wouldn’t be true.
Likewise, we sometimes just have to accept that there are many things in Scripture that are not as clear-cut or easy to understand as we desire them to be. For example, it would be great if someone could clearly explain to me what Ezekiel 13:18 means? I am still a bit stumped by this one:
… Thus saith the Lord GOD; Woe to the women that sew pillows to all armholes, and make kerchiefs upon the head of every stature to hunt souls! Will ye hunt the souls of my people, and will ye save the souls alive that come unto you?
Someday I will dig into that verse, but for now I’ll just refrain from sewing pillows onto armholes and making kerchiefs upon the head of every stature to hunt souls, which shouldn’t be too difficult since I don’t even have a clue what that means.
And with that, my guinea pig and salt licks rambling comes to a point. Dear reader, it is quite easy to misunderstand some of the Scriptures, which are written and can be studied. It is a great deal easier to misunderstand people, because we are much more complex. Even Jesus was misunderstood quite often. However, we should never –we must never– allow misunderstandings to damage otherwise healthy relationships.
Margaret Elizabeth Sangster once wrote, “In the whole round of human affairs little is so fatal to peace as misunderstanding.” I wholeheartedly agree with that. Misunderstandings have all too often caused otherwise peaceable folks to stand in frozen defiance of each other like bitter, unmovable pillars of salt; their eyes unable to see anything other than what they desire to see; unable to move forward.
Seeking truth is important and fighting for truth sometimes necessary, but fighting each other is never the best recourse. Let us, therefore, remember to be charitable in our misunderstandings and disagreements, knowing full well that:
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.… (1 Corinthians 13:4-6).
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Rays of Light 