Guests in the Story of Lot: Competing Unconditional Demands?

Dear Professor Kearney,
I was interested in your reaction to the reading I proposed yesterday on the story of Lot - where the two visitors are inscribed within Lot's ethical system & cease to be guests, becoming part of Lot's narrative, while the Sodomites take the role of the Stranger demanding hospitality from Lot. Something I forgot to mention is that I feel that if Lot had said 'No, you can't have these men, because... I don't know why, you just can't.' the two visitors would have remained guests; however, since he gave a reason ('they have come to me for hospitality') he has inscribed them within his ethical system.
I'm curious for your response, since I give seems to break down the possibility of ethics (while preserving the possibility of morality) in a way that I'm not sure is compatible with your own reading; so a critical response would be most welcome.
Gabe


Dear Gabe,
Interesting...
But isn't Lot himself a 'guest' of the Sodomites who originally host him....' a foreigner (ger) come to stay (gur) with the Sodomites' (OH, p 251)?
So when the Sodomites (Lot's hosts) ask him to hand over his own guests they are abusing both the right of their guest (Lot) and of his guests (the two angels). A case of double betrayal of the law of hospitality?
I am not sure about your distinction between ethics and morality here; unless you mean that if Lot protects his guests he is observing the ethic of hospitality but if he hands over his daughters as 'gifts' to the Sodomites (his hosts and perhaps now, perversely, his guests who know at his door?) he is breaking the moral rules of family kinship and protection?
By this reading the biblical story would illustrate the trumping of familial morality by an ethics of unconditional hospitality? But does not the rhetorical force of the narrative suggest that this is not a great thing....to sacrifice your daughters to rapists? Or I imagining the biblical scribes to be more moral than they were?
It is true, of course, that Abraham was ready to sacrifice his son....to God? But what kind of God? A God of rapine who insists on child sacrifice or a God of mercy who is teaching Abraham a basic moral lesson: you just shouldn't do that kind of thing with your children, even if you think it is God knocking at the door and demanding you hand them over. So put away that knife and take your son home with you to Sarah and grow up!In other words, 'I am not a God of sacrificial bloodletting like the gods before me, but a God of love and justice'!
--Wishful thinking on my part? Kant and Girard would agree with the moral reading....but they are weird, so maybe the three of us are wrong and the sacrificial reading of both Abraham and Lot wins out? Give the gift of your children unconditionally to the one who asks but protect your guests no matter what? (Abraham receives the angels - God - unconditionally under the Mamre tree when they bring the gift of a son, Isaac, to him and the barren Sarah...but Abraham is then willing to give Isaac back again (offer him up!) to the same God when He asks. Benveniste's reading of hospitality as exchange of gifts? Potlach. You gave something to me, but I am now giving something more to you etc).
Perhaps that opens up new questions for discussion?
Best,
Prof. Kearney