Come, let us make our father drink wine,.... Meaning to excess, so as to be inebriated with it, and not know what he did: this wine might be brought with them from Sodom, with other provisions for their refreshment and support; or it may be rather from Zoar, where they furnished themselves with a quantity for their support in the mountain they betook themselves unto:and we will lie with him, that we may preserve the seed of our father; have children by him, and propagate and preserve the human species; this they might think lawful, such incestuous copulations being usual among their neighbours the Arabs, as appears from Strabo and other writers, and especially when there seemed to them to be a necessity for it; and it may be this did not arise from a spirit of uncleanness, or a brutish lust prevailing in them, having been religiously educated, and having preserved their chastity among such an impure generation as the men of Sodom: wherefore this might rather arise, as Bishop Patrick and others have thought, from an eager desire after the Messiah, they might hope would spring from them; their father being a descendant of Shem, a son of Abraham's elder brother, and now remarkably saved from Sodom, which they might conclude was for this purpose; and they knew of no way in which it could be brought about but in this they proposed; and the rather this may be thought to be their view, as the above learned commentator observes, when we remark their former chaste life in Sodom; their joining together in this contrivance, which, had it been a lustful business, they would have been ashamed to have communicated their thoughts of it to one another; and their imposition of names on their children to perpetuate the memory of this fact, which they rather gloried in, than were ashamed of: to which may be added, that the ancient Jewish writers interpret this of the Messiah; and they observe,"it is not said a son, but seed, that seed, which is he that comes from another place: and what is this?
this is the King Messiah:''and Ruth, the Moabitess, who was of the race of the eldest daughter of Lot, stands in the genealogy of our Lord, Mt 1:5: however, let the intention be ever so good, it will, not justify an action so monstrously vile.
Geograph. l. 16. p. 538. Vid. Pocock, Specim. Arab. Hist. p. 337, 338. Bereshit Rabba, sect. 51. fol. 46. 1. Midrash Ruth, fol. 35.