“Gen 19:4 But before they lay down, the men of the city, [even] the men of Sodom, compassed the house round, both old and young, all the people from every quarter:
Gen 19:5 And they called unto Lot, and said unto him, Where [are] the men which came in to thee this night? bring them out unto us, that we may know them.”
A rereading of this story does suggest that maybe the men were spies for the attacking army.
“Know” in the sense used there is the same as here:
“Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived...” (Gen 4:1)
Doubt he was simply spying on her!
Regarding Lot, if the men of Sodom were worried about spies, it wouldn’t have made sense for him to offer them his daughters in place of his guests.
???? I'm not sure HOW you are rereading this story. The men that came to Lot were angels from the Lord. The men of SODOM (from where we get the word "sodomite") wanted to rape these angels. Lot offered his daughters instead.
I will add there are degrees to sin that God tolerates before He exact judgment. Homosexuality is just about the final deprivation of man that God allows in scripture.
>> A rereading of this story does suggest that maybe the men were spies for the attacking army. <<
Umm... no. They weren’t spies; they were angels. And this is one of those passages from which we get the phrase, “to know, as in the biblical sense.”
They wanted to rape the angels. Lot was so horrified at the evil that he even offered the men his daughters, but the Sodomites asked instead for his sons, or his sons-in-law. From that day forth, the word, “Sodomite,” was used to refer to homosexual men.
Wierd fact:
On Seinfeld, Jerry (who is, ironically, Jewish) was once famously shocked to hear Elaine (who is, ironically, nominally Catholic) refer to the goings-on of a sexual encounter as “yada, yada, yada.” “Yada” is the Hebrew word for “to know” as used in this passage.