The incident of Sarah's laughing when the angel delivers his message and then denying that she had laughed should not be omitted as it affords an interesting human touch to the story and still more as it gives the occasion for the angel's reply which contains the moral of the story, "Can anything be too wonderful for God?" There is no need of glossing over Sarah's prevarication and certainly no need of giving it undue emphasis, but the incident should be told in such a way that her motive is made clear. Say, for instance; "Now as you know, Sarah was very old, so old that she thought herself too old to have a little baby, and when she heard, from behind the curtain of the tent, the angel telling Abraham that in a year's time she should have a son she laughed, just as you would laugh if I told you that a rose bush would have roses in mid-winter. But the angel said to Abraham, 'Why does Sarah laugh? Is there anything that God cannot do?' Then Sarah was ashamed and said, 'I did not laugh'. But the angel said, 'Nay but thou didst laugh and Sarah was more ashamed than ever, for she knew that she had not told the truth, and she said no more."
=Interpretation.= The incident of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, like that of the destruction of the generation of the deluge, is meant as an assertion of God's justice. The insistence on the justice of God is made the more emphatic by the recognition of the fact that His dispensations are such as may lead us at times to call His justice into question. When, therefore, Abraham exclaims, "Shall not the judge of all the world do justice?" he is not rebuked for his presumption, but, on the contrary, God seems to prefer his attitude to one that would accept apparent injustice with complacent resignation, and God does not disdain to justify Himself to Abraham in very much the same spirit as the Book of Job represents Him as preferring the blasphemous accusations of Job to the pious apologetics of his friends. (Job 42. 7.)
The particular crime assigned as an instance of the wickedness of Sodom was a form of immorality of which strangers were the especial victims. Lot's offer to surrender to the men of Sodom his daughters instead of the strangers was not only prompted by a sense of the obligation of hospitality but by the consideration of the different degree of immorality involved in the two acts. It goes without saying that the specific crime of the men of Sodom cannot be explained to the children otherwise than as a disposition to abuse strangers, the antithesis to the attitude of Abraham and Lot towards them, and, inasmuch as the nature of the crime cannot be taught, Lot's offer to substitute his daughters for the strangers cannot be taught since this act would then appear as an attempt to remedy one injustice by perpetrating another.