After travelling west about nine yards, ascending five steps, and then proceeding 14 yards north, the tourist arrives at a cave containing a very conspicuous column called "Lot's Wife."
[CHAPTER XXIII.]
LOT'S WIFE.
The alabaster pillar called "Lot's Wife" stands in solitary grandeur within a gloomy cave. Its sombre surroundings are in harmony with the tragic old-world history recalled by the central figure. The nimble thought skips over ages and ages, and in the "mind's eye" appear the rich plains of Siddim and the flowing Jordan, and the fugitives and the lava, and the terrible climax. As the Biblical record of the catastrophe is supposed to teach the folly of disobedience on the part of wives, and the perils of hankering after doubtful pleasures, the pillar which recalls it may be contemplated with advantage by newly-married couples, now that the caves are becoming a favourite resort of honeymooners. Perhaps in time to come there may be religious services and solemnisation of matrimony in these fantastic subterranean caverns. It is related by Dr. Forwood, that a romantic marriage took place in the Gothic chapel of the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky, "which family interference prevented occurring on the earth." He says: "The fair lady, whose lover was opposed by her parents, in a rash moment promised them that she would never marry her betrothed 'on the face of the earth.' Afterwards, repenting of her promise, but being unable to retract and unwilling to violate it, she fulfilled her vow to her parents as well as to her lover by marrying him 'under the earth.'"
How far the pillar in the caves is like that mentioned in the Book of Genesis it is impossible to say, because the latter has been neither minutely described nor photographed. Josephus, the great historian of the Wars and Antiquities of the Jews, and who was not born until about 2,000 years after Lot's departure from Sodom, says he saw it. His words are: "When Lot went away with his two maiden daughters—for those who were betrothed to them were above the thoughts of going, and deemed that God's words were trifling—God then cast a thunderbolt upon the city, and set it on fire with its inhabitants.... But Lot's wife continually turning back to view the city as she went from it, and being too nicely inquisitive what would become of it, although God had forbidden her to do so, was changed into a pillar of salt." And, he adds, "for I have seen it, and it remains to this day." It is to be regretted that he did not describe the pillar itself.
A century later Irenæus bore testimony to the existence of the pillar, and spoke of its lasting so long "with all its members entire." This would lead to the inference that the original pillar retained the shape of a female figure. If it did, then in this respect there is no similarity between the Pillar of Warning on the Dead Sea plain and the pillar in the Jenolan Caves. The latter is a pretty round column, about five feet four inches high, rounded off irregularly at the top, and built up in sections, which show separate growths, like divisions in the stem of a cabbage-tree palm, or the joints of a bamboo. It is probable, therefore, that there is not the slightest resemblance between the two pillars. Bishop Patrick thinks that some of the storm which overwhelmed the Cities of the Plain overtook Lot's wife, "and falling upon her as she stood staring about, and minded not her way or guide, suddenly wrapped her body in a sheet of nitro-sulphurous matter, which, congealing into a crust as hard as stone, made her appear, they say, as a pillar of salt, her body being candied in it."
It is about 3,800 years since the disobedient "help-meet" of the Oriental squatter was fixed like a fly in amber, as a solemn warning to recalcitrant spouses for all time. Had the first drip then fallen on to the mound in the Jenolan Caves where now stands "Lot's Wife"? Query. The Jenolan pillar is evidently of slow growth. Each joint, which looks something like fine tallow, may, as the curator facetiously puts it, represent a century of "dripping." In this respect it is unlike the historic pillar whose name it bears. Dr. Kitto, in his very interesting "Daily Biblical Illustrations," says in reference to the latter: "From the nature of the case, and from the peculiarly bituminous and saline character of the locality through which this phenomenon was produced, we must not expect to discover many parallel instances which might be quoted in illustration. Accordingly we find that the illustrative parallels which have been diligently sought out by the old commentators have rarely any real bearing on the subject, being for the most part accounts of people frozen to death and long preserved in that condition uncorrupted in the Boreal regions, or else of persons suffocated and then petrified by the mineral vapours of the caves in which they were hid, or otherwise of persons 'turned to stone,' and found generations after standing in the postures wherein they found their death. The only instance we have met with which seems appropriate, and which rests on the authority of a contemporary of fair credit, is related by Aventinus, who states that in his time about 50 country people, with their cows and calves, were, in Carinthia, destroyed by strong and suffocating saline exhalations which arose out of the earth immediately upon an earthquake in 1348. They were by this reduced to saline statues or pillars, like Lot's wife, and the historian tells us that they had been seen by himself and the Chancellor of Austria."