Lot's Wife - Interpretation

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I was just thinking about the story of Lot’s wife and wondering how it should be interpreted - I don’t like the modern interpretation that it was simply a tale developed around rock formations in the region.
Does anyone know of any good books that discuss this topic, and how best to interpret it - literally, allegorical, etc.?
Or any good stuff online?
I did a search but couldn’t find much and wouldn’t know of any books that discuss these things.
Thanks.
 
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Ellicott: (26) His wife looked back from behind him.—In Oriental countries it is still the rule for the wife to walk behind her husband. As regards the method of her transformation, some think that she was stifled by sulphureous vapours, and her body subsequently encrusted with salt. More probably, the earthquake heaped up a mighty mass of the rock-salt, which lies in solid strata round the Dead Sea, and Lot’s wife was entangled in the convulsion and perished, leaving the hill of salt, in which she was enclosed, as her memorial. Salt cones are not uncommon in this neighbourhood, and the American Expedition found one, about forty feet high, near Usdum (Lynch, Report, pp. 183 et seq.). Entombed in this salt pillar, she became a “monument of an unbelieving soul” (Wisdom of Solomon 10:7).

Haydock: And his wife. As a standing memorial to the servants of God to proceed in virtue, and not to look back to vice or its allurements. (Challoner) — His, Lot’s wife. The two last verses might be within a parenthesis. — Remember Lot’s wife, our Saviour admonishes us. Having begun a good work, let us not leave it imperfect, and lose our reward. (Luke xvii; Matthew xxiv.) — A statue of durable metallic salt, petrified as it were, to be an eternal monument of an incredulous soul, Wisdom x. 7. Some say it still exists. (Haydock) — God may have inflicted this temporal punishment on her, and saved her soul. (Menochius) — She looked back, as if she distrusted the words of the angel; but her fault was venial. (Tirinus)

Swedenborg (allegorical): AC 2453. Verse 26. And his wife looked back behind him, and she became a pillar of salt. “His wife looked back behind him,” signifies that truth turned itself away from good, and looked to doctrinal things; “and she became a pillar of salt,” signifies that all the good of truth was vastated. Truth is said to turn itself away from good, and to look to doctrinal things, when the man of the church no longer has at heart what kind of a life he lives, but what kind of a doctrine he possesses when yet it is a life according to doctrine that makes a man of the church, but not doctrine separate from life; for when doctrine is separated from life, then because good, which is of the life, is laid waste, truth, which is of doctrine, is also laid waste, that is, becomes a pillar of salt; which every one may know who looks only to doctrine and not to life, when he considers whether, although doctrine teaches them, he believes in the resurrection, in heaven, in hell, even in the Lord, and in the rest of the things that are of doctrine. [Do not believe only, but also live and act what doctrine teaches.]

These are just some sources interpreting it. The first more literal, the second more moral, the third more allegorical. Take them for what you will.
 
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And Jesus said unto him, No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God. – Luke 9:62
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Think about the effect that sin has on the mind. It traps the mind into fixed, crystallized forms of thinking and acting. It strips man of his freedom of action, and instead creates in him a form of compulsion (which we call “temptation”) to act in accordance with the desires of that sin.

So lot’s wife looking back at the city of Sodom (sin) symbolizes regression into sin after having previously left it behind, as the Lord describes a person putting their hand to the plow and looking back.

The consequence of this is being turned into a pillar of salt, that is, the crystallization of the mind (salt is a crystal, a mineral). The mind under the influence of sin has no true freedom of action (minerals are fixed, rigid), but is instead a slave to the desires of sin.

Thus, the Lord said,
Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden [with the desires and temptations of sin], and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls [by freeing you from the burden of having to continually grasp after sinful desires]. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. – Matthew 11:28-30
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That Swedenborg citation doesn’t make sense. Truth cannot turn itself from good, because God IS Truth and God IS Good. IOW, God cannot turn from Himself.
 
I don’t think we can come at this from a literal perspective because none of us were there to see it. Rather, we have to approach this in a way as to understand what the author meant.

My interpretation is that Lot and his family left the sinful city (debating the particular sin of the city is for a different thread) because God said to as he was to destroy it. But by turning back and looking, she was turning her back on God’s command and instead turning towards sin. This rejection of God led to her demise.

In a more modern adaptation of this: to know something is a mortal sin but to willfully turn back to it (not considering an addiction to it), would be to reject the truth of the Gospel and instead accept sin for its finite pleasures. This is the sin Lot’s wife committed, willfully accepting sin over Truth.
 
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Have checked the commentaries I have on this verse:

A Catholic Commentary of Holy Scripture (Bernard Orchard):

19:26. Lot’s wife lingered to watch the spectacle. Her disobedience, 17, and recklessness, 19, cost her her life. She was overwhelmed probably by the fumes, and later her body became encrusted with salt. It is not true that everything in the neighbourhood of the Dead Sea is so encrusted. But the casts of human bodies preserved in the museum at Pompeii suggest what happened to Lot’s wife. These casts preserve the exact form of the victims who were overwhelmed by the eruption and became encased in the falling ashes. 28. ‘and lo the smoke rose up’.

Navarre Bible Commentary:

19:26. The story of Lot’s wife is a warning not to turn back once one has set out on one’s way. Our Lord reminds us about it, applying it to the fact that we cannot foresee the day of Judgment (cf. Lk 17:32). Christian tradition has applied it to the need to persevere in one’s good resolutions. Here is what one ancient writer says: “Lot’s wife, who was turned into a pillar of salt, is an example to the simple, that they should not look back with sick curiosity when they are advancing to a holy resolution” (Quodvultdeus, De promissionibus, 1). And, applying the same image to the Christian vocation, St Josemaría Escrivá exhorts: “You have seen very clearly that you are a child of God. Even if you were never again to see it—it won’t happen!—you should continue along your way forever, out of a sense of faithfulness, without ever looking back” (The Forge, 420).

The Ignatius Catholic Study Bible Genesis (Scott Hahn):

19:26 pillar of salt: Lot’s wife becomes part of the landscape, resembling one of the natural salt formations in the southern Dead Sea basin.

St Augustine (sermon 105 on the New Testament):

“But one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, reaching forth unto those things which are before, I follow on earnestly unto the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 3:13-14) Nothing then is so hostile to hope, as to “look back,” to place hope, that is, in those things which flit by and pass away; but in those things should we place it, which are not yet given, but which sometime will be given, and will never pass away. But when the world is deluged by trials, as it were the sulphureous rain of Sodom, the example of Lot’s wife must be feared. For she “looked behind;” and in the spot where she looked behind, there did she remain. She was turned into salt, that she might season the wise by her example.

St Anthony of Padua (sermon 5):

Whoever confesses goes out of Sodom and up into the hills, not looking back like Lot’s wife who was turned into a statue or pillar of salt (cf. Gn 19,17 Gn 19,26). The animals (that is, the demons) eagerly consume that pillar by licking. When the just man goes out from Egypt with the true Israelites, journeying to the land of promise, he does not set up his own guide (that is to say, his own will) to lead him back to the fleshpots, peppers and pickles of the Egyptians (the desire for carnal things).

continued….
 
St Anthony of Padua (sermon 34):

These are the two angels who, in Genesis,

brought Lot forth from Sodom, and said to him:

Save thy life; look not back, neither stay thou in all the country about;

but save thyself in the mountain, lest thou be also consumed. (Gn 19,17)

Whoever considers well the beginning and end of his life will go forth from ‘Sodom’, the foulness of the world and of sin, and will save his soul. He will not look back, returning to his former sins, nor will he linger ‘in the country about’; for he who dwells among the occasions and images of sin after he has put sin aside has not yet abandoned sin utterly. He will save himself ‘in the mountain’, that is, in excellence of life.
 
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