It is also important to note that if the men had indeed abused the daughters, they would not only have been required to MARRY the girls, but also never to DIVORCE them.
This is actually a big deal.
First, in the culture of the time, male supremacy ruled. Stinks, but it’s history; one cannot change what happened, or hold people to the same standards as today.
And in fact, just because male supremacy could allow for this kind of rape, the Jewish people actually, through God, came up with an answer that protected the woman who was raped.
If the man was unmarried and raped a woman, he had to marry her, give her a dowry, and never divorce her (since divorce was allowed for MEN, this was a big safeguard as a raped woman couldn’t be ‘married and discarded’).
If the man was MARRIED and raped a woman, he could not marry her but he was required to compensate the woman.
So as far as Lot and the men of Sodom were concerned, if they truly were interested in making ‘alliances’ (which was usually done by sexual interactions) and NOT in homosexual actions, Lot’s offering his daughters would mean that he was offering a perpetual alliance, not one that could be broken by divorce, and between his daughters and the townspeople; people who must have KNOWN each other and probably liked each other. If the men had good intentions they would have been ashamed of the ‘rape’ offer and would have made arrangements for the usual marriage rituals with Lot’s daughters.
But if they had bad intentions, which they did, this was an opportunity to find out. And Lot did. Instead of the men wanting to form an alliance with a man whom they had known for years, they were only interested in forcing themselves onto ‘new men’. In abusing Lot’s hospitality. In this culture, guests in a home were SACRED and were to be protected, even if the host died for it.
It is hard for 21t century feminist sensibilities, but the ‘offering of Lot’s daughters’ is not even a major part of the story. It is part of a strategy of determining the intentions of a mob. The girls themselves were never in danger of being raped, discarded, or killed. Their marriage offering was an attempt to see if the mob was ‘in good faith’, and they were, in fact, never victimized themselves in any way.
