Genesis 19:35-38

"And they made their father drink wine that night also: and the younger arose, and lay with him; and he knew not when she lay down, nor when she arose. Thus were both the daughters of Lot with child by their father. And the first-born bare a son, and called his name Moab: the same is the father of the Moabites unto this day. And the younger, she also bare a son, and called his name Ben-ammi: the same is the father of the children of Ammon unto this day."

The guilt of the daughters. That Lot's daughters knew the action they initiated was sinful was proved by the fact that they knew that their father would not willingly participate in it. All efforts to understand the action of these young women in any favorable light disappears in the light of the truth that they themselves knew that it was sinful.

The allegations of critical scholars to the effect that this "tale" was invented by the Israelites to cast a slur upon their enemies is totally unreasonable and illogical. As Keil pointed out:

"This account was neither the invention of national hatred of the Moabites and Ammonites, nor was it placed here as a brand upon those tribes. These `discoveries' of criticism, imbued with hatred of the Bible, are overthrown by the fact, that, according to Deuteronomy 2:9,19, Israel was ordered not to touch the territory of either of these tribes because of the descent from Lot."[21]

The names Moab and Ammon are apparently symbolic: "Moab (Genesis 19:37) closely resembles the Hebrew [~me'ab], meaning "from a father"; and Ben-ammi signifies "son of my kinsman."[22] Thus, the degrading circumstances of their birth were memorialized by the Moabites and Ammonites themselves, and it is most illogical to blame Israel in any manner with the charge that they "invented" this account to discredit those peoples.

It is true that long afterward both nations became bitter enemies of Israel, both politically and religiously. It will be recalled that the king of Moab hired Balaam to curse Israel, and that through Balaam's suggestion, the whole nation of Israel was seduced by the licentious devices of the Moabites at Baal-Peor (Numbers 25), resulting in the whole nation's rejecting God and becoming attached to Baal. It was the "sacred prostitution" associated with the Baalim cults that proved the undoing of God's people. "Solomon built a high place for Molech, the god of the Ammonites, and burned incense and sacrificed to this god (1 Kings 11:5; 7:8)."[23] Molech was the horrible fire god. His image was a huge ugly statue with a hollow belly containing a furnace to heat his brazen arms, into which children were cast as sacrifices. Some of the kings of Israel, notably Solomon and Ahaz, as did also Manasseh, caused their sons "to pass through the fire to go to Molech."

As Morris pointed out, however, not all of those people were evil. Ruth the Moabitess was honored with one of the O.T. books relating how she became one of the ancestresses of Jesus our Lord. Naamah, an Ammonite woman, was one of Solomon's wives, and the mother of king Rehoboam.

Despite all of this, the subsequent history of the unfortunate races that descended from Lot's incestuous union with his daughters was just as sordid as their unhappy beginning.