In that day, he who shall be on the housetop, and his stuff in the house, let him not go down to take it away; and he that is in the field, let him likewise not return back.
The Lord has just spoken of "the day when the Son of Man is revealed." Now He tells people caught in ordinary life at that moment to run and leave their belongings behind. Two questions press on the reader: which day this is, and why a man's goods become the test of his safety.
Commentators begin by clearing away three familiar readings of the verse.
This is not about the destruction of Jerusalem, any more than it is about the final judgment. It is absurd to apply it to death. But the mind of man is clever at finding ways to dodge the blows of the truth. It is a testimony that keeps the coming of the Lord Jesus to judge the inhabited world always hanging over the heads of careless people.
The Lord's own comparisons point the same way.
In Luke 17, He Himself compares the days of Noah and of Lot with the day when the Son of Man is revealed... When His day comes as a thief, it will overtake them eating, drinking, buying, selling, planting, building, marrying and giving in marriage. How strange to apply Luke 17:31 to the dissolving of all things! Or even to the destruction of Jerusalem! It is not a judgment in providence that falls on all alike — verses 34 and 35 stand in sharp contrast to that. Nor is it the last judgment, which it does not match at a single point.
Matthew records almost the same warning about the housetop and the field. Luke ties his version to the revelation of the Son of Man, and one writer uses that to date Matthew's warning too.
Here the language of the two writers is almost identical. But Luke is not speaking of the siege of Jerusalem here. He is speaking of the revelation of the Son of Man. This makes it clear, therefore, that Matthew is speaking of the same time.
The scene is a house with a roof, a room below, and a field outside. One writer reads those local details as a mark of who the warning is for.
Verse 31 shows how clearly Jewish and local this scene is. The unbelieving people would go on in a false sense of security, counting on things staying as they were.
The same writer sets this warning apart from the Christian's hope of being caught up to meet the Lord.
The point here is escape, because it is not safe to stay... It has nothing at all to do with the Christian's hope of going up to heaven to meet the Lord "in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye." What would be the point of telling a Christian not to come down from the housetop at that time? Would it matter whether he was at the top or the bottom of the house?
The order sounds strange: a man may not fetch his own property. One writer explains what that small errand would prove.
There must be no looking back; that would be to have the heart in the place of judgment. Better to lose everything, life itself, than to be associated with what is going to be judged.
Another writer states the test in one line, then adds that God's judgment still finds the ones it came for.
They were to take care that their hearts were not held by anything they owned in the place under judgment. Escaping that judgment would be impossible, for it was God's; it would take away the ones it came for, even if they were together in bed or at the grinding stone.
The Lord's next words point to the one person who did the very thing this verse forbids.
This is a moral touch for those who might seem safer than others, but are not saved. It is unique to Luke, and a most searching word for everyone whose face and heart are not steadily fixed on the Lord. She was, after all, very close to Lot and seemed to have passed beyond all reach of judgment. But her heart was in the city she looked back to. She paid no attention to the warning of God's messengers, and in her destruction she proved true the word she had not believed. ... There is no security, and no real happiness, except in faith; and faith is always obedient to the Word of the Lord.
- Day — This is the day the Son of Man is revealed. It is not the fall of Jerusalem, not the final judgment, not death.
- Suddenness — That day arrives while people are eating, buying, planting and marrying, just as judgment came in the days of Noah and of Lot.
- Escape — The command is to get out, not to gather up. The housetop and the field are real places with a real way out, so the warning fits people on the ground, not saints caught up to meet the Lord.
- Heart — The goods left behind are the test, because turning back for them shows the heart is still in the place marked for judgment.
- Warning — Lot's wife stands as the proof: outside the city in body, still inside it in heart, and lost for it.
Remember the wife of Lot.
Three words, and the Lord expects them to carry a whole history. He drops them into His description of the day the Son of Man is revealed. They sit between a command to flee without looking back and a saying about losing your life to keep it.
The verse sits inside a picture of sudden judgment, and the danger it names is not slow feet but a divided heart.
The day would be like Lot's day, and like Noah's day. Men would be at ease, busy with their worldly pursuits. They would be like the world that the flood overtook, and like Sodom that fire from heaven overtook... There must be no looking back; that would be to have the heart in the place of judgment. Better to lose everything, life itself, than to be associated with what is going to be judged.
One writer hears love in the warning, not only alarm:
"Remember Lot's wife." This short but weighty sentence shows the Lord's love for His own. It points to the danger His people must avoid on that day.
Commentators locate her failure not in the look itself, but in what the look revealed.
This is a moral touch for those who might seem safer than others, but are not saved. Only Luke records it. It is a most searching word for everyone whose face and heart are not steadily fixed on the Lord. She was very near to Lot, and she seemed to be out of all reach of judgment. But her heart was in the city she looked back to. She paid no attention to the warning of God's messengers. In her destruction she proved true the word she had not believed... There is no security, and no real happiness, except in faith. And faith always obeys the word of the Lord.
Her advantages were real, and there were many of them.
She was married to a true saint. Abraham, an eminent saint, prayed for her. Angels from heaven pressed her to leave. Yet she was lost. She had the unclean nature that loved the filthy garbage of Sodom. What upset Lot clearly had attractions for her.
Why would anyone turn round with fire falling behind them? One writer traces the thought that would explain it.
Nearly saved, but not quite! Near to the place of safety, but not in it... She lingered a little behind her husband. Then this thought came up: I do not think the Lord will judge the place after all. Although her body was outside Sodom, her heart was inside it. So she decided to take a little look, despite the word, "Do not look back." Just as she was entering Zoar, the place of safety, she disobeyed God. Judgment overtook her... Unbelief led to disobedience.
She did not die in the fire that fell on the cities. One writer reads the salt she became as a reversal of what she should have been.
The angels brought her out of Sodom, but she had left her heart there. She cared more about Sodom than about the word of God that the angels had spoken... To the disciples the Lord Jesus said, "You are the salt of the earth." Lot and his wife should have been "salt" in that way in Sodom. She should have been salt inside Sodom in a moral sense. Instead she becomes salt outside it in a literal sense, a memorial of "the goodness and the severity of God."
The next verse turns her story into a principle.
Men bury themselves in the things of earth trying to save their lives. The result is that they only lose them. The believer is to let these things go in favour of the far greater things that God reveals to him. He preserves his life, as will be very clear when the Lord comes. Lot's wife illustrated this principle. The angels pulled her body out of Sodom, but her heart was still there. She lost everything, and her own life as well.
One writer turns the command into a question about our own hearts.
To her, leaving Sodom was exile, not deliverance... And this raises a solemn, practical question for us. How do our souls think about separation from the world? In the judgment of our hearts, is it exile or redemption? Are we singing over that thought, like Israel at the Red Sea? Or are we like Israel later on, remembering the fish of Egypt, its onions, its leeks, and its cucumbers?
- Heart — Her body left Sodom but her heart stayed. The backward look only showed where she already was.
- Unbelief — She did not believe judgment was coming. That unbelief bred the disobedience that destroyed her.
- Nearness — A godly husband, an interceding relative, angelic hands on her arm: near to safety is not the same as in it.
- Memorial — She should have been salt inside the city. Instead she became a pillar of salt outside it, a lasting warning.
- Exchange — Grasping at life here loses it; letting it go keeps it. That is why three words are enough: remember her, and let go.