Why does 2 Peter say Lot was righteous after the cave?
Because Peter read what Genesis actually wrote. The Genesis narrator deliberately withheld three vocabulary classes from Lot: the verb «become drunk» that Genesis used of Noah, the verb «uncover» Noah used of himself, and the Levitical word for nakedness that appears twenty-three times in Leviticus 18. Lot is never the subject of an active verb in the cave; the daughters are the agents, and the only knowledge-verb belongs to Lot in the negative — «he did not know» (Gen 19:33, 35). Peter calls Lot «righteous» three times in two verses (2 Pet 2:7-8) because the Genesis grammar already exonerated him.
This is one of the harder verses in the New Testament. Peter calls Lot «righteous» three times in two verses, in a passage that opens by naming Sodom's destruction. The reader asks: how is the man in the cave «righteous»? The answer is in the Hebrew grammar of Genesis 19.
What Peter actually writes
"And he rescued righteous Lot, oppressed by the conduct of the lawless in licentiousness; for in seeing and hearing, the righteous one dwelling among them tormented his righteous soul day by day at the lawless deeds." — 2 Peter 2:7-8
Three uses of «righteous» (dikaios, δίκαιος, G1342) in two verses. That is the heaviest concentration of «righteous» attributed to any Old Testament figure in the New Testament. Peter is not casual with the word. He is reading Genesis 19 the way Genesis 19 was written.
What the Genesis narrator did not write
Compare Noah's wine scene with Lot's. Genesis 9:21 says of Noah:
"And he drank from the wine, and became drunk, and uncovered himself in the midst of his tent." — Genesis 9:21
Three verbs, all active, all with Noah as the grammatical subject. He drank. He became drunk (va-yishkar, from shakar, H7937). He uncovered himself (va-yitgal, the reflexive Hithpael of galah, H1540). The narrator implicates Noah's volition fully.
Now Lot:
"And they made their father drink wine that night, and the firstborn went in and lay with her father; and he did not know when she lay down or when she arose." — Genesis 19:33
The verb «made drink» is the causative stem (shaqah in the Hiphil, H8248) — they cause him to drink. Lot is the direct object, not the subject. The verb «become drunk» (shakar) that was used of Noah is conspicuously missing. So is «uncover» (galah). So is the Levitical word for nakedness (ervah, H6172) — the technical incest-code term that appears twenty-three times in Leviticus 18:6-18. Genesis 19:30-38 contains none of them.
The one verb attached to Lot in verses 33 and 35 is the negated yada — «and he did not know.» Repeated verbatim on both nights.
The narrator's calibration
This is not silence. It is calibration. The narrator had every vocabulary class available — the Noah-vocabulary, the Levitical incest-vocabulary, the verb «become drunk» — and he chose not to apply any of them to Lot. The daughters get the active verbs. The cohortatives («let us make him drink,» «let us lie»). The imperatives. Lot gets the accusative case-marker and a negated verb of perception.
That is the grammatical foundation of «righteous Lot.» Peter is not softening Genesis 19. He is reading it. Habakkuk 2:15 supplies the indictment-vocabulary the narrator withheld — «woe to the one who makes his neighbor drink … in order to gaze upon their nakedness» — but Habakkuk says it without naming Lot. The narrator preserves the man; the prophet condemns the deed. Both witnesses are in the canon, and neither cancels the other.
This is not a verdict that the act was acceptable. The text reports the act four times in four verses. It is a verdict on whose hands the agency belonged to — and the narrator wrote with care so that the apostle who came after him would be able to say what he said.
How is Ruth the Moabitess in Jesus's genealogy?
Ruth is a Moabitess (Ruth 1:4) — and Moab is the people born of Lot's daughters in the cave (Gen 19:37). Deuteronomy 23:3 excluded Moab from the assembly «even to the tenth generation.» Yet the book of Ruth ends at Ruth 4:22 with David's name, and Matthew 1:5 names Ruth explicitly in the genealogy of Christ. The bridge is Ruth chapter 3 — a threshing-floor scene written with the cave of Genesis 19 in view: same vocabulary, opposite outcome. Lot did not know; Boaz wakes.
Where did Moab and Ammon come from?
Moab and Ammon are both born in a single cave-night sequence at the end of Genesis 19. The firstborn daughter bears Moab; the younger bears Ben-Ammi (Gen 19:37-38). Their names are etymologies of the act itself: Moab sounds like «from father» in Hebrew, and Ben-Ammi means «son of my people / kindred.» The Septuagint makes both etymologies explicit. From that one night come two nations east of the Jordan — Moab south of the Arnon, Ammon north along the Jabbok — that will shadow Israel for nine hundred years until a Moabitess named Ruth walks into Bethlehem.
Why did Lot leave Zoar for a cave?
Because he was afraid. Genesis 19:30 says plainly: «Lot went up from Zoar and dwelt in the mountain, and his two daughters with him; for he feared to dwell in Zoar.» The same man who had begged the angels for Zoar instead of the mountain (Gen 19:18-22) now abandons Zoar for the mountain on his own. The narrator does not tell us what he feared, but the move is loaded with irony: the mountain the angels first commanded Lot toward, which he refused, is the mountain he climbs under his own fear. And at the top there is no city — only a cave.
Why did Lot's daughters get him drunk and sleep with him?
They had misread Sodom as the Flood — and acted on it. The firstborn says «there is no man on the earth to come in to us» (Gen 19:31), and then states the plan in Noah's exact vocabulary: «that we may preserve seed alive from our father» (Gen 19:32). The verb-plus-noun pairing «preserve seed alive» appears in only six verses in the entire Hebrew Bible, and the founding instance is Yahweh's command to Noah at the ark (Gen 7:3). The daughters thought they were the last women on earth and that their father was the ark.