Why was Lot "let off the hook" for offering his daughters to be raped?

Lot's visitors were "men of God." His daughters were "mere" human beings, and as Muke has suggested, may have been "less unwilling" to be raped than Lot's guests.

Essentially, Lot was faced with a choice of evils. So he offered his (human) daughters to protect God's messengers, consciously choosing the "lesser" evil. (In this regard, his actions may have been similar to that of Abraham "offering" his son Isaac to God on Mount Moriah.) Such actions or intentions, would make Lot (and Abraham) "righteous" in God's eyes.

Of course God wouldn't stand for this, however well intentioned. So he ordered his "messengers" to intervene, just as God himself had intervened on Mount Moriah.

The overall Genesis 19 is chilling, specially verses 19:4-9 and 19:30-38. These verses represent, respectively, wickedness of Sodomites and Lot, and Lot's backsliding.

In our current society we can't understand Lot's offering of his virgin daughters. Yet, it's more understandable when we consider the low place of women in the pre-Christian world and the high standing of any guest in terms of Middle Eastern hospitality.

Regarding Lot and his daughters getting him drunk, it reminds me the shame of Noah (9:20-27). In both places, God saves them (flood and destruction of the Sodom) and after that they fall into sin (and sons and daughters are involved).

I reckon the key to understand why righteous, even though such acts with consequences, is revealed in Genesis 15:6 (KJV)

And he believed in the Lord; and he counted it to him for righteousness.

God declares people righteous on the basis of their faith.

A natural harmony between Genesis and Peter is found in the harmony between Peter and Paul. Someone who reads the Bible as a disaparate collection of different people's opinions might object that to import Paul is the wrong way to answer the question. But such an approach does not even require a reconciliation between Peter and Genesis. Copies of the Scriptures were not as plentiful as they are now, Peter was an uneducated man, and someone who holds that position has no reason to be puzzled if he practices historical revisionism or drew from a different source about Lot. Thus, to even ask for reconciliation between Peter and Genesis presupposes the reasonableness of harmony between Peter and Paul (i.e. on the basis of the inspiration of Scripture).

Lot's offer of his daughters was a horrifically wicked action. Any man who does not diligently guard the chastity of his daughter greatly offends a righteous God. A man who would encourage her to be unchaste is worse; but a man who offers not one, but both, of his daughters to not one lone, but a whole town full of men, is a criminal of the first order. Indeed, my own inclination would be to say that Lot's offer of his daughters is more wicked than the men of Sodom. If we do not emphasis the great monstrosity of what Lot did, we do not uphold the moral character of God. The man was vile!

How then is Peter able to hold forth Lot as a righteous man? Because he holds to the same doctrine of righteousness as Paul—alien righteousness through faith in the Messiah. Lot was more righteous than the men of Sodom because he believed in God. This faith is evidenced by his distress at the wickedness of the people around him, as mentioned by Peter; but were we to tally up his righteousness, his distress at the wickedness of the Sodomites would certainly have been far outweighed by his own lack of moral fortitude. Distress at the wickedness of others is hardly a thing of positive merit—but it can be a sign of a heart which faith has begun to soften. The only possible way to consider him righteous, then, is to recognize that his wicked deeds were washed away by the blood of the Messiah. This salvation by faith that he experienced resulted in his disgust at the evil around him, even though his faith remained wavering and imperfect.

If Peter's doctrine is to be separated from Paul's, then why not Genesis also? And to man who minimizes the horror of what Lot suggested, what can I say?—may daughters never be born to him! Justification by faith alone is the only viable way to reconcile the two passages.

Outside of being offered by their father in this incident, there are really only two things we know about Lot's daughters:

• they were betrothed or in some translations actually married to men of Sodom (Gen. 19:14 - the latter option making Lot's claims to their virginity suspect), and
• after the destruction of Sodom, they get their father drunk and seduce him (Gen. 19:30-38)

They may well have been pure-hearted young women, but the text itself doesn't suggest this. So while the situation might have resulted in gang rape for Lot's unwilling guests, his daughters might well have been enough of the Sodomish mindset where they wanted to join in—and while allowing one's daughters to join an orgy is not the most fatherly of actions, if they were consenting it would at least move it out of the category of offering them up for gang rape.

I've heard a variety of theories on this topic:

1. He "knew" (or hoped) the crowd wouldn't accept them (they were asking for men, after all)
2. Females were considered a sub-class of society, and therefore were his "possession" wherewith to do as he pleased
3. It was the offer of a desperate man trying to save the guests whom he suspected of being more than just "visitors" (but did not know were messengers of God)

Lastly, the "righteousness of Lot" does not indicate he was perfect, or even the best representation of a God-truster of the day - Abraham was "righteous", and yet on two occasions tried to save his own skin by telling his wife to say she was his sister.

Lot elected to go towards the greener pastures near the cities when Abraham offered him the choice of land on which to graze his flocks - and he continually migrated closer and closer to sin until he was living in Sodom: a phenomenal shift from being with Abraham and away from such obviously-evil influences.