Then Lot went up out of Zoar and dwelt in the mountains, and his two daughters were with him; for he was afraid to dwell in Zoar. And he and his two daughters dwelt in a cave. (Gen 19,30)

Do you remember how Lot convinced God that he wanted to go to Zoar, not to the mountain where God was sending him? He thought he knew better, or at least that even though God was giving him a very specific instruction, it didn't really matter if he obeyed it, he thought he had a choice. Lot hadn't learned in his entire life to obey God and put His will above his own. As long as he didn't get into a crisis, he could go through life paying no price for this ignorance of the higher ways. It might even have seemed to him that Abraham, on the contrary, was paying too great a price for it by avoiding the cities and remaining on the uncomfortable mountains. But in the end it was just the opposite: it was Lot who paid with all he had.

So Lot arrived in Zoar, but very quickly left from there - but where to? To the very place where God had originally sent him, to the mountain. Why did he leave the city? We don't have an answer to that, except that the Scriptures tell us that "he was afraid to settle there." We can only surmise that it was most likely for one of the following two reasons.

Lot, on arriving at Zoar, may have found that the city was in exactly the same condition as Sodom, whose final destruction he had experienced the night before. For God told him: "I have favored you concerning this thing... I will not overthrow this city" (19:21), which means that Zoar was on the "black list" with God, and the moral conditions there must have been very similar to those in Sodom. Lot may have realized upon arriving that the same thing was likely to happen here sooner or later, and he feared the destruction of the city.

Or he may simply have noticed shortly after his arrival the clear indications that he could very quickly become a target for violence similar to what God's messengers had experienced in Sodom and fled quickly.

In any case, Lot left Sodom reluctantly; he was reluctant to admit that God was right about the change of destination and that it was a waste of time to argue about it. And in the end, he was just as reluctant to get to where God had wanted to take him from the beginning. Something like this can hardly be called a path of pursuit of God, only a virtue out of necessity. And if only at least some virtue...