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. Now the firstborn said to the younger, “Our father is old, and there is no man on the earth to come in to us as is the custom of all the earth. Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, that we may preserve the lineage of our father.” (Gen 19,30-32)

It is remarkable (and sad) to see the generational progression of spiritual decay when parents lose a living relationship with God. What would not have been acceptable to them becomes normal for the children. First, the person stops actively living out his faith and freezes in a certain state where he does not do much good, but neither does he do much evil; he still has some notion of God and a basic moral discernment. But then come another generation or two in which the reins are loosened and not only are they lacking any consciousness of God, but the moral ruin is plainly visible.

The laws of Mesopotamia of Abraham's time, the earliest Assyrian principles, and the later Code of Hammurabi, regarded incest as an abominable thing, especially between mother and son. But even for incest between father and daughter, the guilty party could be excommunicated. It is therefore somewhat amusing to encounter even an interpretation of the actions of Lot's daughters that claims that they resorted to incest because they "desired to be in the line of the Messiah," since Lot was of the tribe of Sheth, to which the Messiah was promised. This is an interpretation a la "wish fathered by thought", for there is really nothing to suggest it when looking at the whole story. Lot's daughters cannot be seen as following God's ways, quite the opposite. Lot had a clue about morality, he once lived in Sodom internally separate from Sodom and did not accept her ways. But his daughters no longer consider them forbidden if they see no other way out. They may have come out of Sodom, but they took Sodom with them. Even if they did not do so for pleasure, they still saw it as legitimate to resort to such abominable ways if it appeared to be the way to solve their problem. Not that such things didn't occur then, but they were mostly despised. They didn't even try to talk to their father about it, they straight away got him drunk.

Of course, Lot himself certainly viewed his family's plight with a sense of hopelessness and despair. In the cave, isolated from the surroundings, he ended up living there alone with his two daughters, without much chance of a reasonable future. He was certainly struggling, and the contrast between his rich life (and rich social life) in Sodom and their present reality must have been glaring. Lot suffered, but he did not resort to the same means as his daughters, deception and incest. There is a kind of despair, a depression if you will, that leads to throwing off one's inhibitions, as the epistle of Ephesians 4 puts it: ...having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart; who, being past feeling, have given themselves over to lewdness, to work all uncleanness with greediness. (v. 18-19)