Bedouin Camp, John Singer Sargent, 1905-1906. WikiArt
Abraham and Lot’s Bedouin-Style Hospitality
Bedouin culture goes back 4,500 years. Owing to the unchangeability of desert conditions, this culture remained largely unchanged and is recognizable in the Bible. The stories of Abraham and Lot hosting angels illustrate one of the most renowned and cherished social values in Bedouin society, namely the practice of hospitality.
Published: November 11, 2019
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Last Updated: September 7, 2026
This piece is a brief summary of the argument I make in my, Bedouin Culture in the Bible (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018).
This saying was heard from Frayj al-Saddan, of the Azazma tribe in the central Negev, 1999. For more on Bedouin hospitality, see Alois Musil, The Manners and Customs of the Rwala Bedouins (New York: American Geographical Society, 1928), 455–470; Clinton Bailey, A Culture of Desert Survival: Bedouin Proverbs (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 195–218.
The importance of an open tent for welcoming guests may have inspired the midrashic description of Abraham and his tent, open on two sides. See Genesis Rabbah 48:
אמר ר' אבהו פלונו שלאבינו אברהם מפולש היה, ר' יודן אמר כהדין דרומליס,
Rabbi Abahu said, “The entrance to Abraham’s [tent] was open on both sides.” Rabbi Yuden said, “It was like a double gate.”
See Clinton Bailey, Bedouin Law from Sinai and the Negev (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 189.
Bailey, Culture, 196
See Clinton Bailey, Bedouin Poetry from Sinai and the Negev (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 142.
Bailey, Bedouin Poetry, 130–131.
Bailey, Culture, 212.
See Arif al-Arif, al-Qada bayn al-Badu (Jerusalem: Bayt al-Maqdes, 1933), 293.
Bailey, Culture, 213.
Reported by the Czech scholar Alois Musil, Manners, 447–448.
Bailey, Culture, 175.
Editor’s note: For a discussion of this story and its connection with the Sodom account, see Sara Milstein, "The Story of the Concubine at Gibeah: A Satire on King Saul," TheTorah (2017).
