What Does Genesis 19:11 Mean?

Then they struck the men who were at the door of the house, young and old, with blindness so that they could not find the door. The blindness struck on the Sodom mob is the first direct use of divine power in the chapter's action sequence. The Angels, who were meals-eating guests moments before, now exercise the supernatural capacity that was theirs all along. The striking of blindness on the entire mob, young and old (the same comprehensive description as verse 4's identification of the mob's reach), disables the threat without the kind of immediate physical violence that the final destruction will bring. It is a measured, specific, targeted response.

The detail that the blinded men "could not find the door" is notable: even blinded, they continued trying to find the door and force entry. The persistence of the mob in seeking the door even after being blinded is the narrative's final document of the city's character. A rational person struck with sudden blindness while attempting a violent assault might retreat. The Sodom mob continues to grope for the door. The inability to find it is divine protection; the continued attempt despite blindness is the city's moral condition displayed in its most vivid form.

Spiritual blindness that prevents one from finding the door is the image Jesus uses repeatedly in the Gospels. "Seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear" (Matthew 13:13) is the condition He describes in those who encounter the covenant's content and remain unable to receive it. The physical blindness of the Sodom mob, groping for a door they cannot find even when it is right in front of them, is the enacted form of the spiritual blindness that Jesus came to heal: the miracle of the blind man in John 9, where Jesus gives sight to the physically blind as the sign of His mission to open the eyes of those the religious establishment has condemned to darkness.