Lot’s Wife

In chapter 31, as Jane accepts a position with St. John Rivers as a schoolmistress, he warns her not “to yield to the vacillating fears of Lot’s wife…I counsel you to resist, firmly, every temptation which would incline you to look back.” God tells us, in GENESIS 19:12-26, that when He commanded Lot and his family to escape the doomed cities of Sodom and Gomorrah before their destruction, He gave them very specific instructions: “Escape for your life! Do not look behind you…lest you be destroyed” (v.17). Verse 26 records that Lot’s wife was disobedient and that God kept His promise: “But his [Lot’s] wife looked back behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.”