Apparently, powerful men behaving badly is a tradition that goes back to biblical times.
If Jeffrey Epstein had lived in biblical times, he might have felt right at home in the story of Lot. Powerful men, young women, sexual exploitation, and a disturbing willingness to treat daughters as disposable commodities. The similarities are enough to make you wonder whether civilization has actually progressed or merely upgraded its real estate.
Of course, Lot wasn’t technically a king. And the Bible’s account is a little more complicated than the usual tale of a powerful man taking advantage of young women. But the underlying theme is depressingly familiar: women and girls pay the price for a world in which men hold the power.
Let’s revisit the biblical version of the boys’ club.
Lot: Father of the Year Was Apparently Not an Award Yet
In Genesis 19, Lot is living in Sodom when an angry mob demands that he surrender two male visitors for sexual assault. Lot’s solution? Offer the mob his two virgin daughters instead. Apparently, protecting the male guests was essential, but sacrificing his daughters was an acceptable negotiating strategy.
Later in the story, after Sodom is destroyed, Lot and his daughters take refuge in a cave. Believing there are no men left with whom they can have children, the daughters get their father drunk on successive nights and have sex with him. Both become pregnant. To be clear, the biblical text describes the daughters initiating the encounters while Lot is intoxicated and unaware. It does not depict Lot deliberately orchestrating incest. But it is also a story in which the boundaries of family, sexuality, consent, and power have become catastrophically distorted.
Sound familiar?
When women are used— or sacrificed— for men’s purposes, women themselves can lose a sense of their own individual autonomy and bodily rights. This is why some women experience repeated abuses and exploitation: they no longer believe their own body is theirs to decide.
Enter Jeffrey Epstein: Same Moral Rot, Better Address
Fast-forward several thousand years, and along comes Jeffrey Epstein.
No cave for Jeffrey. He preferred a Manhattan mansion, a Palm Beach estate, a New Mexico ranch, and a private Caribbean island. Why settle for one location when you can build an international infrastructure for exploitation?
Epstein wasn’t merely a wealthy man with questionable sexual appetites. He was a convicted sex offender who sexually abused and exploited underage girls and young women. His operation relied on recruitment, manipulation, money, and an environment in which vulnerable girls could be treated as commodities. And unlike Lot’s daughters, Epstein’s victims weren’t characters in an ancient religious narrative. They were real girls whose lives were profoundly affected by what happened to them.
The difference between ancient Sodom and modern Palm Beach?
Sodom didn’t have private jets. Ba-dum-dum.
The More Things Change, the More Powerful Men Get Away With
Perhaps the most disturbing parallel isn’t incest. It’s the willingness of societies to tolerate the mistreatment of women and girls when powerful men are involved.
Lot was willing to hand over his daughters to protect his guests. Epstein built a system in which girls were recruited and exploited for his sexual gratification, while his wealth and connections insulated him from accountability for years. Plenty of respectable institutions and influential people willingly looked away, minimized warning signs, or continued associating with him. After all, why let allegations of sexual exploitation interfere with a perfectly good dinner invitation?
Epstein’s 2007 federal non-prosecution agreement, followed by his 2008 state guilty plea and extraordinarily lenient punishment, became an enduring symbol of how differently justice can operate when the accused has money and influence. For ordinary people, the justice system can be merciless. For Epstein, it practically rolled out the beach towels.
The Brotherhood of Convenient Blindness
What makes the Epstein scandal particularly revolting is not simply what one man did. It is the broader network of social privilege that surrounded him. He cultivated scientists, politicians, financiers, academics, celebrities, and other influential people. Being associated with Epstein does not, by itself, establish knowledge of or participation in his crimes. But the sheer reach of his social network raises a legitimate question: How did a convicted sex offender remain welcome in so many elite circles?
Apparently, being rich enough can make people remarkably incurious.
A man with a private island? Fascinating.
A man with connections to billionaires? Impressive.
A man with a criminal conviction involving the sexual exploitation of a minor?
Well, nobody’s perfect.
The problem isn’t that every person who knew Epstein was complicit. The problem is that status, access, and wealth can make moral scrutiny terribly inconvenient.
The Real Biblical Lesson
The story of Lot and the story of Jeffrey Epstein aren’t identical. They involve different circumstances, different forms of sexual wrongdoing, and very different questions of responsibility.
But both expose something deeply uncomfortable about societies organized around male power.
In Lot’s world, daughters could be offered up to preserve male honor. In Epstein’s world, girls could be recruited, groomed, and abused while a wealthy predator moved comfortably among the world’s elite. In both cases, the question that deserves our attention isn’t how scandalous the sex was. It’s why the girls mattered so little to the people who should have protected them.
We like to imagine that humanity has evolved beyond the brutal moral arrangements of the ancient world. We’ve invented democracy, constitutional rights, smartphones, and artificial intelligence. Yet somehow, we still struggle with the revolutionary idea that wealthy, influential men should not be allowed to exploit girls.
Sodom Never Really Disappeared. It Just Got a Better ZIP Code.
The most unsettling thing about Epstein isn’t that he was some unprecedented monster. It’s that the mechanisms that protected him are painfully recognizable.
Wealth buys access. Access buys influence. Influence discourages questions. When enough people benefit from the arrangement, silence becomes its own form of currency.
The Bible gave us Sodom and Gomorrah as cautionary tales about moral collapse. Modern America gave us Jeffrey Epstein, a private island, a notorious plea deal, and years of unanswered questions about institutional failure.
Perhaps the real lesson is that moral depravity doesn’t always announce itself with fire and brimstone. Sometimes it arrives in a tailored suit, makes a generous donation, gets invited to dinner, and offers everyone a ride on the private jet.
And somehow, it’s still the girls who end up paying the price.
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