בראשית, פרק י״ט, פסוק ל״ז

The birth of a child to Lot's older daughter marks a historical milestone, laying the foundation for an entirely new nation. The name chosen for this child captures the deep complexity of the daughters' actions and leaves a permanent imprint on the identity of the resulting people and their future relationship with the Israelites. The primary approach among commentators is that the name translates directly to "from a father," indicating that the child was born from the mother's own father. A related perspective suggests the name signifies being born specifically from the father's seed [שד״ל].

Why the older daughter chose such an explicit name is a matter of debate. One perspective views her choice as a moral flaw and a disgrace. By publicly broadcasting that she conceived from her father, she acted with a severe lack of modesty [רש״י, רבנו בחיי, הטור הארוך]. Her lack of refinement stands in stark contrast to her younger sister, who later chose a much more delicate and polite name for her own son. Because God rewards refined speech, He ensured this difference had historical consequences. During the time of Moses, the Israelites were commanded to grant the descendants of the younger sister absolute protection from any harm. For the descendants of the older daughter, however, while the Israelites were forbidden from waging open war against them, they were permitted to cause them distress and draft them into forced labor [רש״י, רבנו בחיי, הטור הארוך, מחוקקי יהודה].

In contrast, another approach views the choice of name in a positive light. According to this line of thought, the older daughter gave her son this specific name to publicly declare that she had not conceived through prostitution with a random, immoral man. Instead, she acted with pure and good intentions, genuinely believing the world had been destroyed and that human survival urgently depended on her actions [ספורנו, ביאור יש״ר, מחוקקי יהודה]. Because the daughters acted with proper intentions, God rewarded their descendants by allowing them to become nations that inherited a portion of Abraham's land [ספורנו, הכתב והקבלה]. Furthermore, documenting this specific origin highlights the historical family ties between this new nation and the Israelites. This close relationship actually magnifies the severity of the descendants' actions generations later, when they cruelly refused to greet the Israelites with bread and water [ביאור יש״ר].

When God establishes a new nation from a specific individual and grants them a land, that nation takes on the name of its founder rather than his ancestors. Therefore, the lineage and the land are named directly after the son himself, rather than after Lot [מחוקקי יהודה]. Finally, the enduring nature of this lineage indicates that this familiar nation did not intermingle with other peoples. They maintained their direct ancestry from this original son, a fact that remained widely known and clear up until the time Moses recorded these events [אבן עזרא, רשב״ם, רש״ר הירש, מחוקקי יהודה].