Genesis 19:26

For God looks closely at the actual inner purpose, as when Lot's wife was the only one to turn of her own free will toward the wickedness of the world. He left her insensible, giving her the likeness of a pillar of salt and leaving her without the power of forward movement, a statue, yet not one without a useful message but one intended to season and salt the person capable of spiritual perception.

Remember Lot's wife, who, because the love of her kinsfolk and the outcries of her beloved ones constrained her, turned and looked back behind her, and became a pillar of salt, even as is written concerning her; and because her soul had not been salted with the fear of the Highest she became a destructible salted thing. Remember then this woman who was in doubt, and who perished, and be thou not in doubt like unto her, and turn not thyself backwards, lest thou remain in the place where thou art. For the soul that turneth and looketh backward after it hath gone forth on the journey in this path becometh a senseless pillar, and as the wife of Lot ceased from bodily feeling, and thereby became a pillar of salt, even so also here the mind, which looketh behind it always at corruptible things, ceaseth to feel, and becometh stupefied at spiritual things; because the remembrance of the world maketh us to possess dulness of heart, and it defileth the purity and innocency of the soul.

But let us return to Lot, who, fleeing the destruction of Sodom with his wife and daughters, having received from the angels the command not to look back, was making his way toward Segor. But his wife becomes forgetful of the precept, "she looks back," she breaks the law imposed upon her, "she is made a pillar of salt." Do we suppose there was so much wickedness in this deed committed, that, because the woman looked back after herself, she incurred the destruction which by the divine favor she seemed to have escaped? For what great crime was there, if the anxious mind of the woman looked back to where she was terrified by the excessive crackling of the flames? But because "the law is spiritual" and the things that befell the ancients "befell them as a figure," let us see whether perhaps Lot, who did not look back, is the rational sense and the manly spirit, while the wife here holds the image of the flesh. For it is the flesh that always looks back to vices, which, when the spirit strives toward salvation, looks back and seeks after pleasures. Hence indeed the Lord also said: "No one putting his hand to the plow and looking back is fit for the kingdom of God," and he adds: "Remember Lot's wife." And that "she is made a pillar of salt" seems set forth as an indication of her folly. For salt is put in place of prudence, which she lacked. Lot, therefore, pressed on to Segor, and there, having for a little while gathered the strength which he could not have in Sodom, he ascended into the mountain and dwelt there, as Scripture says, "he and his two daughters with him."