That is, the Sodomites didn’t “know their place;” they were threatening Lot, his family, and his guests, all of whom the Sodomites were told through the curse they should be serving; and by those actions they were simply inviting God’s fierce justice that would act not only as a punishment of them for the violation but also as a warning to all other “children of Ham and Canaan” of what happens to those who fail to fulfill their duty and who seek to overturn the right ordering of things in the world. (When you read 10.6-20, you see that names pop out from those verses of tribes and nations with whom Israel had problems throughout biblical history – Egypt, Babel, Assyria, Nineveh, the Philistines, the Amorites, and others – all descendants of Ham!)