Sodom and Gomorrah

Two visitors came to Sodom, and the way the city treated them shows how different it was from Abraham's tent in chapter 18. Two scenes of welcome. In 18:2 Abraham saw strangers at noon and ran to them. In 19:1 Lot saw the two angels at evening. He was sitting “in the gate of Sodom” — the place where a city's leading men sat — and he too rose, bowed and begged them to come in (19:2-3). So far, Lot was doing what Abraham did. When the angels said they would sleep in the square, “he insisted strongly.” Lot knew it was not safe to spend the night in the streets of Sodom. Then the city showed what it was. “The men of the city, the men of Sodom, both old and young, all the people from every quarter, surrounded the house” (19:4). This was not a small gang. It was the whole town, and they demanded that Lot bring out his guests so they could abuse them (19:5). That was the outcry of 18:20 out in the open — strangers who came under a roof for shelter, and a city that wanted to hurt them. Lot's offer was terribly wrong. To save his guests he offered the crowd his two daughters (19:8). In those days a host was expected to protect anyone under his roof, and that is why Lot wanted to protect his guests. But it did not make what he offered right, and God's Word never approves it. A father's first duty is to protect his own children. Then the guests rescue the host. The crowd sneers that Lot “keeps acting as a judge” (19:9) and surges at the door. The angels pull Lot in and strike the crowd with blindness (19:10-11). The people Lot tried to protect turn out to be the ones protecting him.

19:1-11 closely matches Abraham's welcome in 18:1-8, and setting the two side by side shows how far Sodom had fallen. The scenes are alike: both hosts see the visitors, rise to meet them and bow (18:2; 19:1); both offer foot-washing and lodging; both prepare food (18:6-8; 19:3). But the differences matter. Abraham's scene is kechom hayyom, in the heat of the day; Lot's is ba'erev, at evening. Abraham sits at his tent door; Lot sits besha'ar Sedom, in the gate of Sodom — the seat of the city's leaders, which suggests he has become a man of standing there. Abraham's guests accept at once; Lot must press his, wayyiftsar bam me'od, he urged them strongly (19:3), because he knew what the city was like. Now the charge of 18:20 is acted out. 19:4 stresses that the whole crowd came — old and young, kol-ha'am miqqatseh, all the people to the last man — and 19:5 demands that the guests be brought out wenede'ah otam, that we may know them. The verb is the ordinary Hebrew way of speaking of sexual relations (compare 4:1), and here the demand is for sexual violence against strangers who had taken shelter under a host's roof. Genesis shows the sin of the city as an attack on the most vulnerable, the reverse of Abraham's welcome in chapter 18. Later Scripture adds to the picture. Ezekiel 16:49-50 names pride, fullness of food, idleness, the neglect of the poor and needy, and “abomination.” Jude 7 speaks of sexual immorality and going after “strange flesh.” Isaiah 1:10 calls Jerusalem's corrupt rulers “rulers of Sodom.” Together these passages show that Sodom's sin was not one single thing. It was a whole way of life turned against God and against people. Lot's offer in 19:8 was wrong. He appealed to the duty of hospitality — ki al-ken ba'u betsel qorati, for this is why they came under the shadow of my roof — and that explains why he did it, but it does not excuse it. God's Word never approves it, and the angels end the scene before the offer can be taken up. The crowd mocks Lot in 19:9, wayyishpot shafot, he keeps playing the judge, yet the true Judge of all the earth (18:25) has sent His messengers into Lot's house. The blindness of 19:11, sanwerim, appears again only at 2 Kings 6:18, where once more it protects God's servants from a hostile crowd.

Remember how Abraham welcomed three visitors? He ran to meet them and fed them a feast. Now two angels came to the city of Sodom. Lot asked them to his home, and that was kind. But that night men from the whole city came to the door. There were young men and old men from every part of town. They wanted to hurt the visitors very badly. Abraham had been kind to strangers, but Sodom was cruel. Then Lot did something terrible and wrong. He offered the crowd his own daughters instead. A good father protects his children. The angels pulled Lot inside and stopped it at once.

Two angels came to Sodom. Bad men wanted to hurt them. But the angels kept everyone safe.

Before the angels destroyed anything, they gave Lot time to rescue everyone he could. “Have you anyone else here?” (19:12). Sons-in-law, sons, daughters — anyone at all could come. God's judgment on the city came with an open door for Lot's whole family. The reason is given plainly. “The outcry against them has grown great before the face of the Lord” (19:13) — the same word as 18:20. The cry of the people Sodom hurt has reached God, and He is answering it. Then Lot warned his family. He went to his sons-in-law with the most urgent message of his life: “Get up, get out of this place; for the Lord will destroy this city!” But “to his sons-in-law he seemed to be joking” (19:14). They heard the warning and laughed it off. God gives warnings because He wants people to be saved, and it is a terrible thing to treat His warning as a joke. Were they married or engaged? The NKJV says these men “had married his daughters”; the ICB says they were engaged to them. The Hebrew words can mean either one. Either way, they stayed behind.

19:12-14 turns from the crowd to Lot's family, and it teaches us three things. First, the offer is wide. 19:12 lists chatan, son-in-law, sons, daughters, and kol asher-lekha ba'ir, anyone you have in the city. The rescue is offered to Lot's whole circle before the judgment falls. Abraham had asked that the righteous not be swept away with the wicked (18:23-32), and God shows that same care here. Second, the reason. 19:13 grounds the destruction in tsa'aqatam, their outcry, before the LORD — the language of 18:20-21 again. The judgment is God's answer to the cry of the victims, not a careless display of power. Third, the sons-in-law. The words chatanav loqche venotav in 19:14 can mean his sons-in-law who had taken his daughters (as the NKJV puts it) or those who were going to take them (as the ICB puts it). The Hebrew allows both, and 19:15's “your two daughters who are here” fits either. Either way, these young men were part of Lot's family and were offered the same way out. Their response, wayhi khimtsacheq be'ene chatanav, he was in their eyes like one jesting, uses the root tsachaq (say: tsah-KHAHK), to laugh — the same verb used when Abraham and Sarah laughed in chapters 17-18. There laughter met a promise of life; here it meets a warning of judgment. Both times God's word came true, whether people laughed or not.

Then the angels gave Lot a job. “Who else do you have here? Get them out.” “The Lord has heard the cry against this city.” “And He has sent us to destroy it.” God was giving Lot's whole family a way out. So Lot went to find his sons-in-law. “Get up! Get out! The Lord is going to destroy this city!” And what did they do? They thought he was making a joke. Nobody came with him, not even one of them.

The angels told Lot to get his family out. Lot warned them. But they thought he was joking.

Lot's rescue is the heart of this chapter, and it is a rescue nobody deserved. “And while he lingered” (19:16). The angels had urged him to hurry (19:15). The city was about to be destroyed. And still Lot hesitated. Even with judgment coming, he was slow to leave Sodom. But God did not leave him behind. So they took his hand. “The men took hold of his hand, his wife's hand, and the hands of his two daughters, the Lord being merciful to him, and they brought him out and set him outside the city” (19:16). Lot did not escape on his own. He was carried out. And the reason given is not Lot's faith or courage. It is God's mercy. “Escape for your life! Do not look behind you” (19:17). Run, do not stop, and do not look back. Remember that command, because Lot's wife did not obey it (19:26). Then Lot asked for something too. Like his uncle in chapter 18, he made a request — not the mountains, but the little town nearby (19:18-20). And the answer was yes: “I have favored you concerning this thing also” (19:21). Then the angel said, “I cannot do anything until you arrive there” (19:22). The judgment of two cities waited until one hesitant man was safe. That is how patient and merciful God is.

19:15-23 is the heart of the chapter, because it shows that Lot was saved by mercy alone. Wayyitmahmah, and he lingered (19:16), is an unusual doubled form of the verb that suggests delay after delay. Into that hesitation comes bechemlat YHWH alav, in the LORD's compassion upon him — chemlah, a word for pity or sparing — and the angels take hold of all four and set them outside the city. God did all the work. Nothing Lot did is given as the reason he was saved. 19:17 gives three commands: himmalet al-nafshekha, escape for your life; al-tabbit acharekha, do not look behind you; and al-ta'amod bekhol-hakkikkar, do not stop anywhere in the plain. The second is the one Lot's wife breaks in 19:26. Lot's plea in 19:18-20 is like a small version of Abraham's prayer. He too argues from favor already received — matsa avdekha chen be'enekha, your servant has found favor in your sight (19:19) — and he too asks for a city to be spared, though only a small one and only for his own sake. The request is granted: nasati fanekha, literally I have lifted up your face, the Hebrew way of saying a request is granted (19:21). The name Zoar comes from mits'ar, a little thing (19:20, 22). Then comes 19:22: ki lo ukhal la'asot davar ad-bo'akha shammah, for I am not able to do anything until you arrive there. The judgment was held back until the one being rescued was safe. 2 Peter 3:9 says the same about the time before the final judgment: the Lord is longsuffering, “not willing that any should perish.” God's patience today is mercy too, giving people time to come to Jesus.

At sunrise, the angels told Lot to hurry. “Take your wife and your daughters. Go now!” But Lot just stood there and waited. Fire was coming soon. Still Lot could not make himself leave. So the angels grabbed his hand. They grabbed his wife and his daughters too. And they pulled them all the way out of the city. The Bible tells us why they did it. “The Lord being merciful to him.” Lot did not earn that rescue. God gave it to him. Even then, Lot asked to go somewhere closer. And God said yes to that too.

Lot was slow to leave. So the angels took his hand. God was kind to Lot and his family.

This part of the story has judgment, a warning, and a prayer from the last lesson that God did not forget. The judgment. “The Lord rained brimstone and fire on Sodom and Gomorrah, from the Lord out of the heavens” (19:24). In a moment the cities of the plain were gone — the land Lot chose in 13:10 because it looked “like the garden of the Lord.” What looked so good to Lot ended in smoke and ashes. The look back. “But his wife looked back behind him, and she became a pillar of salt” (19:26). She was walking behind her husband, and she did the one thing the angel had told them not to do. Jesus later used her as a warning. Speaking about the day He returns, He said, “Remember Lot's wife” (Luke 17:32), right after telling people not to turn back for their belongings. She had been brought out of the city, and still she turned back toward it. The watcher on the hill. Early the next morning Abraham goes back to “the place where he had stood before the Lord” (19:27) — the place where he had prayed — and sees the smoke rising “like the smoke of a furnace” (19:28). He had asked for fifty, then ten. There were not ten. And then the line that answers him. “God remembered Abraham, and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow” (19:29). The city was not spared. But Abraham's prayer had not gone into silence. The ICB says it plainly: God “remembered what Abraham had asked.” Where it leaves Lot. Afraid, he leaves the little town he begged for and goes to live in a cave in the mountains with his two daughters (19:30) — the very mountains the angel told him to run to in the first place. The man who chose the best land in chapter 13 ends the chapter in a cave.

19:24-30 tells of the judgment in two verses and then of two people: one who looked back and one who looked down from the hill. 19:24 reads wa-YHWH himtir... me'et YHWH min-hashshamayim, the LORD rained... from the LORD out of the heavens. The doubled name stresses that this judgment came straight from God. Many Christians through the centuries have also seen in it a hint of the Father and the Son, though the verse itself simply makes clear who sent the fire. Lot's wife in 19:26: wattabbet ishto me'acharav, his wife looked from behind him. The verb is the same nabat (say: nah-BAHT) as the command in 19:17, so her disobedience matches the command exactly. Luke 17:31-33 uses her to teach about following Jesus, setting “Remember Lot's wife” between a warning not to turn back for one's goods and the saying about losing one's life to save it. That is how Jesus teaches us to remember her: as someone who had been brought out and still turned back. Then Abraham. 19:27 returns him el-hammaqom asher-amad sham et-pene YHWH, to the place where he had stood before the LORD — the language of 18:22 — and 19:28 gives his view: the smoke of the land rising kekitor hakkivshan, like the smoke of a kiln. The day before, he had prayed for that city in that very place. 19:29 sums up the whole rescue. Wayyizkor Elohim et-Avraham — God remembered Abraham — uses the verb of 8:1, where God remembered Noah. To remember, in Genesis, is to act on behalf of someone. Lot's rescue is credited not to Lot's righteousness but to God's remembering of Abraham. This verse links Abraham's prayer in chapter 18 to Lot's rescue, and the ICB makes that link clear. 2 Peter 2:7-9 adds the New Testament's own word: “righteous Lot,” tormented by what he saw, and an example that the Lord knows how to deliver the godly. Peter shows God's verdict on Lot and his grief over Sodom; Genesis shows his hesitant, compromised conduct. Both are true, and together they show that Lot was saved by God's mercy. 19:30 closes the span with Lot in a cave in the mountains he refused in 19:19 — a bleak end for the man who chose the plain in 13:10-11.

Then the Lord sent burning sulfur from the sky. Sodom and Gomorrah were gone, and the whole valley too. But something else happened on the way out. Lot's wife looked back. And she became a pillar of salt. The angel had said, “Do not look back.” She did not obey what God's angel said. Next morning, Abraham went back to where he had prayed. He saw smoke rising from the valley. The city had not been saved. But God had not forgotten Abraham's prayer. God remembered Abraham, and got Lot out safely.

God sent fire on the bad cities. Lot's wife looked back. But God remembered Abraham and saved Lot.