Genesis 19:23-29

7. The Divine Judgment Executed (Genesis 19:23-29)

23 The sun was risen upon the earth when Lot came unto Zoar. 24 Then Jehovah rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from Jehovah out of heaven; 25 and he overthrew those cities, and all the Plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground. 26 But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt. 27 And Abraham gat up early in the morning to the place where he had stood before Jehovah: 28 and he looked toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and toward all the land of the -Plain, and beheld, and, lo, the smoke of the land went up as the smoke of a furnace.
29 And it came to pass, when God destroyed the cities of the Plain, that God remembered Abraham, and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow, when he overthrew the cities in which Lot dwelt.

(1) At sunrise Jehovah rained upon Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from Jehovah out of heaven, etc. Fire from Jehovah: probably for emphasis to make it clear that this was a judgment from the Lord and not a natural phenomenon. (SIBG, 243, comment on Genesis 19:17): The Angel Jehovah has now come up from Abraham, and charged Lot and his companions to depart with the utmost haste, and without the smallest regret, from that rich country abounding with sensual indulgence (Luke 9:62;Philippians 3:13-14; Matthew 24:16-18). The Divine command was, Escape for thy life, that is, it is enough that you save your life; do not try to save your wealth also.

(2) Obviously, from correlation of various Scriptures, the cities destroyed were not only Sodom and Gomorrah, but also Admah and Zeboiim (cf. Amos 4:11, Isaiah 1:9-10; Genesis 14, Deuteronomy 29:23, Hosea 11:8), Bela, or Zoar, of the five cities of the Jordan circle being exempted, in response to Lot's appeal, Genesis 19:21-22. Note Genesis 19:22: the catastrophes wrought by God are always under His control: this one is not unleashed until Lot has safely reached Zoar; by that time the sun has fully risen.

(3) The nature of the catastrophe has been a matter of much speculation. The means causing the destruction are said to have been brimstone and fire (sulphur and fire) poured out so plentifully on the doomed cities that God is said to have rained them down out of heaven. Was this divinely-sent infliction burning pitch, or lightning which ignited the bituminous soil, or a volcanic eruption which overwhelmed the whole area? Whitelaw (PCG, 256): Whatever it was, it was clearly miraculous in its nature, and designed as a solemn punitive infliction on the cities of the plain. The account has been properly designated that of one of the most horrifying events in all history, and is presented as such throughout both the Old and New Testaments. The lesson is inescapable, namely, that when a city, or nation, becomes given over wholly to iniquity, that city or nation forfeits its right to exist, because its very existence inevitably spreads this moral pollution to all neighboring peoples and -even those of the regions beyond. There is no limit to the infection of concentrated vice. Therefore, there is but one step for Absolute Justice to take, that is, to destroy utterly. History proves that repeatedly, in the account of man's sojourn on earth, the destruction of a nation, or at least of a nation's power, has become a moral necessity. (Cf. Ezekiel 21:27, Jeremiah 18:5-10, Exodus 17:14-15, Deuteronomy 25:17-19, 1 Samuel 15, Revelation 19:11-16, etc.). Lange (CDHCG, 438): The decisive execution of the judgment proceeds from the manifestation of Jehovah upon the earth, in company with the two angels, but the source of the decree of judgment lies in Jehovah in heaven.

Some authorities hold that an earthquake caused the catastrophic destruction of these doomed cities. E.g., The text enables us to locate the catastrophe (an earthquake) in the southern part of the Dead Sea. The subsidence of the southern half of the Dead Sea bed is known to be recent as geologists reckon, and the whole district is geologically unstable (JB, 37). Others think that an earthquake may have accompanied the burning, and others suggest a volcanic eruption may have been used to effect the divine judgment. Still others would have it that the area in question was submerged beneath the waters of the Dead Sea (cf. Genesis 14:3). However, the Genesis account says nothing about the drowning of lands or cities (although the idea is found in writings of Hellenistic-Roman times). The expression brimstone and fire does suggest volcanic phenomena, such as swallowed up the Roman Pompeii. But geologists tell us that the most recent volcanic activity in that area took place ages before Abraham's time (Kraeling, BA, 72). Again, the language of Genesis 19:29 certainly does suggest, at first glance, an earthquake; however, the narrative itself attributes the cataclysm to some kind of igneous agency. Sulphur and fire, writes Speiser, should be sulphurous fire, adding, the context points plainly to hendiadys (ABG, 141). Writes Leupold (EG, 568): Nothing points directly to a volcanic eruption; nor do lava remains happen to be found in the immediate vicinity. Nor does the expression -overthrow-' necessarily point to an earthquake. The -fire-' which rained down from heaven may have been lightning. The -sulphur-' may have been miraculously wrought and so have rained down together with the lightnings, although there is the other possibility that a huge explosion of highly inflammable materials, including sulphur, deposited in the ground (cf. -bitumen pits-' of Genesis 14:10) may have cast these materials, especially the sulphur, high into the air so that they rained upon these cities, causing a vast conflagration. Besides, it seems quite likely that after, these combustible materials once took fire, the very site of the cities was, literally burnt away to quite a depth, and so the waters of the northern part of the Dead Sea filled in the burnt-out area. For it is a well-known fact that the southern end of the Dead Sea hardly exceeds a depth of twelve feet and usually runs much less, i.e., three or four feet. In fact, at certain points it is by no means difficult towade across the lake. On the other hand, the northern portion reaches a maximum depth of 1300 feet. To assume, then, that the entire lake is the result of this -overthrow,-' as some have, hardly seems reasonable or in conformity with the Biblical account. A conflagration that would have burnt out the ground to a depth of 1,300 feet cannot be conceived. An earthquake, causing so deep and so broad a fissure in the earth's crust, would at least have called for the use of the term -earthquake-' in this connection, for, apparently, in violence it would have surpassed all earthquakes of which man has a record. Equally difficult would be the assumption that the Jordan once flowed through this delightful valley of the Pentapolis and poured its water into the Elanitic Gulf. Again, with reference to the word overthrow, Genesis 19:29: Only that which stands up can be -overthrown.-' Consequently the verb connotes something of the idea of proud men and institutions being brought low by the Lord who -throws down the mighty from their seats-' and lays iniquity prostrate. (Cf. Deuteronomy 29:23, Isaiah 13:19; Jeremiah 49:18; Jeremiah 50:40; Amos 4:11).

It has been rightly said that an air of mystery hovers over the location of the cities of the plain. Tradition had it for centuries that they were immediately north of the Dead Sea, a notion arising no doubt from the vague identification of the Vale of Siddim with the Salt Sea. (Genesis 14:3). (See Part 27 supra).However, the names of Sodom and Zoar continued, even down to Roman times, to be associated with the area south of the Dead Sea. The archaeologists, G. Ernest Wright, assumes, with W. F. Albright, that the destroyed cities were buried beneath the shallow waters of the southern tip of the Dead. Sea. Recently E. G. Kraeling has questioned this identification;. He writes (BA, 70-71): Recent writers of the highest competence have been willing to assume that Sodom and Gomorrah lay by the Dead Sea shore and that they were submerged by the rise of the waters. However, the land suitable for agriculture was precious in a country like Palestine, and was reserved for that purpose. One must therefore look for the sites of Sodom, Gomorrah, and Zoar on higher ground and back from the lake. Their destruction would have been due to other agencies than the waters of the Dead Sea. The names of the cities are certainly not invented. Sodom and Zoar, furthermore, still occur as names of inhabited places south of the Dead Sea area in the fourth century A.D., and the former name clings to Jebel Sudum, as local natives called it, or Jebel Usdum, as it has become known since Robinson to this day. These Christian towns may not have stood on the identical sites of the ancient ones, but presumably were close enough to them to preserve the old names. All indications point to their having lain near the southern end of the Dead Sea.. If one looks at the area on the south end of the Dead Sea, one notes first of all that on the west side there is no suitable location for any habitations, because the brooks that enter in here near the Jebel Usdum are salty. Far different, however, is the situation on the eastern side of the south end of the Dead Sea. Kraeling goes on to show why this region may well have been the original site of the doomed cities, concluding that only further exploration and some excavation can shed light on the old cities of this neighborhood. Cornfeld writes (AtD, 68) that at the southern end of the Dead Sea there is the deepest rift valley in the world, which lies 1290 feet below sea level. He goes on to say that earthquakes or some other destructive agents seem to have wiped out a civilization that had existed near the Dead Sea and east of the Jordan from the Stone Age (4000 B.C.E.) down to the Bronze Age (around the 20th century): This, he says, is the area which included the -five cities of the Plain,-' or -the circle of the vale of Siddim.-'. It is thought by those who favor the geological theory, that these cities were situated south and east of the Dead Sea, most of them being now covered by the water. We know also that nomadic peoples settled down in villages and towns before the 20th century B.C.E., just at the time when the dark age was settling over Palestine, due, apparently, to Amorite invasions, and that these sites were abandoned about the 20th century B.C.E., as were Other towns and villages in southern Transjordanfor some mysterious reason, the people returning to nomadic pursuits. Note also this comment in similar vein (BWDBA, 543): The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and the other cities of the valley may have been the result of lightning igniting the petroleum Seepages and the gas which was plentiful in the region. About five miles from the. shore of the Dead Sea at an elevation of five hundred feet, southeast of the Lisan peninsula is -Bab ed-Dra,-' which served as a religious shrine for inhabitants of the area. Pottery indicates that the site was frequented from ca. 2300 B.C. to ca 1900 B.C. This seems to indicate that Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed ca. 1900 B.C., during the lifetime of Abraham. From near Hebron, Abraham looked in the direction of Sodom and Gomorrah and he saw that the smoke of the land went up like the smoke of a furnace.-' To sum up here, we may indeed have in this narrative a picture of an event that was both natural and. supernatural (miraculous): God may have used natural, means, of bringing about the catastrophe which fell on these doomed cities; it can hardly be denied, however, that the timingand the design of the event lay outside the realm of the natural. (We use the word natural here in its proper sense, i.e., as simply the name we give to observed phenomena).

Lot's Wife. The Divine command had been clear and the urgency of it unmistakable: --Escape for thy life; look not behind thee, etc. We cannot, of course determine whether the woman was motivated by longing, pity, or curiosity (Delitzsch) when she did look back. Note that she looked back from behind him, i.e.,her husband. This seems to indicate that she was bringing up the rear and it certainly bespeaks her reluctance to leave behind her the flesh-pots of Sodom. (Cf. Exodus 16:1-3). Evidently her heart was in the city. She appreciated but little what the delivering angels had done for her. Almost escaped, she allowed her vigilance to relax. -So she became a warning example to all who do not make a clear-cut break with the life of wickedness, as Jesus-' remarkable warning designates her (Luke 17:32). God's punishment overtook her on the spot, apparently through the agents already operative in the destruction-' (EG, 571). It is most interesting to note here that Lot's wife is the only womanof the many who appear in Biblical storywhom we are exhorted to remember,, and that by our Lord Himself. (Cf. Matthew 26:13).

The woman became a pillar of salt. At the time, Lot and his daughters could not have seen this: they did. have sense enough (and some faith, it seems) to have realized that looking back would have meant their destruction. We see no reason for assuming that Lot's wife was instantaneously transformed into a pillar of salt: a more probable interpretation would be that she was overcome by the sulphurous vapors and afterward became encrusted with salt. It would be most unreasonable for us in this twentieth century to assume that this tragicone might say, mummifiedfigure could have survived the elements for any great length of time, much less for a time-span of four millenniums. It is a matter of common sense to hold that attempts at identification, either past or present, must be fruitless. (Cf. the apocryphal book of Wisdom-[Genesis 10:7, a pillar of salt. a memorial of the unbelieving soul]). We would agree, however, with Leupold (EG, 572), that in the days shortly after the catastrophe the salt-encrusted, crudely pillar-like remains of the unhappy woman were to be seen.

Abraham's Last View of the evidences of the-' catastrophe is portrayed in a few poignant sentences. Very early in the morning he returned to the spot whither he had accompanied his celestial Visitors the day before (Genesis 18:22), and from which, in the vicinity of Hebron, he could look to the east, across the Jordan plain, to the hill country and mountainous region beyond (later the home of the Moabites). What was his purpose?. No doubt to satisfy himself as to whether ten righteous men had been found in Sodom and the city spared; in general, to see what actually had happened. And what was the sight that greeted him? It was total destruction: only the smoke of the land of the plain where once these thriving cities flourished went up as the smoke of a furnace.-'-' Whitelaw (PCG, 257): Thus the appalling catastrophe proclaimed its reality to Abraham; to subsequent ages it stamped a witness of its severity (1) upon the region itself, in the black and desolate aspect it has ever since possessed; (2) upon the page of inspiration, being by subsequent Scripture writers constantly referred to as a standing warning against incurring the Almighty's wrath. and (3) upon the course of ancient tradition, which it powerfully affected. (See esp. Tacitus, Histories, Genesis 19:7; for traditional references to the event, see Diodorus Siculus, Strabo, Pliny, Ovid, etc.). Jamieson (CECG, 164): From the height which overlooks Hebron, where the patriarch stood, the observer at the present day has an extensive view spread out before him towards the Dead Sea. A cloud of smoke rising from the plain would be visible to a person at Hebron now, and could have been, therefore, to Abraham as he looked toward Sodom on the morning of its destruction. What an awesome spectacle this was that was spread out before the eyes of Abraham on that fateful morning!

Skinner (ICCG, 310): Abraham's morning visit to the spot where he had parted from his heavenly guests forms an impressive close to the narrative. an effective contrast to Genesis 18:16. Speiser (ABG, 143): As Abraham peered anxiously at the scene of the disaster, from the distant heights of Hebron, he had his answer to the question he had posed the night before. A pall of dense vapors was all that could be seen. All life was extinguished. The author is much too fine an artist to spell out the viewer's thoughts, and the close of the narrative is all the more eloquent for this omission. This is a characteristic of the Bible throughout: in so many instances it tends to speak more forcefully by what it omits than by what it tells us. The most impressive example of this is in the Lord's narrative of the Forgiving Father (Luke 15:11-32).

It is charged by the critics that the Genesis story of Lot's wife's inglorious end is just another version of an ancient folk tale. Alleged similarity of the Greek legend of Orpheus and Eurydice is cited as a corresponding example. According to this legend, after his return from the Argonautic expedition, Orpheus lived in Thrace, where he married Eurydice. His wife having died as a result of the bite of a serpent, Orpheus followed her into Hades, where his sweet music alleviated temporarily the torments of the damned, and enabled him to win her back. His prayer was granted, however, on one condition, namely, that he should not look back at his wife until they had arrived in the upper world. At the very last moment the anxiety of love overcame the poet and he looked around to make sure that his wife was following him, only to see her snatched back into the infernal regions. The mythological tale of Niobe is another example of the case in point. As the alleged wife of the king of Thebes, Niobe, filled with pride over the number of her children, deemed herself superior to Leto, who had given birth to only two (Apollo and Artemis, by Zeus). Apollo and Artemis, indignant as such presumption, slew all her children with their arrows, and Niobe herself was metamorphosed by Zeus into a stone which during the summer always shed tears. We can only affirm here that to find any parallels, in motivation especially, between these fantastic tales and the fate of Lot's wife, must require the activity of a profane mentality. The awesome manifestation of Divine judgment (though tempered with mercy where possible) on a population given over wholly to iniquity, one in which Lot's wife perished because of her unwillingness to break with her environment, cannot reasonably be put in the same category with these folk tales which reflect only human passion, pride, jealousy and revenge. Leupold (EG, 565): Because the command not to look around is met with in heathen legends. that fact does not yet make every command of that sort in Israelitish history a part of a legendary account. We ourselves may on occasion bid another to look around without being on our part involved in some legendary transaction.

Recapitulation, Genesis 19:29. The interesting fact in this statement is the change in the name of God from Jehovah to Elohim. The total destruction of the hotbeds of iniquitythe Cities of the Plainwas a display of Divine Powers which causes men to fear the Sovereign of the universe; therefore Elohim and not Yahweh. (Cf. Genesis 28:17, Hebrews 10:31; Hebrews 12:29, etc.). The destruction of the cities of the plain was not at this moment viewed by the writer as an event related to the Abrahamic covenant and intercession, but as a sublime vindication of Divine (Absolute) Justice. Nor should the fact be overlooked that in this transaction God remembered Abraham, that is, Lot was not delivered simply for his own sake, but primarily for Abraham's sake. The blessings that go forth from one true-hearted servant of God are incalculable, Cf. James 5:16-18.

The Import of the Account of the Catastrophe that befell the Cities of the Plain is clearly indicated by the repeated references to it throughout both the Old and New Testaments, as a warning against incurring the wrath of the Almighty (Deuteronomy 29:22-23; Isaiah 13:19; Jeremiah 49:18; Jeremiah 50:40; Lamentations 4:6; Amos 4:11; Luke 17:32; 2 Peter 2:6, Jude 1:7). Cf. J. A. Motyer (NBD, 1003): The story of Sodom does not merely warn, but provides a theologically documented account of divine judgment implemented by -natural-' disaster. The history is faith's guarantee that the Judge of all the earth does right (Genesis 18:25). Being personally persuaded of its justice and necessity (Genesis 18:20-21), God acts; but in wrath He remembers mercy, and in judgment discrimination (Genesis 19:16; Genesis 19:29). The fate of Sodom and Gomorrah is referred to by Jesus as a warning to those who are inhospitable to the Gospel, Matthew 10:15. Sodom is a symbol for dead bodies lying in the street of a city, Revelation 11:8 (HBD, 692). The plain in which the cities stood, hitherto fruitful -as the garden of Jehovah,-' became henceforth a scene of perfect desolation. Our Lord Himself, and the Apostles Peter and Jude, have clearly taught the lasting lesson which is involved in the judgment: that it is a type of the final destruction by fire of a world which will have reached a wickedness like that of Sodom and Gomorrah (OTH, 77). Cf. Luke 17:29, 2 Peter 2:6, 2 Thessalonians 1:7-10, 1 Corinthians 3:13; Hebrews 10:27; Hebrews 12:29; Jude 1:7; Revelation 14:10; Revelation 20:14-15; cf. Exodus 3:2; Exodus 19:18; Isaiah 66:15-16; Ezekiel 1:13 ff.; Daniel 7:9,Matthew 25:41, etc. The partial judgment upon Sodom and Gomorrah, like the universal judgment of the flood, serves as an exampleand a typeof all the divine judgments, and especially of the Last Judgment; hence in Scripture the two are closely associated (Luke 17:26-32, 2 Peter 2:4-9). The Last Judgment is the Second Death (Revelation 20:14; Revelation 21:8).

Review Questions

See Genesis 19:30-38.