Add parallel Print Page Options

23 The sun had risen over the earth when Lot arrived in Zoar, 24 and the Lord rained down sulfur upon Sodom and Gomorrah, fire from the Lord out of heaven.(A) 25 He overthrew[a] those cities and the whole Plain, together with the inhabitants of the cities and the produce of the soil.(B) 26 But Lot’s wife looked back, and she was turned into a pillar of salt.(C)

27 The next morning Abraham hurried to the place where he had stood before the Lord. 28 As he looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah and the whole region of the Plain,[b] he saw smoke over the land rising like the smoke from a kiln.(D)

Read full chapter

Footnotes

  1. 19:25 Overthrew: this term, lit., “turned upside down,” is used consistently to describe the destruction of the cities of the Plain. The imagery of earthquake and subsequent fire fits the geology of this region.
  2. 19:28–29 In a deft narrative detail, Abraham looks down from the height east of Hebron, from which he could easily see the region at the southern end of the Dead Sea, where the cities of the Plain were probably located.

22 all its soil burned out by sulphur and salt, unsown and unfruitful, without a blade of grass, like the catastrophe of Sodom and Gomorrah,(A) Admah and Zeboiim,[a] which the Lord overthrew in his furious wrath—

Read full chapter

Footnotes

  1. 29:22 Admah and Zeboiim: neighboring cities of Sodom and Gomorrah in the Jordan Plain and identified in the tradition as destroyed with them. Cf. Hos 11:8; Jer 50:40.

23 Even so, his wrath dispossesses the nations
    and turns fertile land into a salt marsh.(A)

Read full chapter