The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah

The event

Three visitors — the LORD and two angels — come to Abraham at Mamre with news: Sarah will have a son within the year, and the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah has grown too great to ignore. What follows is one of the boldest prayers in Scripture: Abraham, standing before the LORD, bargains him down from fifty righteous people to ten, pleading, "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?" It's intercession born of genuine relationship, not flattery — Abraham calls God to be exactly who God already is.

Ten righteous cannot be found. When the two angels arrive in Sodom, Lot — now living inside the city he once merely camped near — takes them in and shields them from a mob at his door, a scene that shows how thoroughly the city's cruelty had set in. At dawn, the angels drag Lot, his wife, and his daughters out by the hand, warning them not to look back, and the LORD rains down sulfur and fire, overthrowing the cities and "all the valley." Lot's wife, lingering in her heart for what was left behind, looks back and becomes a pillar of salt.

The destruction is remembered throughout Scripture as the paradigm case of judgment on entrenched sin (Isaiah 1:9; Ezekiel 16:49-50; Jude 7), yet the chapter that records it is bracketed by Abraham's prayer on one side and God's rescue of Lot on the other — "God remembered Abraham, and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow." Even in judgment, God's covenant mercy toward Abraham's family is what saves Lot.

Dating

The year follows from Genesis 18's promise that Sarah would bear a son "about this time next year" (Isaac was born c. 2066 BC), placing the destruction within a year of the covenant of circumcision. Archaeology has not confirmed this date: the two leading candidate sites both carry destruction layers that conflict with it — Bab edh-Dhra and Numeira, southeast of the Dead Sea, were destroyed c. 2350 BC (centuries too early), while Tall el-Hammam, northeast of the Dead Sea, was destroyed c. 1700-1650 BC (centuries too late; its excavators argue for redating the patriarchs later to match). The biblical reckoning, not any destruction layer, is followed here.

Scripture references

• Genesis 18:16-33
• Genesis 19:1-29
• 2 Peter 2:6-9
• Jude 1:7