Yahweh Destroys the Cities of Sodom and Gomorrah

19:1-29

19 Then the two angels came to Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting at the gate of Sodom. And Lot saw them, and he got up to meet them and bowed down with nose to the ground. 2 Then he said, “Behold, please, my lords: Please turn aside to the house of your servant and spend the night, and wash your feet. Then you can get up early and go on your way.” But they said, “No, rather we will spend the night in the street.” 3 But he urged them strongly, so that they turned aside with him and entered into his house. Then he prepared a feast for them, and he baked unleavened bread, and they ate.

4 Before they lay down, then the men of the city, the men of Sodom, surrounded the house, from the young and to the old, all the people from the edges. 5 Then they called to Lot and said to him, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we can know them!” 6 Then Lot went out to them at the entrance and shut the door behind him, 7 and he said, “Please, my brothers, do not do evil! 8 Behold, please: I have two daughters who have not known a man. Please let me bring them out to you, and you do to them as is good in your eyes. But do not do anything to these men, because for that reason they have come under the shadow of my rafters.” 9 But they said, “Get back!” Then they said, “This one came to sojourn, and now he is judging us! We will treat you worse than them!” Then they pressed hard against the man Lot and came near to break down the door. 10 But the men reached out their hands and brought Lot into the house to them and shut the door. 11 Then they struck the men who were at the entrance of the house with blindness, from the small and to the great, so that they became weary trying to find the door.

12 Then the men said to Lot, “Who else belongs to you here, a son-in-law or your sons or your daughters or anyone else who belongs to you in the city? Take them out from this place, 13 because we are destroying this place. For their outcry before Yahweh is great, so Yahweh has sent us to destroy it.” 14 Then Lot went out and spoke to his sons-in-law who were to take his daughters, and he said, “Get up, get out of this place, because Yahweh is destroying the city!” But it seemed like he was joking in the eyes of his sons-in-law.

15 Then when the dawn came, the angels urged Lot, saying, “Get up, take your wife and your two daughters who are here, so that you are not swept away in the punishment of the city.” 16 But he lingered, so the men grabbed his hand and the hand of his wife and the hands of his two daughters, because of Yahweh’s mercy for him, and brought him out and set him outside the city. 17 And it happened when they had brought them out to the outside, then he said, “Flee for your life! Do not look behind you, and do not stop anywhere in the plain! Escape to the mountains so that you are not swept away!” 18 Then Lot said to them, “Please, no, my lords! 19 Behold, please: Your servant has found favor in your eyes, and you have magnified your mercy that you have shown to me by saving my life. But I am not able to escape to the mountains, because the disaster will overtake me and I will die. 20 Behold, please: That town there is near to flee to, and it is a little one. Please let me escape there. Is it not a little one? Then my life will live.” 21 Then he said to him, “Behold, I have also lifted up your face concerning this thing, so I will not overthrow the town that you are talking about. 22 Hurry up, escape there, because I am not able to do a thing until you go there.” For that reason they called the name of the town Zoar.

23 The sun rose over the land and Lot came to Zoar. 24 Then Yahweh rained down on Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from Yahweh out of the heavens, 25 and he overthrew those cities and all of the plain, including all the inhabitants of the cities and the vegetation of the ground. 26 But his wife from behind him looked back, and she became a pillar of salt.

27 Abraham got up early in the morning and went to the place where he had stood before Yahweh, 28 and he looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah and toward all the surface of the land of the plain. And he saw that, behold, smoke was rising from the land like smoke from a furnace. 29 So it was, when God destroyed the cities of the plain, that God remembered Abraham and sent Lot out of the middle of the overthrow, when he overthrew the cities which Lot had lived in.