Genesis 19:17–29

¹⁷As soon as the angels got them outside, one of them^C said, “Run for your lives! Don’t look back and don’t stop anywhere on the plain! Run to the mountains, or you will be swept away!”

¹⁸But Lot said to them, “No, my lords^D—please. ¹⁹Your servant has indeed found favor with you, and you have shown me great kindness by saving my life. But I can’t run to the mountains; the disaster will overtake me, and I will die. ²⁰Look, this town is close enough for me to flee to. It is a small place. Please let me run to it—it’s only a small place, isn’t it?—so that I can survive.”

²¹And he said to him, “All right,^E I’ll grant your request^F about this matter too and will not demolish the town you mentioned. ²²Hurry up! Run to it, for I cannot do anything until you get there.” Therefore the name of the city is Zoar.^g

²³The sun had risen over the land when Lot reached Zoar. ²⁴Then out of the sky the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah burning sulfur from the Lord.^{h 25}He demolished these cities, the entire plain, all the inhabitants of the cities, and whatever grew on the ground. ²⁶But Lot’s wife looked back and became a pillar of salt.ⁱ

²⁷Early in the morning Abraham went to the place where he had stood before the Lord.^{j 28}He looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah and all the land of the plain, and he saw that smoke was going up from the land like the smoke of a furnace. ²⁹So it was, when God destroyed the cities of the plain, he remembered Abraham and brought Lot out of the middle of the upheaval when he demolished the cities where Lot had lived.