Genesis 19:17–29

¹⁷And as they brought them out, one said, “Escape for your life. ^fDo not look back or stop anywhere in the ^gvalley. Escape to the hills, lest you be swept away.” ¹⁸And Lot said to them, “Oh, no, my lords. ¹⁹Behold, your servant has found favor in your sight, and you have shown me great kindness in saving my life. But I cannot escape to the hills, lest the disaster overtake me and I die. ²⁰Behold, this city is near enough to flee to, and it is a little one. Let me escape there—is it not a little one?—and my life will be saved!” ²¹He said to him, “Behold, I grant you this favor also, that I will not overthrow the city of which you have spoken. ²²Escape there quickly, for I can do nothing till you arrive there.” Therefore the name of the city was called ^hZoar.¹

God Destroys Sodom

²³The sun had risen on the earth when Lot came to Zoar. ²⁴Then ⁱthe Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the Lord out of heaven. ²⁵And he overthrew those cities, and all the valley, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew on the ground. ²⁶But Lot’s wife, behind him, looked back, and she became ^ja pillar of salt.

²⁷And Abraham went early in the morning to the place where he had ^kstood before the Lord. ²⁸And he looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah and toward all the land of the valley, and he looked and, behold, the smoke of the land went up like the smoke of a furnace.

²⁹So it was that, when God destroyed the cities of the valley, God ^lremembered Abraham and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow when he overthrew the cities in which Lot had lived.