Genesis 19:17–29

¹⁷As soon as the angels got them outside, one of them ⁿsaid, “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 ^o—please. ¹⁹Your servant has indeed found favor in your sight, 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 run to. It is a small place. Please let me go there—it’s only a small place, isn’t it?—so that I can survive.”

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

²³The sun had risen over the land when Lot reached Zoar. ²⁴Then out of the sky the Lord rained burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah from the Lord. ^t25He demolished these cities, the entire plain, all the inhabitants of the cities, and whatever grew on the ground. ²⁶But his wife looked back and became a pillar of salt. ^u

²⁷Early in the morning Abraham went to the place where he had stood before the Lord. ^v28He 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.