Genesis 19:17–29

¹⁷As soon as they had brought them out, one of them said, “Flee for your lives!^k Don’t look back,^l and don’t stop anywhere in the plain!^m Flee to the mountainsⁿ or you will be swept away!”

¹⁸But Lot said to them, “No, my lords,^b please! ¹⁹Your^c servant has found favor in your^d eyes,^o and you^e have shown great kindness^p to me in sparing my life. But I can’t flee to the mountains;^q this disaster will overtake me, and I’ll die. ²⁰Look, here is a town near enough to run to, and it is small. Let me flee to it—it is very small, isn’t it? Then my life will be spared.”

²¹He said to him, “Very well, I will grant this request^r too; I will not overthrow the town you speak of. ²²But flee there quickly, because I cannot do anything until you reach it.” (That is why the town was called Zoar.^fs)

²³By the time Lot reached Zoar,^t the sun had risen over the land. ²⁴Then the Lord rained down burning sulfur^u on Sodom and Gomorrah^v—from the Lord out of the heavens.^{w 25}Thus he overthrew those cities^x and the entire plain,^y destroying all those living in the cities—and also the vegetation in the land.^{z 26}But Lot’s wife looked back,^a and she became a pillar of salt.^b

²⁷Early the next morning Abraham got up and returned to the place where he had stood before the Lord.^{c 28}He looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah, toward all the land of the plain, and he saw dense smoke rising from the land, like smoke from a furnace.^d

²⁹So when God destroyed the cities of the plain,^e he remembered^f Abraham, and he brought Lot out of the catastrophe^g that overthrew the cities where Lot had lived.^h