Genesis 19:1–29

Sodom and Gomorrah Destroyed

19The two angels^h arrived at Sodomⁱ in the evening, and Lot^j was sitting in the gateway of the city.^k When he saw them, he got up to meet them and bowed down with his face to the ground.^{l 2}“My lords,” he said, “please turn aside to your servant’s house. You can wash your feet^m and spend the night and then go on your way early in the morning.”

“No,” they answered, “we will spend the night in the square.”ⁿ

³But he insisted^o so strongly that they did go with him and entered his house.^p He prepared a meal for them, baking bread without yeast,^q and they ate.^{r 4}Before they had gone to bed, all the men from every part of the city of Sodom^s—both young and old—surrounded the house. ⁵They called to Lot, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we can have sex with them.”^t

⁶Lot went outside to meet them^u and shut the door behind him ⁷and said, “No, my friends. Don’t do this wicked thing. ⁸Look, I have two daughters who have never slept with a man. Let me bring them out to you, and you can do what you like with them. But don’t do anything to these men, for they have come under the protection of my roof.”^v

⁹“Get out of our way,” they replied. “This fellow came here as a foreigner,^w and now he wants to play the judge!^x We’ll treat you worse than them.” They kept bringing pressure on Lot and moved forward to break down the door.

¹⁰But the men^y inside reached out and pulled Lot back into the house and shut the door. ¹¹Then they struck the men who were at the door of the house, young and old, with blindness^z so that they could not find the door.

¹²The two men said to Lot, “Do you have anyone else here—sons-in-law, sons or daughters, or anyone else in the city who belongs to you?^a Get them out of here, ¹³because we^b are going to destroy this place. The outcry to the Lord against its people is so great^c that he has sent us to destroy it.”^d

¹⁴So Lot went out and spoke to his sons-in-law, who were pledged to marry^a his daughters. He said, “Hurry and get out of this place, because the Lord is about to destroy the city!^e” But his sons-in-law thought he was joking.^f

¹⁵With the coming of dawn, the angels urged Lot, saying, “Hurry! Take your wife and your two daughters who are here, or you will be swept away^g when the city is punished.^h”

¹⁶When he hesitated, the men grasped his hand and the hands of his wife and of his two daughtersⁱ and led them safely out of the city, for the Lord was merciful to them.^{j 17}As 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