Lot Leaves the Burning City

Abraham’s nephew Lot lived in the city of Sodom. But Sodom was a wicked city. The people there did evil things, and their wrongdoing had grown so great that its cry rose all the way up to the Lord. God decided the city could not go on. One evening, two messengers from God came to Sodom. Lot was sitting at the city gate, and when he saw them, he rose to meet them and bowed low. He said, “My lords, please come to your servant’s house. Rest, and wash your feet, and in the morning you can go on your way.” So they came to his house, and Lot made them a feast, and they ate. But that night, the men of the city surrounded Lot’s house and shouted for the visitors, meaning to hurt them. The messengers pulled Lot safely inside — and struck the men outside with blindness, so that they could not even find the door.

Then the messengers said to Lot, “Do you have family in this city? Get them out of this place — for we are going to destroy it. The Lord has sent us to destroy it.” When morning came, the messengers hurried Lot along: “Get up! Take your wife and your two daughters, and go — now!” And when Lot’s family stood frozen with fear, the messengers took them by the hand — Lot, his wife, and his two daughters — and led them out of the city, because the Lord spared them. Outside the walls, the messengers said, “Run for your lives! Do not look back, and do not stop anywhere in the valley. Run to the mountain, or you will be swept away.” Lot begged to run instead to a tiny town nearby, and God granted it. The little town was called Zoar.

The sun was just rising as Lot reached Zoar. Then the Lord rained burning sulfur and fire on Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities of the plain were destroyed — the houses, the walls, everything. But Lot’s wife did not obey. She stopped, and looked back — and she became a pillar of salt. Far away, early that morning, Abraham stood on the ridge where he had once talked with God, and looked down toward the plain. Smoke was rising from the land like the smoke of a great furnace. But God had remembered Abraham — and he had brought Lot out safe.