Genesis 19:25

The fire comes at the end of a long story. In Genesis 18 the LORD told Abraham that the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah was great and their sin very grievous, and that he would go down and see (Genesis 18:20–21). Abraham pleaded for the city, and the LORD agreed to spare it for the sake of even ten righteous people (Genesis 18:23–33). On the night the two angels came, the men of Sodom surrounded Lot’s house and demanded his guests so that they could abuse them (Genesis 19:4–9). Among the patriarchs, welcoming a stranger was a sacred duty, as Abraham’s own welcome at Mamre shows, and Sodom met strangers with violence. Long before, Genesis had called the men of Sodom wicked and sinners before the LORD exceedingly (Genesis 13:13). Ezekiel later names the sins of Sodom as pride, fulness of bread and idleness, with a hard hand toward the poor and needy (Ezekiel 16:49–50). The angels brought Lot, his wife and his two daughters out of the city, and Lot reached Zoar just before the judgment fell (Genesis 19:15–23).

“Overthrew” is hâphak, to turn about or over, to overturn or change. The cities were turned upside down, and the verse lists everything the overturning reached: those cities, all the plain, all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground. The word “all” stands twice in this verse, and with it the list leaves nothing in the valley untouched.

“Those cities” are Sodom and Gomorrah with their neighbours. Moses names Admah and Zeboiim with them when he holds up this overthrow as a warning to Israel (Deuteronomy 29:23). The plain is kikkâr, a round district or plain, the circle of the Jordan valley. Lot had chosen it because it was well watered, like the garden of the LORD (Genesis 13:10). Its inhabitants are those who dwell there, from yâshab, to sit down or dwell, and all of them died except Lot and his daughters. “That which grew upon the ground” is tsemach, a sprout, branch or bud, every plant that came up from the soil. The most fruitful land Lot had seen became a barren waste, and it stood afterward as a memorial of the judgment.

The angels had told the family to escape for their lives, without looking behind them or stopping anywhere in the plain, and to flee to the mountain (Genesis 19:17). Lot’s wife had been brought out of the city with the rest. The word for wife, ʼishshâh, means a woman or a wife, and “his wife” ties her to Lot and to the rescue God gave him. She was “behind him”, ʼachar, a word that properly means the hind part, from a root meaning to loiter or be behind. She was on the road to safety, with her husband ahead of her, and she turned to look.

“Looked back” is nâbaṭ, the usual verb for looking, seeing or gazing. Genesis gives no length or motive for her look. Its weight comes from the command she broke, a command given to save her life, and from the way Jesus speaks of her. He uses her to warn against turning back to possessions and the old life when the time comes to flee, so her look was the look of a heart still bound to the city God was destroying.

She “became a pillar of salt”. The pillar is nᵉtsîyb, something set up and fixed in place, such as a post, a garrison or a statue. Salt is melach. The change was sudden and complete, and she stood where she had turned. The land around the Dead Sea is full of salt and salt formations, so anyone who knew the region could picture her. Salt here speaks of barrenness and desolation, the same desolation that fell on the whole plain.

“Abraham gat up early in the morning”, in Hebrew wayyashkem babbōqer. The verb shâkam means to rise early. It comes from loading up the back of a man or a beast before a day’s journey, and so it means to make an early start. Abraham had heard what the LORD meant to do, he had pleaded for the city through a long conversation, and his nephew lived there. After what was likely a restless night, he went out early to see the outcome.

He went to the “place”, mâqôwm, a place or spot, from a root meaning to stand or rise. It was the place “where he stood”, ʻâmad, to stand, and the words point back to Genesis 18:22, where Abraham remained standing before the LORD to plead for Sodom. In Scripture, to stand before the LORD or before a king is the posture of a servant, ready to make a request or to receive an answer. Abraham went back to the very ground where he had made his appeals and heard the LORD’s replies.

People ask whether his early rising shows that he doubted God. It shows a man who had prayed for the city and for his nephew and wanted to see what the LORD had done, with the concern anyone would feel who had pleaded as he had. He came as a witness to God’s justice, and he came reverently, to the place of prayer. His waiting is the stillness of “Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10), and it is like Habakkuk’s, who stood at his watch to see what God would say to him (Habakkuk 2:1).

“He looked” is shâqaph, to lean out, as from a window, and so to look down on something. From the high ground where he lived, likely near Hebron, Abraham looked toward Sodom and Gomorrah and toward all the land of the plain, the kikkâr of verse 25. He “beheld”, râʼâh, to see, and “lo”, hinneh in Hebrew, calls attention to what he saw.

He saw smoke. The word is qîyṭôwr, a fume or cloud, smoke or vapour, and it went up from the whole “country”, ʼerets, the land. Genesis compares it to the smoke of a furnace, kibshân, a smelting furnace for reducing metals. In the days of the patriarchs furnaces were used for smelting metal and for baking bricks, and everyone knew the thick column of smoke that rose from that kind of heat. Abraham saw the whole plain smoking like one. The cities he had prayed for were gone, because ten righteous people had not been found in them.

This is the last time Genesis shows us Sodom. Moses, Peter and Jude all looked back to this smoke as a warning (Deuteronomy 29:23, 2 Peter 2:6, Jude 1:7), because what Abraham saw that morning is what God’s judgment on unrepented sin looks like.

Genesis sums up the destruction once more and gives the reason Lot lived. “God remembered Abraham, and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow.” The verb is zâkar, to remember, and in another form to mention or bring to remembrance. When Scripture says that God remembers, it means that he acts on what he has promised. He remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob when Israel groaned in Egypt (Exodus 2:24). A psalm says he has remembered his covenant for ever (Psalm 105:8), and Zacharias praised him for remembering his holy covenant, the oath he swore to Abraham (Luke 1:72–73). God had called Abraham and promised to bless him (Genesis 12:1–3), and he had bound himself to him by covenant (Genesis 15). Lot’s rescue was part of that faithfulness.

The verse also answers Abraham’s prayer. He had asked the LORD to spare the righteous in Sodom, and though the cities fell, the LORD brought Lot out. Lot was taken from “the midst of the overthrow”, hăphêkâh, a noun from the root meaning to turn about or over, so the word itself recalls the overturning of verse 25. And these were “the cities in the which Lot dwelt”, from yâshab, to sit down or dwell. Lot had chosen to settle in Sodom’s plain and make his home there. He lived in the middle of what God judged, and God took him out of the middle of it.

The New Testament reads this passage in the light of Christ. The fire on Sodom shows what sin deserves, and Christ bore that judgment for his people on the cross. John calls him the propitiation for our sins (1 John 2:2). Isaiah says the servant was wounded for the sins of others and that the LORD laid our iniquity on him (Isaiah 53:5–6). Paul says that God showed his love in that Christ died for us while we were still sinners, and that, justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him (Romans 5:8–9). Believers wait for Jesus, who delivers us from the wrath to come (1 Thessalonians 1:10). God gave his Son so that whoever believes in him should not perish, and whoever refuses him stands condemned already (John 3:16–18).

Abraham’s prayer for Sodom points to a greater intercessor. Christ lives for ever to make intercession for those who come to God by him (Hebrews 7:25), and he has entered heaven itself to appear before God for us (Hebrews 9:24). Lot was brought out of the overthrow because God remembered Abraham, and God brings his people out of the power of darkness into the kingdom of his Son (Colossians 1:13) because of his promise to Abraham’s seed, which Paul says is Christ (Galatians 3:16). The same Christ will return as the righteous judge (Revelation 19:11–16), and the judgment pictured at Sodom will be finished.

In one morning this passage shows both sides of who God is. He is holy, and the fire on Sodom is his own act, aimed at wickedness he had heard, weighed and waited on. He is faithful, and the same verse that tells of the overthrow tells that he remembered Abraham and brought Lot out. The God who judges is the God who keeps his word to his friend.

Lot’s wife and Abraham stand at the two ends of the passage. She looked back at what God was destroying and became a pillar of salt. He stood in the place of prayer and saw the smoke, and God kept his promise to him. Jesus gave us her name to remember, and in him God gives us what Lot had, a way out of the judgment, opened by grace for the sake of another. The smoke Abraham saw is the warning, and the rescue of Lot is the mercy, and both come from the same Lord.