Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah

God destroys the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah with fire and brimstone due to their extreme wickedness. Lot and his daughters are rescued by angels, but Lot's wife looks back and becomes a pillar of salt.

A paradigmatic act of divine judgment on sin, frequently referenced throughout Scripture as a warning against moral depravity.

Key Verses

Background

The sin of Sodom and Gomorrah had been noted from the moment Lot chose the Jordan plain (Genesis 13:13). By the time of Genesis 18–19, the moral condition of Sodom had reached a crisis point before God: "The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is enormous, and their sin is extremely severe" (Genesis 18:20). Three divine visitors appeared to Abraham at Mamre, and as two of them proceeded toward Sodom, Abraham interceded boldly, negotiating from fifty righteous down to ten — a number even Sodom could not produce.

The episode illustrates God's justice as both responsive to human wickedness and careful not to sweep away the righteous with the guilty. It also reveals the weight of cumulative corporate sin — entire city-civilizations can so corrupt themselves that judgment becomes the only remaining mercy.

The Event

When two angels arrived at Sodom's gate, Lot recognized their supernatural character and urged them to stay in his house rather than the city square — a telling detail about conditions in the streets. The men of Sodom, young and old, surrounded Lot's house demanding sexual access to his visitors, escalating from demand to violent assault. The angels struck the attackers with blindness, then revealed the judgment to Lot and urged him to evacuate his family immediately.

Lot lingered — a poignant note of his attachment to the city he had built a life in — and the angels physically seized his hand and the hands of his wife and daughters, dragging them to safety (Genesis 19:16). Once outside, the angels commanded: "Run for your lives! Don't look back." Lot's wife looked back and became a pillar of salt. Then the LORD rained fire and sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah, obliterating the cities, the entire plain, and all their inhabitants.

Theological Significance

Sodom and Gomorrah become the supreme Old Testament paradigm of divine judgment on corporate wickedness. Second Peter 2:6 describes God as having "condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah by reducing them to ashes, making them an example of what is coming for those who live in ungodliness." Jude 1:7 connects their fate to the punishment of eternal fire, linking the temporal destruction to eschatological reality.

Jesus himself referenced Sodom as a benchmark of judgment (Matthew 10:15; Luke 17:28–32), warning that the day of the Son of Man's coming would be like the day Lot left Sodom — sudden, total, and falling upon those who lingered in attachment to a condemned world. Lot's wife stands as an enduring image of divided loyalties, her fatal backward glance a warning against the danger of belonging to a community of salvation while the heart remains with the condemned city.