Lot's Rescue and the Fall of Sodom

The two angels reached Sodom at evening, and Lot was sitting in the city gate. He saw them, rose, and bowed with his face to the ground. He pressed them to turn aside to his house, to wash their feet and stay the night. They first refused, saying they would spend the night in the street, but Lot urged them strongly, and they entered his home. He baked unleavened bread and made a feast, and they ate.

Before they lay down, the men of Sodom surrounded the house—young and old, from every part of the city. They called to Lot, demanding he bring out the men who had come to him, that they might know them. Lot went out, shut the door behind him, and pleaded with them not to act wickedly. He offered his two daughters, who had not known a man, to do with as they pleased, but to do nothing to the men under his roof.

The crowd refused. They shouted that Lot, a sojourner, had no right to judge them, and they pressed hard against him, drawing near to break the door. But the angels reached out, pulled Lot inside, and shut the door. They struck the men at the doorway with blindness, so that they wearied themselves trying to find the door.

The angels then asked Lot who else he had in the city—sons-in-law, sons, daughters, anyone belonging to him—and told him to bring them out, for the Lord had sent them to destroy the place because the outcry against it had grown great. Lot went to his sons-in-law, who were betrothed to his daughters, and urged them to leave, saying the Lord would destroy the city. But his sons-in-law thought he was joking.

At dawn, the angels hurried Lot, telling him to take his wife and his two daughters who were with him, or be consumed in the city's iniquity. Lot lingered. The angels seized his hand, his wife's hand, and the hands of his two daughters—the Lord being merciful to him—and brought them out and set them outside the city.

Once they were outside, the angels commanded Lot to escape for his life, not to look behind him, and not to stop anywhere in the plain, but to flee to the mountain, or else be consumed. Lot protested, saying he could not reach the mountain before disaster overtook him. He begged to flee to a small nearby city, asking that it be spared. The angel agreed, saying he would not overthrow that city, and urged him to hurry, for he could do nothing until Lot arrived there. That city was called Zoar.

The sun had risen when Lot reached Zoar. Then the Lord rained brimstone and fire from heaven upon Sodom and Gomorrah, overthrowing those cities, all the plain, all the inhabitants, and everything that grew on the ground. Lot's wife looked back from behind him and became a pillar of salt.

Abraham rose early that morning and went to the place where he had stood before the Lord. He looked toward Sodom and Gomorrah and all the land of the plain, and he saw the smoke of the land rising like the smoke of a furnace. When God destroyed the cities of the plain, he remembered Abraham and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow, removing him from the cities where he had lived.

Lot left Zoar and went up into the mountain, fearing to stay in Zoar. He and his two daughters lived in a cave. The older daughter said to the younger that their father was old and there was no man to come in to them after the manner of the earth. She proposed they make their father drink wine and lie with him to preserve their family line. That night they made him drink wine, and the older daughter lay with him. He did not know when she lay down or when she arose.

The next day the older daughter told the younger what she had done, and they repeated the plan. That night the younger daughter lay with him, and again he did not know. Both daughters became pregnant by their father. The older bore a son and named him Moab; he became the father of the Moabites. The younger bore a son and named him Ben-ammi; he became the father of the Ammonites.