The Gate, the Angels, and the Salt

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

Before they lay down, the men of Sodom surrounded the house—young and old, all the people from every quarter. They called to Lot and demanded that he bring out the men who had come to him, so that they might know them. The word carried the full weight of the city's intent.

Lot went out to them, shutting the door behind him. He pleaded with them, calling them his brothers, and begged them not to act so wickedly. Then he offered his two daughters, who had not known a man, to be brought out and used as they saw fit, only that the men under his roof should be left alone. The men of the city refused and pressed hard against Lot, threatening to deal worse with him than with the visitors, and they drew near to break the door.

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 entrance. Then the angels asked Lot if he had anyone else in the city—sons-in-law, sons, daughters, anyone—and commanded him to bring them out, for the Lord had sent them to destroy the place because the cry against it had grown great.

Lot went out and spoke to his sons-in-law, who had married his daughters, telling them to get up and leave because the Lord would destroy the city. But his sons-in-law thought he was joking.

When morning came, the angels hurried Lot, telling him to take his wife and his two daughters who were with him, lest he be consumed in the city's iniquity. But 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 him to escape for his life, not to look behind him, not to stay anywhere in the plain, but to flee to the mountain, lest he be consumed. Lot argued. He said he could not escape to the mountain, that evil would overtake him there and he would die. He asked instead to flee to a small city nearby, a little one, and begged that his life might be spared there.

The Lord accepted this request and promised not to overthrow that city. He told Lot to hurry, for he could do nothing until Lot had reached it. That city was called Zoar. The sun had risen when Lot arrived there.

Then the Lord rained brimstone and fire on Sodom and Gomorrah from the Lord out of heaven. He overthrew those cities and all the plain, all the inhabitants, and everything that grew on the ground. But Lot's wife looked back from behind him, and she 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 rising from the land like the smoke of a furnace. God had remembered Abraham and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow when he destroyed the cities where Lot had lived.

Lot went up out of Zoar and dwelt in the mountain with his two daughters, for he was afraid to stay in Zoar. They lived in a cave. The older daughter said to the younger that their father was old and there was no man on earth to come to them in the usual way, so they made their father drink wine and lay with him to preserve their family line. The older daughter did so that night, and the younger the next night, and both became pregnant by their father. The older bore a son named Moab, the father of the Moabites. The younger bore a son named Ben-ammi, the father of the Ammonites.