Genesis 19
Angels Come to Destroy Sodom
The two messengers went to Sodom that evening. Lot was sitting at the city’s gate and when he saw them, he went to meet them and bowed his face to the ground. He said,
“My superiors! Please make a detour and come to your servant’s house. You can shower, spend the night, then be on your way in the morning.”
But they said,
“No, we’re gonna spend the night in the square.”
But Lot insisted strongly, so they detoured and went to his house. He baked flatbread and prepared a feast for them, and they ate.
Townsmen Try to Rape the Angels
Before they went to bed, a bunch of Sodom’s men (both young and old) came from all over the town and surrounded the house. They shouted to Lot, and said,
“Where are those men who came to visit you tonight?? Bring them out here so we can rape them!”
But Lot went outside, shut the door behind him, and said,
“Please, guys. Don’t be corrupt. I have two daughters who are still virgins. Please, let me bring them out to you instead, and you can do whatever you want with them. Just don’t do anything to those guys who are staying with me.”
But the townsmen said,
“Screw that! You came here as a foreigner, and now you think you can make the rules? You’re gonna get it even worse than them!”
So they approached Lot and manhandled him. Just as they were about to penetrate the entryway, God’s messengers reached out, pulled Lot inside, and slammed the door shut. They struck everyone by the doorway with blindness, and they couldn’t find the doorway.
Angels Tell Lot to Flee
Then God’s men asked Lot,
“Who else do you have staying here? Take your sons, daughters, son-in-laws, and whoever else you have in this city and get out of here! We’re about to destroy this place, because it shouts against the Existing One so intensely that he sent us here to destroy it.”
So Lot found his son-in-laws who planned to marry his daughters and told them,
“Get up! We need to get out of here because the Existing One is about to destroy the city!”
But his sons-in-law thought he was just messing with them.
At dawn, the messengers pressured Lot, saying,
“Take your wife and two daughters and get out of here or you’ll get wiped out by the city’s punishment.”
But Lot kept lingering around. Moved by the Existing One’s empathy, the messengers grabbed him, his wife, and his daughters by the hand and brought them outside the city limits. Once they had gotten outside the city, one of them said,
“Run for your lives! Don’t look back, and don’t stop anywhere in the valley. Escape to the mountains or you will be consumed.”
But Lot told them,
“Please don’t do this, your majesty! I’m your servant, and for some reason you’ve treated me favorably. You’ve saved my life which shows how incredibly good and kind you are, but I cannot escape to the mountains. If I do, corruption will cling to me and I will die. There’s a town close by that is really small—can I please go there instead so I can continue living?”
He said,
“I’ll let you go there under one condition: don’t corrupt that town. Now hurry! Run, because I can’t do the deed until you get there.”
The name of that town was “Zoar” [which means “insignificance].
God Explodes Sodom & Gomorrah
By the time Lot had arrived in Zoar, the sun had fully risen. Then the Existing One rained sulfur (which is highly combustible) and fire from the sky onto Sodom and Gomorrah. He uprooted those cities along with the entire valley and all its inhabitants and vegetation.
Lot’s wife was behind him. She looked back and turned into a pile of salt.
That same morning, Abraham had woken up early and gone to the place where he had met with the Existing One. He looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah and its surrounding valley—and sure enough—he saw smoke rising up from that region like it was a stove.
When God destroyed the cities in that valley, it turns out that he remembered Abraham: he sent Lot away from there before uprooting the cities.
Lot’s Daughters Sleep with Him
Lot was too scared to stay in Zoar, so he and his two daughters climbed up the mountains and lived in a cave there.
Lot’s older daughter told the younger one,
“Dad is old, and there aren’t any men around to give us children. Let’s get him drunk and sleep with him to continue our family’s lineage.”
So that night, they gave their father lots of wine. The oldest daughter snuck into his bed, slept with him, and then snuck out. Lot was too drunk to remember any of it. The next day, the older daughter said that it was the younger daughter’s turn, so they did it again with the younger daughter.
So both of Lot’s daughters became pregnant with Lot. The older daughter gave birth to a son who she named Moab [which means “from his father”]. He is the patriarch of the Moabites.
The younger daughter also gave birth to a son who she named Ben-ammi [which means “son of my people”]. He is the patriarch of the Ammon people.