Genesis 19:24-29

The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, &c.

24. Then the Lord, &c. The destruction of the cities of the Plain is an event to which frequent allusion is made in Holy Scripture. The impressive features of the Dead Sea must have continually lent force to the terrible tradition of an overthrow in times of remote antiquity. The barrenness of the soil, the absence of life in the water, the deposits of salt, of bitumen, and of sulphur, helped to connect a region, which was within sight of Jerusalem, with the thought of a judicial visitation by Jehovah, more terrible in character, if less in magnitude, than the Deluge itself. For the prophetic use of this catastrophe, see especially Deuteronomy 29:23. Cf. Jeremiah 20:16; Jeremiah 23:14; Jeremiah 49:18; Jeremiah 50:40; Lamentations 4:6; Amos 4:11; Zephaniah 2:9. In the N.T. see Luke 17:29; 2 Peter 2:6; Judges 1:7.

brimstone and fire It is unreasonable to subject the description of this overthrow to the close scrutiny of modern science. Geologists now tell us that, within recent geological periods, there is no sign of volcanic activity in the Dead Sea region. If, therefore, as is assumed, the cities of the Plain lay in the Dead Sea valley, their overthrow was not occasioned by lava or burning ashes, like Pompeii, or Herculaneum, or St Pierre. It has been contended, and is not beyond the bounds of probability, that an earthquake, causing a sudden subsidence of the crust and accompanied by great fissures in the earth, caused the overthrow of buildings, and released great masses of bitumen, sulphur, &c., which are to be found in large quantities in that locality. The spontaneous combustion of escaping gas, the ignition of great masses of bituminous material, combined with the outflow of steam and hot water, would then have enveloped the whole country in dense smoke, and would have seemed to drop brimstone and fire from the sky. This line of explanation would also assume that the depression of the earth's surface led to the subsequent submergence of the four ruined cities beneath the waters of the Dead Sea; the lower end of which is exceedingly shallow. A careful scientific investigation of the whole question was undertaken by Blanckenhorn, the results of which are contained in the Z.D.P.V. 1896, p. 58, 1898, p. 78.

There is, however, in the Biblical story, no mention of an earthquake. The events recorded evidently refer to a catastrophe, the tradition of which was handed down by the early Hebrews, and popularly localized in the bare and terrible features of the Dead Sea scenery.

from the Lord out of heaven The words "from the Lord" come in very strangely after "the Lord rained." Cf. Micah 5:7, "as dew from the Lord." For "out of heaven," cf. 2 Kings 1:12; Job 1:16.