Sodom

Sodom was the chief of the five "cities of the plain" (with Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboiim, and Zoar) in the vale of Siddim, near the southern end of the Dead Sea. Once it lay in a region so lush it was "well watered everywhere... like the garden of the LORD" (Genesis 13:10), and it was this fertile plain that Abraham's nephew Lot chose for himself, pitching his tent toward Sodom and at last dwelling within it. Yet "the men of Sodom were wicked, great sinners against the LORD" (Genesis 13:13), and the city has become, for all ages, the supreme byword for entrenched sin and the sudden judgment it invites.

Sodom first draws Abraham into the story when a coalition of kings sacked it and carried Lot away captive, and Abraham pursued and rescued him (Genesis 14:11–16). Later, when the LORD disclosed that he would judge the city, Abraham interceded with his great appeal to divine justice — "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?" — and the LORD agreed to spare Sodom for the sake of even ten righteous people (Genesis 18:23–32). But not ten could be found. When two angels lodged with Lot, the men of the city surrounded the house demanding to abuse them, displaying the violent depravity that filled their cup (Genesis 19:4–11). Having dragged Lot and his family out, the angels rained down "sulphur and fire from the LORD out of heaven," overthrowing Sodom and the cities of the plain; Lot's wife, looking back, became a pillar of salt (Genesis 19:24–26).

The smoking ruin of Sodom became Scripture's enduring benchmark of judgment. The prophets invoke it again and again: Isaiah addresses corrupt Jerusalem as "rulers of Sodom" (Isaiah 1:9–10), Jeremiah likens faithless prophets to it (Jeremiah 23:14), and Ezekiel diagnoses its guilt as "pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease," with no care for the poor and needy, alongside its abominations (Ezekiel 16:49–50). Moses had already named it the very image of a land laid waste under the curse (Deuteronomy 29:23).

In the New Testament Jesus warns that it will be "more tolerable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom" than for towns that reject his gospel (Matthew 10:15; Matthew 11:24), and he points to its sudden destruction "in the days of Lot" as a picture of the unexpected day of his own return (Luke 17:28–30). Peter makes Sodom "an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly," even as he notes that God rescued righteous Lot from its midst (2 Peter 2:6–7), and Jude cites it as a warning of "a punishment of eternal fire" (Jude 7). Finally Revelation calls the great city of the world's rebellion, "where their Lord was crucified," by the spiritual name "Sodom" (Revelation 11:8). Sodom thus stands across the whole canon as the solemn type of wickedness ripened for judgment — and, in Abraham's pleading and Lot's rescue, as a witness to the justice and mercy of the God who will spare the righteous and judge the impenitent.