19
Sodom and Gomorrah
1Now the two angels came to Sodom in the evening, while Lot was sitting at the gate of Sodom. When Lot saw them, he got up to meet them, and bowed down with his face to the ground.
2Then he said, “Here, please my lords, please turn aside to your servant’s house, spend the night and wash your feet. Then you can get up early and go on your way.” But they said, “No. We will spend the night in the open plaza.”
3But he urged them strongly, so they turned aside to him and they came into his house. He prepared a feast for them and baked matzot , and they ate.
4They had not yet lain down when the men of the city (the men of Sodom) surrounded the house—from youth to elderly, all the people without exception.
5And they called out to Lot and said to him, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we can have relations with them!”
6But Lot went out to them at the doorway and shut the door behind him,
7and said, “Please, my brothers, don’t act wickedly.
8Look, I have two daughters who haven’t been intimate with a man. Please let me bring them out to you—do to them whatever is good in your eyes! However, do nothing to these men—since they have come under the protection of my roof.”
9“Get out of the way!” they said, and they said, “This one came as an outsider and dares to judge! Now we’ll treat you worse than them!” So they strongly pressed against the man, Lot, and moved in close to break the door down.
10But the men reached out their hands, brought Lot into the house with them, and shut the door.
11Then they struck the men at the doorway of the house with blindness—from youth to elderly—so that they gave up trying to find the doorway.
12Then the men said to Lot, “Who else related to you is still here? A son-in-law, your sons and your daughters, whoever else is related to you in the city—bring them out of the place!
13For we are about to destroy this place, because their outcry has become so great before Adonai that Adonai has sent us to destroy it.”
14So Lot went out and spoke to his sons-in-law who were going to marry his daughters, “Get up!” he said, “Get out of this place! For Adonai is about to destroy the city!” But in the eyes of his sons-in-law, he was like a joker.
15So when morning dawned the angels rushed Lot, saying, “Get up! Take your wife and your two daughters who are here, or else you will be swept away with the city’s iniquity!”
16But he hesitated. So the men grabbed his hand, his wife’s hand and his two daughters’ hands—because of Adonai’s compassion for him—and they brought him out and left him outside the city.
17When they brought them outside, one said, “Flee for your life! Do not look behind you, and do not stop anywhere in the surrounding area! Escape to the hills, or else you’ll be swept away!”
18But Lot said to them, “No, my Lord, please!
19Look, please, your servant has found favor in Your eyes and You have magnified Your merciful loyalty, which You have shown me by letting me live. But I can’t escape to the hill country—for the disaster will overtake me and I’ll die!
20Look, please, this city is close enough to flee there, and it’s little. Please let me escape there. Isn’t it small? And let me live!”
21So He said to him, “Behold, I will grant your request concerning this matter too—not to demolish the city of which you have spoken.
22Hurry! Flee to safety there, because I cannot do anything until you arrive there.” (This is why the town is named Zoar.)
23The moment the sun rose upon the land, Lot entered Zoar,
24and Adonai rained sulfur and fire upon Sodom and Gomorrah from Adonai out of the sky.
25So He demolished these cities and the whole surrounding area, all the inhabitants of the cities and the vegetation of the ground.
26But his wife looked behind him and she turned into a pillar of salt.
27Now Abraham rose early in the morning to the place where he had stood before Adonai,
28and he looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and toward the entire land of the surrounding area, and saw, behold, the smoke of the land ascended like smoke from a furnace.
29So it was, as God destroyed the cities of the surrounding area, that God remembered Abraham, and sent Lot out of the midst of the upheaval, when He demolished the cities where Lot had dwelt.
Lot Fathers Moab and Ammon
30Then Lot went up from Zoar and dwelled on the mountain, his two daughters with him, because he was afraid to dwell in Zoar. So he lived in a cave—he and his two daughters.
31Then the firstborn said to the younger, “Our father is old, and there is no man in the land to come to us as is the custom of the whole land.
32Come on! Let’s make our father drink wine so that we can lie with him and keep the seed from our father alive.
33So they made their father drink wine that night, and the firstborn came and lay down with her father. Yet he did not know that she lay down and got up.
34On the following day, the firstborn said to the younger, “See! I slept with my father last night. Let’s make him drink wine tonight as well. Come on! Sleep with him so that we’ll keep the seed from our father alive.”
35So they made their father drink wine that night as well, and the younger got up and lay down with him and he did not know that she lay down and got up.
36So Lot’s two daughters become pregnant by their father.
37Then the firstborn gave birth to a son and named him Moab: he is the ancestor of the Moabites to this day.
38The younger also gave birth to a son and named him Ben-Ammi: he is the ancestor of the sons of Ammon to this day.