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Sunday Devotional: The annihilation of Sodom and Gomorrah
Posted on July 28, 2019 by Dr. Eowyn

Genesis 18:20-32
In those days, the LORD said:
“The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great,
and their sin so grave,
that I must go down and see whether or not their actions
fully correspond to the cry against them that comes to me.
I mean to find out.”

While Abraham’s visitors walked on farther toward Sodom,
the LORD remained standing before Abraham.
Then Abraham drew nearer and said:
“Will you sweep away the innocent with the guilty?
Suppose there were fifty innocent people in the city;
would you wipe out the place, rather than spare it
for the sake of the fifty innocent people within it?

Far be it from you to do such a thing,
to make the innocent die with the guilty
so that the innocent and the guilty would be treated alike!
Should not the judge of all the world act with justice?”
The LORD replied,

“If I find fifty innocent people in the city of Sodom,
I will spare the whole place for their sake.”
Abraham spoke up again:

“See how I am presuming to speak to my Lord,
though I am but dust and ashes!

What if there are five less than fifty innocent people?
Will you destroy the whole city because of those five?”
He answered, “I will not destroy it, if I find forty-five there.”

But Abraham persisted, saying “What if only forty are found there?”
He replied, “I will forbear doing it for the sake of the forty.”
Then Abraham said, “Let not my Lord grow impatient if I go on.
What if only thirty are found there?”

He replied, “I will forbear doing it if I can find but thirty there.”
Still Abraham went on,

“Since I have thus dared to speak to my Lord,
what if there are no more than twenty?”
The LORD answered, “I will not destroy it, for the sake of the twenty.”
But he still persisted:
“Please, let not my Lord grow angry if I speak up this last time.
What if there are at least ten there?”
He replied, “For the sake of those ten, I will not destroy it.”

But not even ten innocent people could be found in Sodom and Gomorrah.

And so, as recounted in Genesis 19:

17 And it came to pass, when they had brought them forth abroad, that he said, Escape for thy life; look not behind thee, neither stay thou in all the plain; escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed.

24 Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven;

25 And he overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground.

Did you know that in 2011, archeologists had found evidence of the total annihilation of ancient Sodom and Gomorrah by a catastrophic “heat event”(“rained…brimstone and fire”) sometime in the late Bronze Age, ca. 1,600 BC?

That “fiery, civilization-ending cataclysm” covered Sodom and Gomorrah, as well as many satellite towns and villages (“those cities, and all the plain”), in heavy ash and rendered the entire area uninhabitable (“all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground”) for the next 600 years.

See my post of July 29, 2012, “Archeologists find evidence of the obliteration of Sodom-Gomorrah“.

St. Paul counseled us in Philippians 2:13 to “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” for, as Proverbs 1:7 and 14:27 instruct and warn us:

The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction.

The fear of the LORD is a fountain of life, to depart from the snares of death.

May the peace and love of Jesus Christ our Lord be with you,

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