Joachim Patinir, The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, about 1520. Public domain.
Genesis 13 to 19 · Place · Featured Study
Sodom
Genesis sets Sodom in the plain of the Jordan beside the Salt Sea, and later Scripture makes its name a warning.
Lot chose his ground by its water, and Scripture remembers the city by its fire.
And Lot looked out and saw that the whole plain of the Jordan, all the way to Zoar, was well watered like the garden of the LORD, like the land of Egypt. (This was before the LORD destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.)
- Today
- not identified
- Region
- the shores of the Dead Sea
- First named
- Genesis 10:19 “…as Gaza, and then toward Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah,…”
- Last named
- Revelation 11:8 “…of the great city—figuratively called Sodom and Egypt—where…”
Lot chose his ground by its water, and Scripture remembers the city by its fire.
Summary
Sodom was one of the five cities of the plain, and the city Lot made his home.
- Its king Bera fought in the war of the kings, and the victors carried Lot away from the city.
- The prophets and the apostles use the name for a people ripe for judgment.
- Jesus made the days of Lot a picture of the day the Son of Man is revealed.
The Plain of the Jordan
Genesis 13 sets the city in the plain Lot chose when he parted from Abram.
And Lot looked out and saw that the whole plain of the Jordan, all the way to Zoar, was well watered like the garden of the LORD, like the land of Egypt. (This was before the LORD destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.)Lot judged the land by what he could see of it.
Abram lived in the land of Canaan, but Lot settled in the cities of the plain and pitched his tent toward Sodom.Two chapters later, Genesis 14:12 places him inside the city.
But the men of Sodom were wicked, sinning greatly against the LORD.Genesis states the city's character at the moment Lot moves toward it.
Strong's Hebrew dictionary counts the name Sedom 39 times in the Hebrew Old Testament and glosses it as a place near the Dead Sea.
Abram lived in the land of Canaan, but Lot settled in the cities of the plain and pitched his tent toward Sodom.Two chapters later, Genesis 14:12 places him inside the city.
But the men of Sodom were wicked, sinning greatly against the LORD.Genesis states the city's character at the moment Lot moves toward it.
Strong's Hebrew dictionary counts the name Sedom 39 times in the Hebrew Old Testament and glosses it as a place near the Dead Sea.
Where the Cities Stood
The Rand McNally plate of 1926, with the places Genesis names around the plain.
Lot looked out over the plain from near Bethel, and Abraham from near Hebron.
- Located: the site is known
- Proposed: a site put forward for a city of the plain
- 1Bethel, Abram and Lot parted company here Genesis 13:3 to 11
- 2Mamre, at Hebron, Abraham stood here before the LORD Genesis 19:27 to 28
- 3?Tall el-Hammam, OpenBible score 30, Proposed for Sodom in the north
- 4?Bab edh-Dhra, OpenBible score 135, Proposed for Sodom in the south
- 5?Zoar, at Safi, OpenBible score 347, The town Lot fled to Genesis 19:22 to 23
Base map: Reference map of ancient Palestine, Rand McNally reference map (1926), public domain. Places with a place page stand at its coordinates and the others at the point cited for each, set on the plate by Jerusalem and Damascus, as the plate prints them.
Five places; the three dotted rings are proposals, each with OpenBible's identification score out of 1,000.
Sodom After Genesis
From the law of Moses to Revelation, each passage with its own warning.
Ten books after Genesis name Sodom.
- The law of MosesA faithless land will become a burning waste of sulfur and saltDeuteronomy 29:23
- The days of IsaiahIsaiah calls the rulers of Jerusalem rulers of SodomIsaiah 1:10
- The days of AmosGod reminds Israel that He overthrew some of them as He overthrew SodomAmos 4:11
- The days of ZephaniahMoab will be like Sodom, a place of weeds and salt pitsZephaniah 2:9
- The days of EzekielSodom is called Jerusalem's sister, arrogant, overfed and complacentEzekiel 16:49
- The fall of JerusalemJerusalem's punishment is called greater than Sodom'sLamentations 4:6
- The ministry of JesusSodom would have remained to this day, had it seen His miraclesMatthew 11:23 to 24
- The letters of PeterThe cities were reduced to ashes as an example to the ungodly2 Peter 2:6
- The letter of JudeSodom and Gomorrah are on display as an example of eternal fireJude 1:7
- The vision of JohnThe great city where the Lord was crucified is figuratively called SodomRevelation 11:8
Ten passages in the order of the canon, each with its verse.
The ministry of Jesus, The letters of Peter, The letter of Jude, The vision of John
The Valley of Siddim
Genesis 14 sets the war of the kings in a valley by the Salt Sea.
Now the Valley of Siddim was full of tar pits, and as the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah fled, some men fell into the pits, but the survivors fled to the hill country.Josephus says this valley of pits became the Lake Asphaltites.
Josephus, in his Jewish War, describes the country of Sodom beside the lake as once happy in its fruits and the riches of its cities, and now burnt up. He writes that the traces of the five cities could still be seen, with fruits that dissolved into smoke and ashes in the hand.
What Genesis Leaves Unsaid
Two things the account of the cities does not record.
Remember Lot's Wife
Jesus and Peter read the flight from Sodom for their own hearers.
It was the same in the days of Lot: People were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building. But on the day Lot left Sodom, fire and sulfur rained down from heaven and destroyed them all. It will be just like that on the day the Son of Man is revealed.Jesus warns that the fire fell on people busy with ordinary life.
Remember Lot’s wife!Jesus points back to Genesis 19:26, the wife who looked back.
and if He rescued Lot, a righteous man distressed by the depraved conduct of the lawlessPeter adds what Genesis does not say of Lot, that he was distressed by the lawless.
The Voices
Three teachers on Sodom, from Clement of Rome to Matthew Henry.
died 99 · Clement of Rome
LETTER TO THE CORINTHIANS 11.1
God does not abandon those who hope in Him
The quotation1 quotation
“By rescuing Lot the Lord made clear that he does not abandon those who hope in him but that he hands those who turn away over to punishment and torture.”
Clement of Rome · Letter to the Corinthians 11.1 · on 2 Peter 2:7Patristic
died 339 · Eusebius of Caesarea
Catena Aurea by Aquinas
The manner of the destruction of the wicked
The quotation1 quotation
“Having used the example of the deluge, that no one might expect a future deluge by water, our Lord cites, secondly, the example of Lot, to show the manner of the destruction of the wicked, namely, that the wrath of God would descend upon them by fire from heaven.”
Eusebius of Caesarea · Catena Aurea by Aquinas · on Luke 17:29Patristic
1662 to 1714 · Matthew Henry
Commentary on the Whole Bible
Lot picked the plain for wealth and pleasure
The quotation1 quotation
“While he lived among them, he vexed his righteous soul with their conversation, and never had a good day with them, till, at last, God fired the town over his head, and forced him to the mountain for safety who chose the plain for wealth and pleasure. Note, Sensual choices are sinful choices, and seldom speed well.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible · on Genesis 13:10 to 11Puritan
Where Was Sodom?
Three proposals for the site, each with its holders and the strongest objection.
The southern proposalPaul Lapp, Rast and Schaub, and Bryant G. Wood
Paul Lapp began to excavate Bab edh-Dhra, an Early Bronze Age town on the south bank of the wadi al-Karak, in 1965. Walter Rast and Thomas Schaub carried the work on after his death and found further sites to the south, among them Numeira, 13 km away. Bab edh-Dhra was destroyed about 2350 BC, and Numeira some two and a half centuries before it.
Rast and Schaub suggested in 1974 that the sites they had found south of Bab edh-Dhra might be related to the cities of the plain. Bryant G. Wood, writing in Bible and Spade in 1999, took Numeira as Gomorrah and Bab edh-Dhra as Sodom.
The objection: the town covered about ten acres, lay outside the plain of Genesis 13:10 to 12, and fell long before the period most scholars give the patriarchs.
The northern proposalSteven Collins, Discovering the City of Sodom
Tall el-Hammam lies in the Jordan Valley northeast of the Dead Sea and reached its largest extent in the Middle Bronze Age, when its fortifications were built.
Steven Collins of Trinity Southwest University, who has led the excavation at Tall el-Hammam since 2005, links the site to Sodom.
The objection: Wikipedia's article on the site reports the link as rejected by mainstream archaeologists. A paper of 2021 in Scientific Reports that argued an airburst destroyed the city was retracted on 24 April 2025.
Under the southern basinW. F. Lynch, as Jamieson, Fausset and Brown quote him (1871)
Jamieson, Fausset and Brown quote the American explorer Lynch on the depths of the Dead Sea. Its southern end is thirteen feet deep against thirteen hundred in the north, and Lynch took that end to be recent, submerged when the cities fell.
The objection: Genesis 19:25 says the LORD destroyed the cities and the whole plain, and says nothing of water covering them.
Books to Read Next
Both works can be read free online.
The Wars of the Jews, Book 4, chapter 8
Flavius Josephus, translated by William Whiston · about AD 75
Josephus describes Jericho, the great plain and the lake Asphaltites in this chapter.
Read at Project GutenbergThe Discovery of the Sin Cities of Sodom and Gomorrah
Bryant G. Wood · 1999
Wood sets out the case for Bab edh-Dhra and Numeira from the excavation reports.
Read at biblearchaeology.orgThe Judgment and the Way Out
The fire on the plain and the hand that led Lot out stand together in Scripture. Christ gives the same warning and opens the same way out, and the city asks the reader to leave with Him and not look back.
Sources
Scripture is the Berean Standard Bible.
- Strong's Hebrew dictionary, h5467.
- Flavius Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 1.9 and The Wars of the Jews 4.8.4, translated by William Whiston, public domain.
- OpenBible.info, Bible Geocoding Data, ancient.jsonl, CC BY.
- Ted E. Bunch and others, A Tunguska sized airburst destroyed Tall el-Hammam, Scientific Reports 11, 18632 (20 September 2021), retracted 24 April 2025.
- Bryant G. Wood, The Discovery of the Sin Cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, Bible and Spade, summer 1999.
- Jamieson, Fausset and Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible, 1871, on Genesis 19:25.
- Clement of Rome, Letter to the Corinthians 11.1.
- Eusebius of Caesarea, as gathered in Thomas Aquinas's Catena Aurea, on Luke 17:29.
- Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible, 1710, on Genesis 13:10 to 11.
- Steven Collins, Discovering the City of Sodom, the Open Library record.
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