Genesis 13:10

"And Lot lifted up his eyes and beheld all the Plain of the Jordan, that it was well watered everywhere, before Jehovah destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, like the garden of Jehovah, like the land of Egypt, as thou goest unto Zoar."

"Lot lifted up his eyes and beheld ..." Willis pointed out that the apostasy of Lot began right here and that it consisted of the following steps:

1. He looked upon the attraction of the fertile pasture lands toward Sodom;
   
2. He chose it as his home (Genesis 13:11) and moved his home into the close vicinity of it (Genesis 13:13);
   
3. He "dwelt in Sodom" (Genesis 14:12); and
   
4. He acknowledged the men of Sodom as his "brothers" (Genesis 19:7) and offered them his daughters to be used sexually as they wished;
   
5. He "sat in the gate of Sodom" (Genesis 19:1), indicating his acceptance of a post of responsibility there; and
   
6. "Finally, he `lingered,' even after the mercy of God had offered an opportunity to escape."[10]

This progressive, step by step amalgamation of a man with a wicked society, exemplified by Lot's example here, is also visible in Psalms 1:1:

"Blessed is the man who walketh not in the counsel of the wicked, Nor standeth in the way of sinners, Nor sitteth in the seat of scoffers."

"Beheld all the Plain of the Jordan ..." The objection that it would have been impossible for Lot to have seen "all the Plain" from any vantage point near Bethel is a ridiculous quibble. Actually, there is a vantage point near Bethel, mentioned thus: "The Burg Beitin a few minutes southeast of the village, is described as one of the great viewpoints of Palestine."[11] The place affords an extraordinarily extensive view of the whole lower course of the Jordan and of the northern end of the Dead Sea.

"Before Jehovah destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah ..." This is a reference to an area around the southern extremity of the Dead Sea, which was fertile and well watered before the disaster, but which was apparently inundated afterward. There is nothing here to suggest, as alleged, that the writer thought the Dead Sea did not exist until after Sodom and Gomorrah perished. Simpson's notion that, "The author believed that the Dead Sea had not come into existence at that time,"[12] is unacceptable. However, there was a very significant change in the level of it, resulting in the inundation of the land along the southeastern shore, where, as Willis observed, "It is now generally believed that the ancient cities of Sodom and Gomorrah and Zoar lie beneath the waters of the Dead Sea on the eastern side of its southern portion."[13]