Genesis 13:11-13

"So Lot chose him all the plain of the Jordan; and Lot journeyed east: and they separated themselves the one from the other. Abram dwelt in the land of Canaan, and Lot dwelt in the cities of the Plain, and moved his tent as far as Sodom. Now the men of Sodom were wicked and sinners against Jehovah exceedingly."

Thus was effected the separation of Abraham from a portion of that kindred which God had commanded him to forsake in the first place. Abraham appears in a most favorable light in this episode, where he magnanimously offered his nephew the choice of locations and then honored his choice. Of course, God saw to it that Abraham lost nothing by his generous act. "God rewarded it with a new assurance that the land of Canaan would surely be his, even toward the East where Lot then sojourned. Even what he had given away would come back to him."[14] A comparison of Genesis 13:13 and Genesis 13:14 here will emphasize this.

"The men of Sodom were wicked sinners against Jehovah exceedingly ..." The probable purpose of including this here was to emphasize the foolishness of Lot's choice. The wickedness of Sodom consisted of the most vile and repulsive sexual perversion, even the infamous name of the city being perpetuated in the name of their characteristic sin. This sin was a threat to God's Chosen People, a danger to which the Northern Israel eventually succumbed, and which was one of the two principal reasons for their eventual overthrow by God himself, who removed them to Assyria, where they ultimately disappeared from the stream of history. We are distressed and frightened by the easy acceptance of exactly this type of vice in our own beloved nation today. How foolish must men be who can believe that God is any better pleased by this type of gross wickedness than Ge was in Sodom, or that He will any more refrain from punishing it than He did then!