Genesis 19

In the light of the N.T., this chapter appears as one of very great significance, because the destruction of Sodom was specifically mentioned by the Savior himself as a type of the Second Coming of Christ and the destruction of the whole world at the end of the age.

"Even as it came to pass in the days of Lot; they ate, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded; but in the day that Lot went out from Sodom, it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all: after the same manner shall it be in the day that the Son of man is revealed. In that day, he that shall be on the housetop, and his goods in the house, let him not go down to take them away: and let him that is in the field likewise not return back. Remember Lot's wife." (Luke 17:28-32)

The apostle Peter shed further light on this chapter by pointing out that just as God delivered righteous Lot, so the righteous would be delivered out of temptation. God does not destroy the righteous with the wicked. Also, there is evident the special offensiveness of the sins of the Sodomites to the Lord. Those to be punished will be, "chiefly them that walk after the flesh in the lust of defilement."

The sacred writer, Jude, made the destruction of Sodom to be a type of "the eternal fire" that shall consume the wicked at the time of the Judgment. The full references from Peter and Jude are:

"Turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes, (God) condemned them with an overthrow, having made them an example unto them that should live ungodly; and delivered righteous Lot, sore distressed by the lascivious life of the wicked (for that righteous man, dwelling among them, in seeing and hearing, vexed his righteous soul from day to day with their lawless deeds): the Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptation, and to keep the righteous under punishment unto the day of judgment; but chiefly them that walk after the flesh in the lust of defilement, and despise dominion" (2 Peter 2:6-10).

"Even as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities about them, having in like manner with these given themselves over to fornication and gone after strange flesh, are set forth as an example, suffering the punishment of eternal fire (Jude 1:1:7).

One other significant N.T. reference to this chapter is in the prophetic description of the great world city, Mystery Babylon the Great, the terminal climax of the human rebellion against God, which is given a triple designation, Sodom, Egypt, and Jerusalem (where the Lord was crucified) (Revelation 11:8). This indicates that in the final judicial hardening of the human race against their Creator, the same "lust of defilement" that marked the excesses of Sodom will again appear on a universal scale.

God saw to it that the human race would never forget the example of Sodom and Gomorrah. Any denial that the events of this chapter actually happened was labeled by Skinner as "an unduly skeptical exercise of critical judgment."[1] He added that, "Like the Deluge-story, it retains the power to touch the conscience of the world as a terrible example of divine vengeance on heinous wickedness and unnatural lust."[2] As Robinson said, "It is clear that some tremendous event must have occurred in the Dead Sea region which later generations never forgot."[3]

We shall ignore the theories of divided sources as variously applied by contradictory exponents of such devices. As Von Rad declared: "So far as the analysis of source documents is concerned, there are signs that the road has come to an end. Some would say that we have already gone too far!"[4] Indeed, indeed! Amen! Somewhere, sometime, the popular critical fantasy of describing and analyzing "documents" that never existed anywhere on earth except in the imaginations of men must end. The "dead end" of that road does not lie, as Von Rad thought, at the termination of their speculations, but at the beginning of them!