Genesis 19:27-28

"And Abraham got up early in the morning to the place where he had stood before Jehovah: and he looked toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and toward all the land of the Plain, and beheld, and, lo, the smoke of the land went up as a furnace."

Nowhere in the Bible does there appear the skill, genius, and inspiration of the sacred author (Moses) any more dramatically than in these two verses. What a picture they present! We are not told what thoughts must have surged in the mind of the great patriarch. Were there not even ten righteous souls in Sodom? What became of Lot? How complete was the destruction? How awful is the judgment of God upon evil! All of the answers lay in that terrible cloud of smoke that lay above the whole Plain. In the loneliness of Faith, Abraham appears here, awe-stricken, stunned, speechless, and grieving over the fate of a city that he had sought to save through prayer. It is not mentioned, but he must have fallen to his knees.