Plain of Jordan · OT
Sodom
The city of the plain destroyed by fire and brimstone in the days of Abraham and Lot.
Today: Likely beneath or near the southern end of the Dead Sea
Sodom was one of five cities of the plain, situated near the southern end of what is now the Dead Sea (the 'Salt Sea' in the Hebrew text). Genesis 13 describes the surrounding region as 'well watered everywhere, like the garden of the Lord' before its destruction. Lot, Abraham's nephew, chose to settle there.
Sodom became the Bible's standing symbol of grievous sin and certain judgment. Abraham's intercession (Genesis 18) is one of scripture's great prayers — would the Lord destroy the righteous with the wicked? When ten righteous could not be found, the Lord rained sulfur and fire on Sodom and Gomorrah; Lot and his daughters were rescued, but his wife looked back and became a pillar of salt. Jesus and the prophets repeatedly invoke Sodom as the type of cities that reject the word of God.
Key verses
"Now the men of Sodom were wicked and sinners against Jehovah exceedingly."
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"And he said, Oh let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak yet but this once: peradventure ten shall be found there. And he said, I will not destroy it for the ten’s sake."
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"Then Jehovah rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from Jehovah out of heaven; and he overthrew those cities, and all the Plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground."
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"but in the day that Lot went out from Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all:"
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"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."
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