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From: Genesis 19:15-29

The Flight of Lot and His Family

[15] When morning dawned, the angels urged Lot, saying, “Arise, take your wife
and your two daughters who are here, lest you be consumed in the punishment
of the city.” [16] But he lingered; so the men seized him and his wife and his two
daughters by the hand, the Lord being merciful to him, and they brought him forth
and set him outside the city. [17] And when they had brought them forth, they
said, “Flee for your life; do not look back or stop anywhere in the valley; flee to
the hills, lest you be consumed.” [18] And Lot said to them, “Oh, no, my lords;
[19] behold, your servant has found favor in your sight, and you have shown me
great kindness in saving my life; but I cannot flee to the hills, lest the disaster
overtake me, and I die. [20] Behold, yonder city is near enough to flee to, and it
is a little one. Let me escape there—is it not a little one?—and my life will be
saved!” [21] He said to him, “Behold, I grant you this favor also, that I will not
overthrow the city of which you have spoken. [22] Make haste, escape there; for
I can do nothing till you arrive there.” Therefore the name of the city was called
Zoar.

The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah

[23] The sun had risen on the earth when Lot came to Zoar.

[24] Then the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the
Lord out of heaven; [25] and he overthrew those cities, and all the valley, and all
the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew on the ground. [26] But Lot’s wife be-
hind him looked back, and she became a pillar of salt. [27] And Abraham went
early in the morning to the place where he had stood before the Lord; [28] and
he looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah and toward all the land of the val-
ley, and beheld, and lo, the smoke of the land went up like the smoke of a fur-
nace.

[29] So it was that, when God destroyed the cities of the valley, God remem-
bered Abraham, and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow, when he over-
threw the cities in which Lot dwelt.

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Commentary:

19:24 The ruins of Sodom and Gomorrah probably lie under the waters of the
Dead Sea, to the south. The biblical account interprets the disappearance of
these cities as being the result of some terrible cataclysm, which God sent as
a punishinent for the sins of their inhabitants.

Throughout the Bible one meets many references to the dramatic destruction of
these two cities and the land round about (now desolate) as an instance of the
rigor of divine punishment (cf. Deut 29:22; Is 13-19; Jer 49:18; etc.) from which
Israel is preserved in spite of its sins, thanks to the faithfulness of a small remnant
(cf. Is 1:9) and from which righteous men are also preserved (cf. Wis 10:6-7). Our
Lord Jesus Christ compares the punishment inflicted on Sodom and Gomorrah to
that which will come on the day of Judgment and which will be even greater (cf.
Mt 10:15; 11:23-24), and he invites us to bear that cataclysm in mind, so as al-
ways to be on the watch (cf. Lk 17:28-30).

As happened at the time of the flood from which Noah was saved (cf. Gen 6:8-12),
God “by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes condemned them to
extinction and made of them an example to those who were to be ungodly; and if
he rescued righteous Lot, greatly distressed by the licentiousness of the wicked
(for by what that righteous man saw and heard as he lived among them, he was
vexed in his righteous soul day after day with their lawless deeds), then the Lord
knows how to rescue the godly from trial, and to keep the unrighteous under pu-
nishment until the day of judgment, and especially those who indulge in the lust
of defiling passion and despise authority” (2 Pet 2:6-10).

19:26. The story of Lot’s wife is a warning not to turn back once one has set out
on one’s way. Our Lord reminds us about it, applying it to the fact that we cannot
foresee the day of Judgment (cf. Lk 17:32). Christian tradition has applied it to
the need to persevere in one’s good resolutions, Here is what one ancient writer
says: “Lot’s wife, who was turned into a pillar of salt, is an example to the simple,
that they should not look back with sick curiosity when they are advancing to a
holy resolution” (Quodvultdeus, “De Promissionibus”, 1). And, applying the same
mage to the Christian vocation, St. Josemarfa Escrivá exhorts: “You have seen
very clearly that you are a child of God. Even if you were never again to see it—it
won’t happen!—you should continue along your way forever, out of a sense of faith-
fulness, without ever looking back” (”The Forge”, 420).

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Source: “The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries”. Biblical text from the
Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries by members of
the Faculty of Theology, University of Navarre, Spain.

Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland, and
by Scepter Publishers in the United States.