Haste, escape thither; for I cannot do anything until thou art come there. Therefore the name of the city is called Zoar.
Judgment on Sodom is settled and the fire is ready. Yet the angel tells Lot that nothing can happen until one man reaches a small town he picked himself. The verse holds two surprises. God's care for a believer holds the judgment back, and a whole town survives because that believer ran into it. (Older translations read the angel's words as "I cannot do anything till you come there.")
The word is striking on the lips of a messenger sent to destroy. One writer asks why, and answers from the way God always acts, not from any limit on His power.
The word of the angel in verse 22 is worth noting: "I cannot do anything till you come there." Why "cannot"? It is not because He lacked power to judge. It is a fixed principle of God's ways that penal and eternal wrath is never to touch His people. The judgment of these cities was not only a matter of governmental wrath. Penal wrath was involved too, as we see in Jude 7. The "vengeance of eternal fire" could not touch Lot. He was a righteous man, though a misguided one.
In the chapter before, Abraham bargained down to ten righteous people in Sodom. Ten were not found.
Abraham is silent (Gen. 18:33), "and the Lord went His way, when He had finished speaking with Abraham"; but He did more than Abraham asked. He withdrew Lot from Sodom and saved him. Nothing could be done till Lot was safe; Gen. 19:16, 22. God's eye was upon him. What blessedness to be able to reckon on His love for the righteous!
Zoar's survival mirrors Sodom's fall. The numbers run the opposite way from Abraham's plea.
He asked to shelter in the fifth and smallest city of the plain instead of fleeing to the mountain, and God granted it. Sodom would have been spared if only ten righteous persons had been in it. Zoar was spared because only one righteous man entered it. Such is the abounding mercy of our God, and His slowness to judge.
The angels had told Lot to run to the hills. He argued for a nearby town instead. One writer is hard on the heart behind that plea, and amazed that God answered it. The verse's closing line ties the town's name to that request.
How many prayers unbelief dictates! And how plainly it marks this prayer all the way through! He admits a mercy he still dares not trust. He asks God for Zoar because it is a little city, and asks Him to spare it as such. He asks for his own good, not for the human lives at stake. How low unbelief is! How wonderful the goodness that, at such a request, could spare Zoar!
"Escape there quickly" sits right beside the guarantee. Being sure of rescue was never a reason to slow down. One writer turns this against every excuse for delay in leaving what God has condemned.
We may also remember that Lot believed the angel and yet is told to escape "quickly" (Gen. 19:22), that Ananias urged Paul the believer not to "delay," but to be baptised (Acts 22:16), and that Paul himself, writing to the Hebrews (Heb. 6:18), speaks of those who "have fled for refuge to lay hold of the hope set before us."
The delay lasted exactly as long as Lot's journey — not one moment more.
The One to whom vengeance belongs has settled the whole plan of safety. But a solemn scene of judgment goes with all this. The sun had risen on the earth as Lot entered Zoar. And that sunny hour was the very time for the rain of brimstone and fire to fall. Nothing could be done till Lot entered the city, but then nothing remained to be done before the fire came down.
One writer finds the same order in an earlier judgment, and in the one still to come.
God could do nothing till Noah was safe in the ark, after He Himself had shut him in. So also in the case of the five cities of the plain. Lot had to be provided for before the fiery storm could come down, and the little city of Zoar was spared for his sake and at his request. For the sake of the righteous the wicked are spared. "You are the salt of the earth." And the world is preserved now because the children of God are in it, for "He is not willing that any should perish"; and all these, the true Church, must and will be taken out of it before judgment comes down on it.
- Cannot — the angel's "I cannot" is not weakness. It is a fixed rule of God's ways: penal wrath never falls on His righteous ones.
- Care — God did more than Abraham asked; His eye was on Lot, and the whole judgment waited on one man's safety.
- Cover — Zoar lived because one righteous man walked into it, while Sodom died for lack of ten.
- Concession — Lot's plea came from unbelief and self-interest. God's goodness granted it anyway.
- Clock — safety first, then fire. The sun rose, Lot entered, and judgment fell at once. God keeps that order still.
The sun rose upon the earth when Lot came to Zoar.
The sun rose over the plain that morning like any other morning. By the time it was up, Lot had reached the small town he had begged for. Two things hang on that one line. Why did the fire wait until one man was inside a gate? And why did the sky over Sodom look so calm on the day it burned?
The verse marks a moment in a plan. One writer shows how God fitted the rescue and the fire together:
The One to whom vengeance belongs has settled the whole plan of safety. The sun had risen on the earth, and after this Lot came to Zoar. And yet that sunny hour was the very time for the rain of sulfur and fire to fall. Nothing could happen until Lot entered the city; once he was in, nothing was left to do before the fire came down.
The angel had said he could do nothing until Lot arrived. One writer explains what lay behind that limit:
Why "cannot"? Not because power was lacking to act in judgment, but because it is a fixed principle of God's ways that penal and eternal wrath is never to touch His people. The judgment of these cities was not only a matter of governmental wrath; penal wrath was there too, as we see in Jude 7. The "vengeance of eternal fire" could not touch Lot, since he was a righteous man, though a misguided one.
Zoar stood among the cities of the plain and should have burned with them. It survived because of who walked through its gate that morning.
Sodom would have been spared if only ten righteous persons had been in it. Zoar was spared because only one righteous man entered it. Such is the abounding mercy of our God, and His slowness to judge.
Nothing in the weather that day hinted at what was coming. The city was busy, prosperous, and confident.
They held their market; their trading hall was open, and businessmen met there. In came the farmers with their produce from the country. The housewives went out to buy the food for the day, and everybody was busy. The sons-in-law would no doubt be there — godless men they were. They would be telling their friends how the old father-in-law had come in the dead of night and woken them with a foolish story: their city was about to be destroyed. The city had never been more prosperous. Look at the sun. It never shone more brightly. Yes, quite true, "the sun had risen on the earth when Lot came to Zoar," and on the surface nothing had changed in nature or in the city. God is not going to give the world one single bit of warning when He judges it, any more than He gave Sodom. Its only warning was the angels leading Lot out of it, and that warning they clearly despised.
The Lord Himself pointed back to Sodom's last morning when He spoke of His own return.
How solemn are these words, "The sun had risen." It speaks of a cloudless day with no sign of the coming judgment. As the Lord tells us of the men of Sodom, "they were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building." All went on as usual. But "on the day when Lot went out from Sodom, fire and sulfur rained from heaven and destroyed them all." The Lord adds the solemn words, "so will it be on the day when the Son of Man is revealed" (Luke 17:28-30).
God told him to escape to the mountain. He asked for a nearer, smaller place instead, and the sunrise found him there.
He admits the mercy that has saved him, but he has little faith in the preserving care of the One who directs him to the mountain. Moved by fear and unbelief, he pleads that the little city of Zoar may be spared as a place of refuge. His prayer is granted; and as the sun rises Lot enters Zoar.
One writer compares Lot with Abraham, and finds a picture of Israel in Lot's position.
Israel will be much more like Lot, for they will be inside the very place where the judgment falls. Lot went into his shelter — that is, Zoar — when the judgment came. Abraham was completely outside the trial, pleading before the LORD in earnest prayer. Yet before the day came, he knew about it far better than Lot.
reason: repeated keyword frame; "above it" not what the quote says; cuts qualifier
And Jehovah rained on Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from Jehovah out of heaven,
Fire falls on Sodom the morning after the angels pull Lot out. The wording is strange — the LORD rains it from the LORD — and commentators ask two things: what that doubled name shows about God, and what this ruined plain still warns us about.
The verse names the LORD twice — once acting on earth, once sending from heaven. Where the ESV prints "the LORD," older translations use the name "Jehovah":
Notice verse 24. "Then the LORD rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the LORD out of heaven." Here was a Jehovah on earth and He called to Jehovah in heaven.
This is not two Gods. Scripture holds to one God only, yet with distinct Persons in the Godhead — and this verse hints at what the New Testament later states openly:
Though there is but one God (Deuteronomy 6:4), and no other (Isaiah 43:10), there are distinct Persons in the Godhead. The Old Testament already knew this truth. There we read (Genesis 19:24), "Then the LORD [that is, Jehovah] rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the LORD [that is, Jehovah] out of heaven." Yet only the New Testament taught it as doctrine, after Christ came in flesh. Other scriptures pointed to it as well, as New Testament teaching makes plain — Psalm 45, 102 and 110, and Daniel 7:13, which the Lord quoted, and which His hearers took to refer to a Divine Person.
after-reason: n/a
The ESV calls it sulfur; older translations say brimstone. Scripture keeps coming back to it:
Bitumen, pitch, or sulphur, which is still found in its raw state in Palestine. God rained it down from heaven in judgment. Genesis 19:24; Psalm 11:6; Ezekiel 38:22; Luke 17:29. It is a symbol of what will add to the torment and anguish of the wicked.
The text says what fell and who sent it. It never says how:
Judgment from God falls suddenly, as brimstone and fire, like what a volcanic eruption might produce. But we are not told how this terrible disaster came. Some would die at once. No doubt others had time to realise that God was punishing them for their gross wickedness. But it was too late to escape. The judgment and desolation was total.
The angel had said he could do nothing until Lot reached Zoar. The delay shows a principle, not a limit on God's power:
The word of the angel in verse 22 is worth noting: "I can do nothing till you arrive there." Why "cannot"? Not because power was lacking to act in judgment, but because it is a fixed principle of God's ways that eternal, punishing wrath must never touch His people. The judgment on these cities was not only God acting as ruler of the world; real punishment was involved, as Jude 7 shows. That vengeance of eternal fire could not possibly touch Lot, since he was a righteous man, though a misguided one.
The timing runs both ways: the fire waits for Lot, then waits no longer:
The sun had risen on the earth as, after this, Lot entered Zoar. And yet that sunny hour was the very time for the rain of brimstone and fire to fall. Nothing could happen till Lot entered the city, but once he was inside, nothing held the fire back.
One writer measures the destruction by what is missing today:
Almost in a moment, God's judgment wiped several once prosperous cities out of existence. The ruin was so complete that today we cannot be sure where they stood. Well may the apostle exclaim, "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God" (Hebrews 10:31).
Why does this story stand so early in the Bible? One writer answers:
God has not left Himself without witness, on a small scale, of what He plans as punishment for the ungodly who choose to ignore His warning... The book of Genesis itself records how God destroyed the cities of the plain, not long after the flood. Their impurity was so great that it went against fallen nature itself.
Both men come through the fire, but not in the same place. One writer draws the contrast:
Abraham is again in that high place, watching the desolation from far off. He was, in the spirit of the place where he stood, in the company of the One who was carrying out the judgment. But Lot is only rescued. Lot is a delivered man; Abraham is a separated one.
- Source — The LORD rains it from the LORD. One God, yet distinct Persons — hinted here, taught openly only in the New Testament.
- Substance — Brimstone is sulphur. Scripture keeps it as the symbol of the torment of the wicked.
- Sequence — The fire could not fall until Lot was clear. Eternal wrath never touches God's people.
- Scale — God erased the cities so completely that no one is sure today where they stood.
- Sample — Sodom is a small-scale witness of the judgment God plans for the ungodly. Abraham watched it from the height; Lot escaped it just in time.
and overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew upon the ground.
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.
And his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.
Lot's wife walks out of a doomed city with her family, and then stops being a person and starts being a landmark. Why did judgment fall on someone who had already left the city? And what was wrong with one backward look?
The verse notes where she stood as well as what she did. One commentator reads the two together.
Lot had entered Zoar, but not his wife. It seems she lagged behind. Her heart was plainly still in Sodom. Lot seems to have married her in Sodom, since we do not read of her before he went there. Such an unequal yoke in marriage might explain why Lot remained there as long as he did.
Her body had moved; her affections had not. Another writer puts the gap between the two in a single line:
His wife—a fitting picture of someone who merely professes faith—is looking, as Lot taught her years before, towards Sodom. Her body is out of the city, but her heart is still in it, until God stops its beating and fixes her forever as the figure of a mere professor.
The command had been plain: escape, do not look behind you. One writer traces her ruin back to what she believed about that warning.
She was almost saved, but was not. She was within sight of the place of safety, but failed to reach it. She was on the verge of getting divinely appointed security, but missed it. Two things worked in her heart to her ruin: unbelief and disobedience. She did not in her heart believe that God would judge Sodom, and despite His plain command against it, she would look back. In that moment she was cut off. She stands as a lasting beacon of the terrible folly of disobeying the Lord.
Her disobedience grew out of doubting the message.
She died outside the city, and not by the fire that fell on it. One writer pictures a traveller coming on the scene later.
A stranger travelling through that scene afterwards, looking over the blackened country, would be struck with surprise by the bright, shining pillar that met his view, untouched by smoke. Small wonder if he said, "What does this mean?" Lot's wife did not fall in the judgment of Sodom. It was a distinct judgment by the hand of God on unbelief, which He always judges sooner or later. Disobedience, too, He always judges.
Salt in Scripture preserves and gives flavour. Here it does something different, and one commentator marks the difference sharply.
In Genesis 19:26 salt is clearly not a mark of consecration but a stroke of judgment. For Lot's wife, disobeying at such a time, became a lasting monument of divine judgment. The LORD said the same about Israel. If they rebelled and fell under the curse, He declared that their whole land would be brimstone and salt, like the overthrow of Sodom (Deuteronomy 29:23). The New Testament adds the terrible picture of salt that loses its taste. Such salt is no use for the land or the manure heap, so it gets thrown out. Easy-going unbelief destroys all savour in those who bear the Lord's name without self-judgment.
Another writer sets that salt beside the Lord's words to His followers about being the salt of the earth:
The Lord Jesus told His disciples, "You are the salt of the earth." Lot and his wife should have been "salt" like that in Sodom. She should have been salt there in a moral sense. Outside Sodom she becomes salt in a physical sense, as a memorial of "the goodness and the severity of God."
The lesson does not stop with her. One writer presses it on how we feel about leaving the world behind.
She perished not in Sodom, but between Sodom and Zoar. To her the departure from Sodom was exile, not deliverance. Many in the camp in the wilderness treated separation from Egypt with the same mind. And this raises a solemn, practical question for us. What do our souls make of separation from the world? In our hearts, do we count it exile or redemption? Are we singing over that thought, like Israel at the Red Sea; or, like Israel afterwards, are we remembering the fish of Egypt?
The Lord Jesus turned this whole scene into three words of warning. One commentator explains why she, of all people, became the example.
To this the Lord adds a strange but no less solemn word, short as it is: "Remember Lot's wife!" It seems angelic power rescued the wife of Lot. The angels certainly brought her out of the doomed city. But that only made her the more striking monument of God's all-searching judgment. There she stands alone. The others perished; but she remained a pillar of salt — the memorial of God's hatred of a false heart, and morally speaking that memorial never perishes. Despite outward deliverance, that heart still gave its affections to a scene marked out for destruction.
- Heart — She had left Sodom, but Sodom had not left her; her affections stayed where her feet no longer stood.
- Unbelief — She doubted the warning first. The disobedient look came second.
- Distinct — No fire from Sodom touched her. Her judgment was a separate stroke of God's hand on unbelief and disobedience.
- Salt — She would not be salt inside the city, so God made her salt outside it: a lasting monument of judgment.
- Remember — Christ made her a one-line sermon. So the test lands on us: is leaving the world exile, or rescue worth singing about?
And Abraham rose early in the morning [and went] to the place where he had stood before Jehovah;
While Sodom burns, Abraham goes back to the spot where he had pleaded with God the day before. The verse asks where a believer should stand when judgment falls on the world, and what he sees from there.
Down in the city, no one could have told Abraham what was coming. Only the ground where he had stood with God gave a true reading of Sodom.
Suppose Abraham had gone to Sodom for information. Suppose he had asked its leading men what they thought of the city's present state and its future. How would they have answered? No doubt they would have pointed to their farming and building projects, and to the vast resources of the country. They would have set before his eyes one great mixed scene of buying and selling, building and planting, eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage. They would never dream of judgment. If anyone had mentioned it, they would have laughed in unbelief. So it is clear that Sodom was not the place to learn about Sodom's end. No; "the place where Abraham stood before the Lord" was the only proper point from which to take in the whole view. There he could stand above all the fogs and mists that had gathered on Sodom's horizon. There, in the clearness and calmness of God's presence, he could understand it all.
Abraham had spent the day before pleading with God for the city. This verse shows what that praying did in Abraham himself.
Abraham kept on interceding, though he stopped short of the fullness of God's mercy. Abraham grows bold as he goes on, and his confidence increases. As a result he knows God much better than before. The peace of God kept his heart. You can see the fruit of it all here. Abraham gets up early in the morning and goes to the place where he had stood before the Lord. He looks down on the plain, now smoking like a furnace. From far above he sees the effects of the utter destruction. This is our position if we are heavenly, and this is how we see the judgment of the wicked.
One writer reads the mountain-top as a picture of where believers now stand.
Abraham's place is communion with the Lord about the judgment. God saves Lot out of that judgment only through Abraham's intervention. But Abraham was where he stood before the Lord. It was the top of the mountain, and from there he saw the smoke of the plain going up. In figure this place is Heaven, for God says to Abraham there, "I will go down to see." That is the place of intercession, the place of the Church in spirit.
From that height Abraham looked down on the land Lot had once chosen for himself.
Where were those well-watered green pastures that looked like the garden of the Lord, and had attracted Lot's worldly eyes? An immense black, charred plain was all that met Abraham's eyes, and rising from it, the smoke of Sodom and Gomorrah. The proud cities had become ashes. The tempting growth, blossoms and fruit of those treacherous pastures and gardens had become smoke. The calm waters that made them so fresh and fertile had merged into the still waters of the Dead Sea. It now covers the spot where once the lust of the eye, the lust of the flesh and the pride of life held sway.
Lot's escape hangs on a name — and it is not Lot's own. That turns the comparison between the two men upside down.
In contrast to Lot, saved through fire, and his wife who looked back, we have a glimpse of the separated man who looked on to the city that has foundations. Abraham was in "the place where he had stood before the LORD." He sees the destruction of the cities of the plain from far off. Then we learn something highly instructive. If Lot is saved from the overthrow of the cities, it is because "God remembered Abraham." Lot, as he sat in the gate of Sodom, might have said, "What good is Abraham to the world, living apart in his tent?" Yet God had said of Abraham, in the separate path, "you will be a blessing." And so it turned out.
What keeps a believer on that height? One writer gives the practical answer.
Should we not then walk in holy separation from the world? Can we, if we love the Lord, take the hand once pierced on the cross for our many sins? Can we at the same time grasp the hand of the world, stained as it is with the blood of His murder? The cure, the only cure, for worldliness is the positive engagement of our hearts with Christ. Simply keeping away from the world is no better than the life of a monk, if our hearts are not more than repaid by the enjoyment of the company of Christ.
- Return. Abraham went back to the exact place where he had prayed. Only from there could he understand Sodom's end.
- Fruit. The morning view was the harvest of his praying. He had grown bolder, come to know God better, and kept the peace of God in his heart.
- Height. One writer reads the mountain-top as a picture of heaven — the place of communion and intercession, above the smoke.
- Sight. What he saw was Lot's chosen garden turned to ash — the lust of the eye and the pride of life ending in a dead sea.
- Result. God rescued Lot because He "remembered Abraham." The man who kept his distance from Sodom proved to be Sodom's only real friend.
and he looked toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and toward all the land of the plain, and beheld, and lo, a smoke went up from the land as the smoke of a furnace.
The morning after fire fell, Abraham walks back to the spot where he had pleaded with God the day before. From that height he looks down on the burning plain — and where he stands matters as much as what he sees.
Abraham does not return to a random lookout. He goes back to the place of his prayer. Commentators read what he sees as the fruit of that pleading.
Abraham kept on pleading, though he stopped short of the fullness of God's mercy. We do not know all that He is going to do, as God does. Still, we may intercede with faith. Abraham grows bold as he goes on; his confidence increases. As a result he knows God much better than before. The peace of God kept his heart. The fruit of it all appears in Genesis 19:27-28. Abraham gets up early in the morning and goes to the place where he stood before the Lord. He looks down on the plain, now smoking like a furnace. From far above he sees the effects of the utter destruction. Such is our position if we are heavenly. That is how we see the judgment of the wicked.
The plain below had once been the most attractive land in sight.
Where were those well-watered green pastures that looked like the garden of the Lord, and had attracted the worldly eyes of Lot? An immense black, desolate, charred plain was all that met Abraham's eyes. Rising from it was the smoke of Sodom and Gomorrah, like the smoke of Babylon the great that will rise at a future and not very distant time. The proud cities were now ashes. The alluring green shoots, blossoms and fruits of those treacherous pastures and gardens had become smoke.
A furnace was a familiar sight in daily work, and the word carries more weight elsewhere in Scripture:
People used furnaces for many purposes: smelting raw metal, refining metal in crucibles, making lime and bricks, and baking as an oven. Genesis 19:28; Exodus 9:8, 10; Proverbs 17:3. … In the New Testament the furnace of fire refers to the place of eternal punishment. Matthew 13:42, 50.
Abraham's safety here was of a higher order than a rescue.
This is still elevation of the highest order. This is heaven's relationship to judgment, God's own relationship to it. Abraham was not rescued out of it like Lot. He was not taken calmly through it like Noah. He was not carried away before it came like Enoch. Beyond them all, he is given heaven's own place in relation to it. He looks down on it carried out on others, having nothing whatever to do with it.
That place also shaped how Abraham felt on the morning after.
As regards his own position, he is looking down on the place of judgment. In the morning, when the cities are in flames, he finds himself in quietness and peace on the spot where he "stood before the Lord" (v. 27). He is not at all in the place where the judgment had come. The scene before him sobers him, yet he is calm and happy with the Lord.
Earlier, Abraham had refused any share in Sodom's wealth. That old refusal is what leaves him with nothing burning in the plain below.
He had always lived as a stranger in the land. In the days of Chedorlaomer that had let him live outside Sodom and all its circumstances. It still kept him free, and it was the means of his escape from Sodom's unspeakable misery. The king of Sodom once asked Abraham to take a share in the things of Sodom. Had he agreed, he would have shared to some degree in its overthrow, as his brother Lot did. He himself would have been saved, but his work would have been burnt up.
The smoke Abraham saw pointed past the four cities that made it.
The miracle was fire from the Lord out of heaven. It started the mighty blaze and eruptions that blasted these four cities out of existence. Their sites remain to this day as "an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly" (2 Peter 2:6). … This judgment was also a sample of what is yet to come on a much greater scale, in "the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly" (2 Peter 3:7).
- The place. Abraham goes back to the exact spot where he had prayed. The place of his praying becomes the place of his seeing.
- The peace. Standing there he is calm and happy with the Lord, sobered by the scene but untouched by it.
- The position. He is not pulled out of the judgment like Lot. He is not carried through it like Noah. He is given heaven's own place above it.
- The price of choosing. Lot's green plain is now a charred waste. Abraham had refused Sodom's goods, so he has nothing burning below.
- The preview. The smoke going up like a furnace stands on record as an example — a small sample of the day of judgment still to come.
And it came to pass when God destroyed the cities of the plain, that God remembered Abraham, and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow, when he overthrew the cities in which Lot dwelt.
God's comment on Sodom's destruction looks past the burning cities and past the man being pulled out of them. It rests on Abraham, who had prayed for those cities — so why is Lot not the reason for his own rescue?
The verse names the man God had in mind, and it is not Lot. One writer asks what that makes Abraham, who is nowhere in the action.
Was not Abraham even here, where it could be least expected, not only blessed but a blessing? Nothing could be done to Sodom and Gomorrah until Lot came to Zoar; but was it not for Abraham's sake? It was even then and there, because "God remembered" not Lot but "Abraham."
The verse tells us God remembered Abraham. It never says God remembered Lot, and one writer reads that silence as shame.
In the actual story God speaks of him as one He is ashamed of. Lot has sheltered under Abraham's cover, and God must use the cover toward him. He is the God of Abraham; how could He call Himself the God of Lot? How solemn this treatment of one of His own!
Lot is still one of God's own, and he is still rescued. But he comes out under a name that is not his.
Abraham had prayed for the cities, not by name for his nephew. Ten righteous people were never found there. Yet his prayer was not wasted.
Abraham had not definitely asked for this. Still, he kept pressing his prayer until he had God's promise to spare the cities if only ten righteous people were found in them. He no doubt had Lot and his family in mind. Ten righteous people were not found. All the same, God answered Abraham's prayer in the spirit of it, by rescuing the one man who could be called righteous.
Abraham had rescued Lot once before, in battle. The second rescue took a different weapon.
Abraham's sword had delivered Lot when Sodom was conquered. His prayer delivered him at its final overthrow, "for the prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working."
A man living apart in a tent looks useless to a city. This verse is the answer to that charge, and it fulfils the promise God had made to Abraham.
Lot, as he sat in the gate of Sodom, might have said, "What good is Abraham to the world, living apart in his tent?" Yet it is of Abraham, in the separate path, that God had said, "You will be a blessing." So it came to pass. If Lot is saved, it is because God remembered Abraham.
Lot comes out alive and comes out empty. Everything he had built in Sodom burned with the city.
May not Lot be an example of being saved so as by fire? He made unholy links with Sodom. The fire came. To save his life he had to flee from Sodom. The entanglements were burned, and fire was in reality his salvation from Sodom with its unspeakable filth and wickedness. Lot was saved in his person, but his works were burned.
Two men come through the same day alive, in two very different positions. One writer says the pattern repeats in every day of judgment.
At such a crisis — in this day of the judgment of Sodom, the overthrow of the cities of the plain, as in every other day like it — there are two things for our souls to ponder deeply. There is deliverance out of the judgment, and there is separation before it comes. There is Lot, and there is Abraham. Lot is delivered when the hour of the crisis comes; Abraham is separated before it comes.
- Cause. Lot walks out alive because God remembered Abraham. The reason for his rescue lies outside himself.
- Cover. God calls Himself the God of Abraham, not the God of Lot. Lot comes out under another man's cover, not on his own account.
- Prayer. Abraham never asked for this exact rescue. God answered the heart of his prayer and delivered the one righteous man.
- Reach. The man living apart in his tent did Sodom more good than the man living inside it. God's promise that he would be a blessing reached into the city.
- Result. Lot keeps his life and loses his works. Better to be separated before the judgment than pulled out of it.
And Lot went up from Zoar, and dwelt in the mountain, and his two daughters with him; for he feared to dwell in Zoar. And he dwelt in a cave, he and his two daughters.
God has just rescued Lot from Sodom. Now Lot leaves the town he begged to be spared and settles in a cave with his two daughters. The verse raises a hard question: why does a rescued man still live by fear?
Lot ends up in the hills — the very place he had already been told to flee to. His address has changed. His motive has not.
Though saved from the destruction of Sodom, poor Lot is still ruled by fear. He is afraid to live in the very city he chose, so he falls back on the mountain he had been told to flee to. But even so, he goes to the mountain driven by fear of men, not led by faith in God. There he becomes caught up in the shameful act of his daughters. He passes out of the story with no record of his end, leaving behind descendants who become the constant enemies of God's people.
Put beside Abraham, Lot's loss is plain.
Abraham usually walked by faith, but Lot had never learned that lesson. This time fear moved him. He found a cave and lived in it with his daughters. How poor he had become! Lot's story is a warning to every child of God. Friendship with the world may cost you nothing in material things, but it always leaves you poor in spiritual things.
Lot begged for Zoar and got it. Yet he could not settle there. One writer traces that unrest to half-hearted obedience.
At Zoar Lot had safety, but he had no rest, because he had not obeyed the Lord completely. The person who turns to God half-heartedly is safe, but he is not very happy. Many a man who believes in Jesus is not at peace. I will tell you why. He does not follow the Lord fully. Perhaps he does not have enough energy of soul. You have just enough of Christ to make you miserable. The real place of safety for you and me is to be in Christ, and then to be taken up with Christ, delighting in Christ as He now is, accepted in glory.
Notice the timing. He would not go up when God told him to; he goes up now that fear drives him. His fear and his trust land in the wrong places.
And there Lot too goes up out of Zoar. He was afraid to go when God told him to, though there was nothing to fear there. Then he became afraid to stay in Zoar any longer. And now he was not afraid to go — yet this was the place and the moment he would have dreaded most, had he known the trap he was walking into, a trap of wine and women. And, sad to say, of his own daughters.
Even now, the judgment he has just watched teaches him only half a lesson.
Judgment stands so close to the place mercy spared that Lot runs from it. He recognizes God's judgment of the world, but he never judges the spirit of the world himself.
The cave shows what Lot has left: his life, and no more. One writer sees in him a believer who stands safe on the foundation while his work burns.
Since he himself is on the foundation, the burning will not touch him, but he suffers the loss of his works. Lot is a most painful example of this in Genesis 19. He escaped the terrible judgment of Sodom, but the fire took everything he owned. How sad that a believer may have nothing of real spiritual value to show for all the years God has given him on earth!
Two men lived through the same day and came out with different things.
Everything Lot built in Sodom perished when the place burned. He was a righteous man tied to the world in a false and evil partnership, and he was snatched out like a stick pulled from the fire. The reward was Abraham's, but deliverance was Lot's.
Lot is out of the plain at last. But distance and communion are not the same thing.
If Lot had sought the face of God, he might have found the mountain a place of communion with Him. Instead it is the scene of his lasting shame. Being separated from the world does not always mean being in communion with God. The worst corruptions of the world can appear inside the quiet of a monastery or a convent, just as in a wicked city. Sodom had left its mark on Lot's daughters, and they brought into the cave what they had learned there.
(Where these writers say "mountain," the ESV reads "the hills.")
- Rescued. Lot leaves Sodom alive but with nothing. He is saved; his work burns.
- Restless. Zoar gave him safety but not quietness, because he had never fully obeyed the word that sent him higher.
- Ruled by fear. He reaches the right place at last, driven by fear of men rather than led by faith in God.
- Reduced. Friendship with the world may cost a believer no money at all. It still costs him spiritual wealth: a cave is all Lot has left.
- Removed, not renewed. Distance from Sodom was not communion with God. His daughters carried Sodom into the cave.