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.