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15 When morning dawned, the angels urged Lot, saying, “Get up, take your wife and your two daughters who are here, or else you will be consumed in the punishment of the city.”(A) 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 out and left him outside the city.(B) 17 When they had brought them outside, they[a] said, “Flee for your life; do not look back or stop anywhere in the plain; flee to the hills, or else you will be consumed.”(C) 18 And Lot said to them, “Oh, no, my lords; 19 your servant has found favor with you, and you have shown me great kindness in saving my life, but I cannot flee to the hills, for fear the disaster will overtake me and I die. 20 Look, that 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, “Very well, I grant you this favor too and will not overthrow the city of which you have spoken.(D) 22 Hurry, escape there, for I can do nothing until you arrive there.” Therefore the city was called Zoar.[b] 23 The sun had risen on the earth when Lot came to Zoar.

24 Then the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the Lord out of heaven,(E) 25 and he overthrew those cities and all the plain and all the inhabitants of the cities and what grew on the ground.(F) 26 But Lot’s wife, behind him, looked back, and she became a pillar of salt.(G)

27 Abraham went early in the morning to the place where he had stood before the Lord,(H) 28 and he looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah and toward all the land of the plain and saw the smoke of the land going up like the smoke of a furnace.(I)

29 So it was that, when God destroyed the cities of the plain, God remembered Abraham and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow, when he overthrew the cities in which Lot had settled.(J)

The Shameful Origin of Moab and Ammon

30 Now Lot went up out of Zoar and settled in the hills with his two daughters, for he was afraid to stay in Zoar, so he lived in a cave with his two daughters. 31 And the firstborn said to the younger, “Our father is old, and there is not a man on earth to come in to us after the manner of all the world.(K) 32 Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, so that we may preserve offspring through our father.”(L) 33 So they made their father drink wine that night, and the firstborn went in and lay with her father; he did not know when she lay down or when she rose. 34 On the next day, the firstborn said to the younger, “Look, I lay last night with my father; let us make him drink wine tonight also; then you go in and lie with him, so that we may preserve offspring through our father.” 35 So they made their father drink wine that night also, and the younger rose and lay with him, and he did not know when she lay down or when she rose. 36 Thus both the daughters of Lot became pregnant by their father. 37 The firstborn bore a son and named him Moab;[c] he is the ancestor of the Moabites to this day. 38 The younger also bore a son and named him Ben-ammi;[d] he is the ancestor of the Ammonites to this day.(M)

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Footnotes

  1. 19.17 Gk Syr Vg: Heb he
  2. 19.22 That is, little
  3. 19.37 That is, from the father
  4. 19.38 That is, son of my kinsman