The angels pretty much had to pull Lot and his family outside the city of Sodom before destruction begins to rain down. "As soon as they had brought them out, one of them said, 'Flee for your lives! Don't look back, and don't stop anywhere in the plain! Flee to the mountains or you will be swept away!'" (Genesis 19:17)
"But Lot said to them, 'No, my lords, please! Your servant has found favor in your eyes, and you have shown great kindness to me in sparing my life. But I can't flee to the mountains; this disaster will overtake me, and I'll die.'" (Genesis 19:18-19) I hate to be so critical of Lot all the time, but what on earth is he talking about? He's just been promised that he'll be safe if he flees to the mountains, so why does he insist that he'll die if he goes to the mountains?
His statement, in the original text, goes something like this: "Something wicked will stick to me/pursue me and put me to death/execute me." Does Lot believe the people of the hill country will kill him because he's the only man who escaped from the judgment of the Lord that fell upon Sodom? Does he fear that these people will think they are doing the Lord a favor by executing an escapee, not realizing that he escaped only by the Lord's mercy? Or does he think that living in a culture so different from that which he's used to will be to much for him? Is it his own sins he fears will follow him, (as the saying goes "be sure your sins will find you out"---Numbers 32:23), and that he will be made to pay for compromising his faith all these years by dying in poverty and obscurity in the mountains?
Lot's motivations are difficult to understand, but I can't help feeling that the core of his problem is his lack of faith. God calls us to the mountaintops, but that takes the courage to step out in faith. Sometimes we fail to make it to the mountaintop because we're willing to settle for a much smaller blessing. That seems to be what Lot wants to do: settle for something much smaller. He lacks the faith to go to the mountaintop with God. He suggests an alternative. "Look, here is a town near enough to run to, and it is small. Let me flee to it---it is very small, isn't it? Then my life will be spared." (Genesis 19:20) We will see as we move through our chapter that this town is Zoar. It's name literally means "little, small". It's one of the five cities that were located on the plain of Jordan, with the other four being Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, and Zebolim. I believe Lot wanted to go to Zoar because it was enough like the city he was used to for him to feel comfortable in it. The reason I believe this is because it seems, from what the angels say next, that Zoar was also on their list of cities to be destroyed.
"He said to him, 'Very well, I will grant this request too; I will not overthrow the town you speak of. But flee there quickly, because I cannot do anything until you reach it.' (That is why the town was called Zoar.)" (Genesis 19:21-22) The town was called Zoar because the town was "little" as Lot said. I think Lot was saying, "Can't you spare this tiny little town? Look how small it is. What can it hurt to leave it alone? It's so close by that my family and I can flee to it far faster than we can flee up into the mountains." The angel replies, "Fine, I will leave Zoar alone, just get to it right now! You're holding me up. I can't get started on the task the Lord has given me until you are far enough away from Sodom."
Lot thinks leaving one small sinful city alone won't hurt anything. This is because he is used to there being a little bit of sin in his life. But haven't we all fallen into this trap from time to time? We think, "What can this little sin hurt?" Or we'll be willing to let the Lord deal with certain areas of our life while not wanting Him to mess with other areas. We hold certain things back for ourselves, thinking something so small surely won't matter. But the Lord wanted Lot's whole heart. He wants our whole heart. And that means letting Him have access to everything in it so He can repair anything that needs repaired. We wouldn't go to a heart surgeon and tell him to fix anything he finds wrong except one little thing. That would be foolish. While the heart surgeon is in there, we'd want him to fix anything he finds wrong, whether big or small. But sometimes we don't permit the Great Physician to have full access to our hearts. We cling to things and tell Him, "Hands off!" And sometimes, like the angel does when speaking to Lot in our passage, the Lord says, "Fine, I'll leave this thing alone." But it's never in our long-term best interests to insist that the Lord leave this thing alone. Sometimes He has to let us have our own way just to prove to us that our own way is not the best.
Zoar was so close to Sodom that, even though dawn is already breaking, Lot reaches the town by full sunrise. "By the time Lot reached Zoar, the sun had risen over the land. Then the Lord rained down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah---from the Lord out of the heavens. Thus He overthrew those cities and the entire plain, destroying all those living in the cities---and also the vegetation in the land." (Genesis 19:23-25)
The precise location of these destroyed cities is not known. Some scholars and archaeologists believe they now lie under the Dead Sea. Others think that Sodom was in the Bab edh-Dra region and that Gomorrah was near Numeira. Both these locations show evidence of a long-ago fiery conflagration. A layer of ash about three feet deep has been excavated there. As we were told earlier in Genesis, the plain contained tar pits, and there is evidence that at one time tar pits and subterranean deposits of bitumen (a petroleum-like substance that contains a high concentration of sulfur) lay underneath the area. Some geologists think a major earthquake could have struck the area since there is a fault line running underneath it. This would have caused bitumen to be forced out of the earth where it ignited due to all the early morning cooking fires that would have been burning in the cities. After this substance caught fire and exploded and shot flames up into the air, the burning material would have fallen back down and pelted all the structures in the towns. Ancient mausoleums excavated in the general area appear to have burned from the top down.
Though we don't know exactly what method the Lord used to destroy these wicked cities, He destroyed them so thoroughly that they were never rebuilt. He destroyed them so thoroughly that the names of Sodom and Gomorrah have become synonymous with wickedness and judgment.
After being miraculously rescued by angels from the wrath to come, and after witnessing the astonishing level of destruction upon these once-prosperous cities, what does the rescued family do? Not what you'd expect! They don't fall to their knees in thanks to the Lord. They don't repent of their waywardness and experience a change of heart after witnessing both the mercy and the wrath of Almighty God. Things go from bad to worse for this family in tomorrow's passage.
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