Genesis 19

1The two angels came to Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting in the gate of Sodom. When Lot saw them, he rose to meet them and bowed with his face to the ground.

2And he said, “Please, my lords, turn aside to your servant’s house, and spend the night, and wash your feet. Then you may rise early and go on your way.” But they said, “No, but we will spend the night in the square.”

3But he urged them strongly, so they turned aside to him and entered his house. He prepared a feast for them, baked unleavened bread, and they ate.

4Before they lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, surrounded the house—from young to old, all the people from every quarter.

5And they called to Lot and said to him, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we may know them.”

6Lot went out to them at the entrance and shut the door behind him.

7And he said, “Please, my brothers, do not do evil.”

8Look, please, I have two daughters who have not known a man. Please let me bring them out to you, and do to them as is good in your eyes. Only to these men do nothing, for they have come under the shadow of my roof.

9And they said, “Get back!” Then they said, “This one came to live as a foreigner, and now he keeps acting as judge! Now we will treat you worse than them.” And they pressed very hard against the man, against Lot, and came near to break down the door.

10But the men reached out their hands and brought Lot into the house with them, and shut the door.

11And they struck the men who were at the entrance of the house with blindness, from the least to the greatest, so that they wore themselves out trying to find the doorway.

12Then the men said to Lot, “Who else do you have here? A son-in-law, your sons, your daughters, and everyone who belongs to you in the city—bring them out of the place.”

13For we are about to destroy this place, because their outcry has become great before Yahweh, and Yahweh has sent us to destroy it.

14So Lot went out and spoke to his sons-in-law, who were to marry his daughters, and said, “Get up, get out of this place, because Yahweh is about to destroy the city.” But he seemed to his sons-in-law to be joking.

15And as dawn was rising, the angels urged Lot, saying, “Get up, take your wife and your two daughters who are here, lest you be swept away in the punishment of the city.”

16But he lingered, so the men seized his hand, his wife’s hand, and the hands of his two daughters, because of Yahweh’s compassion for him; and they brought him out and set him outside the city.

17And as they brought them outside, he said, “Escape for your life. Do not look behind you, and do not stop anywhere in the plain. Escape to the hills, lest you be swept away.”

18But Lot said to them, “No, please, my lords.”

19Look, please, your servant has found favor in your eyes, and you have made great your steadfast love that you have shown me by preserving my life. But I cannot escape to the mountain, lest the disaster overtake me and I die.

20Look, please, this city is near enough to flee there, and it is small. Please let me escape there—is it not small? Then my life will live.

21And he said to him, “Look, I grant you this request also: I will not overthrow the city of which you have spoken.”

22Hurry, escape there, for I cannot do anything until you arrive there.” Therefore the city was called Zoar.

23The sun had risen over the land, and Lot had come to Zoar.

24Then Yahweh rained sulfur and fire on Sodom and Gomorrah from Yahweh out of the heavens.

25And he overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and the vegetation of the ground.

26But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.

27Abraham rose early in the morning to the place where he had stood before Yahweh.

28And he looked out over Sodom and Gomorrah and over all the land of the plain, and he saw, and behold, smoke was rising from the land like the smoke of a furnace.

29So it happened, 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 had lived.

30Then Lot went up from Zoar and lived in the mountains, and his two daughters were with him, because he was afraid to live in Zoar. So he lived in a cave, he and his two daughters.

31And the firstborn said to the younger, “Our father is old, and there is not a man in the land to come in to us according to the way of all the earth.”

32Come, let us make our father drink wine, and let us lie with him, so that we may preserve offspring through our father.

33So they gave their father wine to drink that night, and the firstborn went in and lay with her father. He did not know when she lay down or when she arose.

34And it happened on the next day that the firstborn said to the younger, “Look, I lay with my father last night. Let us make him drink wine tonight also. Then come, lie with him, so that we may preserve offspring from our father.”

35So they also gave their father wine to drink that night, and the younger arose and lay with him, and he did not know when she lay down or when she arose.

36So both of Lot’s daughters became pregnant by their father.

37The firstborn bore a son and called his name Moab; he is the father of Moab to this day.

38The younger also bore a son and called his name Ben-ammi; he is the father of the Ammonites to this day.