Sodom and Gomorrah
Sodom and Gomorrah
The Sojourn in Egypt Part VI
The Book of Genesis describes a group of five cities located on a fertile plain in the Arabah Valley of Canaan: Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboiim, and Bela (Zoar). Two pericopes in Genesis chapters 14 and 19 describe two calamities that befell those cities.
The Battle of the Five Kings
First, Abraham’s nephew Lot, seeing the lush green plain and the wealth of the cities there, had chosen to move into the city of Sodom with his extended family. While he was there, in 1911 BC, an Elamite king named Chedorlaomer invaded and defeated the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah in battle. The men of Sodom and Gomorrah tried to flee from the battle but many were caught in tarpits and died. Chedorlaomer and his allies then took all the survivors, women, and children and began the trek back to Shinar with the captives, including Abraham’s nephew, Lot.
Abraham heard of this and intervened with his own army of 300 men, routing the army of Chedorlaomer and recovering the captives. He returned all the booty except for the tithe to the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah so they could not say he owed them.
The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah
One might think that after such an ordeal the people of Sodom and Gomorrah might be motivated to seek the knowledge of the Lord from Abraham and repent of their evil ways. But no, they doubled down on their sins instead.
Fourteen years after he had saved the people of Sodom and Gomorrah from Chedorlaomer, Abraham was visited by three angelic beings who prophesied the birth of his son Isaac and also announced they had come to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. It was the year 1897 BC. Abraham pled with them to spare the city for the sake of his nephew Lot, but the angels said, no, it had to be done, but they would rescue Lot and his family first.
The angels came to the city of Sodom and planned to spend the night in the town square, but Lot asked them to stay in his home as his guests because it would not be safe for them.
The men of Sodom and Gomorrah, thinking the angels were attractive young men without facial hair, tried to force their way into Lot’s home to have sexual relations with them. But the angels smote them with blindness.
In the morning, the angelic trio led Lot and his family out of Sodom ahead of the impending judgment. Famously, his wife was warned not to look back, but did so, and she was turned into a pillar of salt.
Given that salt is what remains after water evaporates, I suspect the meaning of the original Hebrew was that she was vaporized.
Three Possible Locations for Sodom and Gomorrah
Amongst Biblical scholars, three candidate locations for the five cities of the plain have been proposed.
Seven Collins excavated a site to the North of the Dead Sea opposite Jericho called Tall El-Hammam. Collins is certain must be Sodom because it was destroyed by a very hot fire. Collins makes his case for the northern location for Sodom at his website here: https://tallelhammam.com/
Ron Wyatt claimed that the mesas in the canyons to the West of the south end of the Dead Sea, just below Masada, were the fossilized cities of the plain. Most convincing were the sulfur balls that Wyatt found in the ash, which can still be ignited with a match today. A video arguing for Wyatt’s location can be found on YouTube here:
William F. Albright organized an expedition to search for the cities of the plain in 1924. Over the following years, he identified five Early Bronze Age cities at the southeastern corner of the Dead Sea. Four of them had been destroyed by fire and never rebuilt, but the fifth, Zoar, was not burned and had been continuously occupied since antiquity. This area is also covered with deposits containing the same type of sulfur balls found at the nearby Wyatt site. Expedition Bible has an excellent short documentary about Albright’s five cities of the plain on YouTube:
Evaluating the Three Candidate Sites
Tel El-Hammam can be ruled out because the burn layer contained Minoan objects dating to the Middle or Late Bronze Age. In the CFAH Chronology, the destruction of Tel El-Hammam corresponds to the Divided Kingdom era. Notably, Ahab and Jehoshaphat fought a battle there against the Moabites, destroying several cities as described in 2 Kings 3.
Ron Wyatt’s site is in the right general area at the Southern end of the Dead Sea. However, the mesa he claimed to be fossilized cities are travertine limestone deposits from when the water level of the Dead Sea was several hundred feet higher. The sulfur balls that he found do appear to be related to the destruction of the cities of the plain. But they are also found at Albright’s sites.
Lastly, Albright did not merely find one city, he found five cities. The center one still bears the name Zoar and was found on a first-century map from the floor mosaic of a synagogue. Four of Albright’s candidate sites were destroyed by fire and never rebuilt. Albright’s destroyed cities date to the Early Bronze Age, which is precisely where we would expect to find Abraham and the destruction of the Dead Sea civilization by fire.
Lot’s cave is found by the center city, Zoar, and can be visited today.
