Genesis 19:24

Then the Lord rained upon Sodom, and upon Gomorrah, brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven.

Then the LORD rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the LORD out of heaven; Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire.

And the neighbouring cities, Admah and Zeboim, as appears from . Brimstone is added to the fire, either to convey and carry down the fire, which in itself is light and apt to ascend; or to increase it, ; or to represent the noisomeness of their lusts. From the Lord, i.e. from himself; the noun put for the pronoun, as . But here it is emphatically so expressed, either, 1. To signify that it proceeded not from natural causes, but from the immediate hand of God. Or, 2. To note the plurality of persons in the Godhead, God the Son, who now appeared upon the earth, rained from God his Father in heaven, both concurring in this act, as indeed all outward actions are common to all the persons of the Trinity.

Genesis 19:24 Then the LORD rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the LORD out of heaven;Ver. 24. Then the Lord rained, &c.] Lot was no sooner taken out of Sodom, but Sodom was soon taken out of the world. The wicked are reprieved for the sake of the godly, and, but for them would suddenly be ruined. Rained upon Sodom, &c.] Rained, not sprinkled; and not fire only, but brimstone and fire for increase of torment, and for a hell above ground, and aforehand. Hot fire they had for their burning lusts; and stinking brimstone for their stinking brutishness. Charles II, king of Navarre, was much given to sensual pleasures, which so wasted his spirits, that in his old age, he fell into a kind of lethargy. To comfort his benumbed joints, he was bound and sewed up naked in a sheet, steeped in boiling aqua vitae :the surgeon, having made an end of sewing him, and wanting a knife to cut off the thread, took a wax candle that stood lighted by him. But the flame, running down by the thread, caught hold on the sheet; which, according to the nature of the aqua vitae , burned with that vehemency, that the miserable king ended his days in the fire. Heyl., Geog. p. 42.

(24) The Lord (Jehovah) rained . . . from the Lord (from Jehovah).—Many commentators, following the Council of Sirmium, see in this repetition of the name of Jehovah an indication of the Holy Trinity, as though God the Son rained down fire from God the Father. More correctly Calvin takes it as an emphatic reiteration of its being Jehovah’s act. Jehovah had mysteriously manifested Himself upon earth by the visit of the three angels to Abraham, but His activity on earth is one with His willing in heaven. Brimstone and fire.—Though God used natural agencies in the destruction of the Ciccar cities, yet what was in itself a catastrophe of nature became miraculous by the circumstances which surrounded it. It was thus made the means not merely of executing the Divine justice, of strengthening Abraham’s faith, and of warning Lot, but also of giving moral and religious instruction throughout all time. Seen by its light, events of history, for which sufficient secondary causes may be discovered, are nevertheless shown to be direct manifestations of the Divine justice, and to have moral causes as their real basis. We lose the benefit of the teaching of the Bible if we suppose that the events recorded there were different in kind from those which take place now. A certain limited number of events were so; but of most it is simply the curtain that is drawn back, and we see God’s presence no longer veiled, as with us, but openly revealed. As for the catastrophe itself, it was not a mere thunderstorm which set the earth, saturated with naphtha, on fire; but, in a region where earthquakes are still common, there was apparently an outburst of volcanic violence, casting forth blazing bitumen and brimstone. This falling down upon the houses, and upon the soil charged with combustible matter, caused a conflagration so sudden and widespread that few or none could escape. Sulphur and nitre are still found as natural products on the shores of the Dead Sea.

Verse 24. The Lord rained - brimstone and fire from the Lord] As all judgment is committed to the Son of God, many of the primitive fathers and several modern divines have supposed that the words ויהוה vaihovah and מאת יהוה meeth Yehovah imply, Jehovah the Son raining brimstone and fire from Jehovah the Father; and that this place affords no mean proof of the proper Divinity of our blessed Redeemer. It may be so; but though the point is sufficiently established elsewhere, it does not appear to me to be plainly indicated here. And it is always better on a subject of this kind not to have recourse to proofs which require proofs to confirm them. It must however be granted that two persons mentioned as Jehovah in one verse, is both a strange and curious circumstance; and it will appear more remarkable when we consider that the person called Jehovah, who conversed with Abraham, (see chap. xviii.,) and sent those two angels to bring Lot and his family out of this devoted place, and seems himself after he left off talking with Abraham to have ascended to heaven, Genesis 19:33, does not any more appear on this occasion till we hear that JEHOVAH rained upon Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from JEHOVAH out of heaven. This certainly gives much countenance to the opinion referred to above, though still it may fall short of positive proof. Brimstone and fire. - The word גפרית gophrith, which we translate brimstone, is of very uncertain derivation. It is evidently used metaphorically, to point out the utmost degrees of punishment executed on the most flagitious criminals, in Deuteronomy 29:23; Job 18:15; Psalms 11:6; Isaiah 34:9; Ezekiel 38:22. And as hell, or an everlasting separation from God and the glory of his power, is the utmost punishment that can be inflicted on sinners, hence brimstone and fire are used in Scripture to signify the torments in that place of punishment. See Isaiah 30:33; Revelation 14:10; Revelation 19:20; Revelation 20:10; Revelation 21:8. We may safely suppose that it was quite possible that a shower of nitrous particles might have been precipitated from the atmosphere, here, as in many other places, called heaven, which, by the action of fire or the electric fluid, would be immediately ignited, and so consume the cities; and, as we have already seen that the plains about Sodom and Gomorrah abounded with asphaltus or bitumen pits, (see Genesis 14:10,) that what is particularly meant here in reference to the plain is the setting fire to this vast store of inflammable matter by the agency of lightning or the electric fluid; and this, in the most natural and literal manner, accounts for the whole plain being burnt up, as that plain abounded with this bituminous substance; and thus we find three agents employed in the total ruin of these cities, and all the circumjacent plain: 1. Innumerable nitrous particles precipitated from the atmosphere. 2. The vast quantity of asphaltus or bitumen which abounded in that country: and, 3.

24–29. The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, &c. 24. Then the Lord, &c.] The destruction of the cities of the Plain is an event to which frequent allusion is made in Holy Scripture. The impressive features of the Dead Sea must have continually lent force to the terrible tradition of an overthrow in times of remote antiquity. The barrenness of the soil, the absence of life in the water, the deposits of salt, of bitumen, and of sulphur, helped to connect a region, which was within sight of Jerusalem, with the thought of a judicial visitation by Jehovah, more terrible in character, if less in magnitude, than the Deluge itself. For the prophetic use of this catastrophe, see especially Deuteronomy 29:23. Cf. Jeremiah 20:16; Jeremiah 23:14; Jeremiah 49:18; Jeremiah 50:40; Lamentations 4:6; Amos 4:11; Zephaniah 2:9. In the N.T. see Luke 17:29; 2 Peter 2:6; Judges 1:7. brimstone and fire] It is unreasonable to subject the description of this overthrow to the close scrutiny of modern science. Geologists now tell us that, within recent geological periods, there is no sign of volcanic activity in the Dead Sea region. If, therefore, as is assumed, the cities of the Plain lay in the Dead Sea valley, their overthrow was not occasioned by lava or burning ashes, like Pompeii, or Herculaneum, or St Pierre. It has been contended, and is not beyond the bounds of probability, that an earthquake, causing a sudden subsidence of the crust and accompanied by great fissures in the earth, caused the overthrow of buildings, and released great masses of bitumen, sulphur, &c., which are to be found in large quantities in that locality. The spontaneous combustion of escaping gas, the ignition of great masses of bituminous material, combined with the outflow of steam and hot water, would then have enveloped the whole country in dense smoke, and would have seemed to drop brimstone and fire from the sky. This line of explanation would also assume that the depression of the earth’s surface led to the subsequent submergence of the four ruined cities beneath the waters of the Dead Sea; the lower end of which is exceedingly shallow. A careful scientific investigation of the whole question was undertaken by Blanckenhorn, the results of which are contained in the Z.D.P.V. 1896, p. 58, 1898, p. 78. There is, however, in the Biblical story, no mention of an earthquake. The events recorded evidently refer to a catastrophe, the tradition of which was handed down by the early Hebrews, and popularly localized in the bare and terrible features of the Dead Sea scenery. from the Lord out of heaven] The words “from the Lord” come in very strangely after “the Lord rained.” Cf. Micah 5:7, “as dew from the Lord.” For “out of heaven,” cf. 2 Kings 1:12; Job 1:16.

24. The Lord rained… from the Lord — The divine names here used are JEHOVAH. Jehovah sent rain, or caused it to rain, (äîùׂ ?éø,) from Jehovah out of the heavens.