Genesis 19

Genesis 19:1

Gen. 19:1. “And Lot sat in the gate of Sodom.” Where he probably sat exhorting and reproving the people; for the gate of the city seems of old to be the place of resort on all public occasions, not only the place the judges sat to judge the people, but where their teachers sat to instruct and reprove them (Isaiah 29:21; Amos 5:10). The judges might properly do this, but others might also do it who did not take upon themselves the office of judges. If Lot was now reproving the people, and striving to persuade them to repent and reform, he thus [showed that he] had “no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness,” but rather reproved them; and God rewarded his withstanding and resisting the stream of the general wickedness of that people, by sending angels on a most kind and merciful errand to him, while in the exercise of his fortitude and opposition; and it is observable that just before the destruction of the people, God used extraordinary means to reclaim them by Lot’s reproofs (who was a preacher of righteousness as well as Noah, 2 Peter 2:5-9), and their destruction came upon them just on the manifestation of the highest and most desperate degree of obstinacy in them, in their despising his reproofs, and most horrid wickedness towards Lot and the angels immediately after. Lot having lately been reproving the people in the gate, the place of judgment, made them the more ready to say, as they do in verse 9 - “This fellow came in to sojourn, and he will needs be a judge.”

Gen. 19:23-24

Genesis 19:23-24

Gen. 19:23, 24, “The sun was risen upon the earth when Lot entered into Zoar. Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven.” This signified that the terrible destruction of the wicked is at the beginning of the glorious day wherein the Sun of righteousness rises on the earth, and at the coming of Christ, Lot’s antitype, and visiting his church, the little city, the antitype of the church. So it was in the days of the apostles, in the morning of the gospel day, when Judea and Jerusalem were so terribly destroyed. So it was in the days of Constantine; and so it will be at the fall of Antichrist; and so it will be at the end of the world. See Job 38:13. Note. So Dagon fell once and again before the ark early in the morning; so after the disciples had toiled all night and caught nothing, yet in the morning Christ came to them, and they had a great draught of fishes; so Christ rose from the dead early in the morning. It is said concerning God’s church, that “weeping may continue for a night, but joy will come in the morning.” The children of Israel were all night pursued by their enemies at the Red sea; in the nigh they were in the sea, in a great and terrible east wind, but in the morning watch the Lord looked through the pillar of cloud and fire, and troubled the hosts of the Egyptians; and in the morning the children of Israel came up out of the sea, and the host of the Egyptians was destroyed, and the children of Israel rejoiced and sang. Jacob, after wrestling with the angel in the night, obtained the blessing in the morning. “He that ruleth over men shall be as the light of the morning, when the sun riseth, even a morning without clouds: and as the tender grass springing out of the earth by clear shining after rain.” 2 Samuel 23:4. Psalms 49:14, “The upright shall have dominion over them in the morning, and their beauty shall consume in the grave from their dwelling. In the morning, when the Sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in his wings, the day comes that shall burn as an oven (as that day burnt in which Lot entered into Zoar), and all the proud, yea, all that do wickedly, shall be stubble, and the righteous shall tread down the wicked, and they shall be as ashes under the soles of their feet.” Malachi 4 , at the beginning. The church in the 59th Psalm, after expressing her great troubles from her enemies, and declaring how God should destroy them, says, verse Psalms 59:16, “But I will sing of thy power; yea, I will sing aloud of thy mercy in the morning, for thou hast been my defence and refuge in the day of my trouble.” So likewise the church, in speaking of her troubles, in Psalms 143:8, “Cause me to hear thy loving-kindness in the morning, for in thee do I trust; cause me to know the way wherein I should walk, for I lift up my soul unto thee.” It is said of the church, Psalms 46:5, “God is in the midst of her, she shall not be moved; God shall help her, and that right early.” And then in the 8th verse, it is said, “Come, behold the works of the Lord, what desolations he hath made in the earth.” Hosea 6:1-3, “Come, and let us return unto the Lord, for he hath torn, and he will heal us; he hath smitten, and he will bind up. After two days will he revive us; in the third day he will raise us up, and we shall live in his sight. Then shall we know if we follow on to know the Lord: his going forth is prepared as the morning, and he shall come unto us as the rain, as the latter rain and the former rain unto the earth.” Gen. 19:24-29

Genesis 19:24-29

Gen. 19:24-29. Concerning the destruction of Sodom and the parts adjacent. The very ground of that region, great part of it, seems to have been burnt up. For it was in great measure made up of bitumen, or what the Scripture calls slime, Genesis 14:10 , “And the vale of Siddim was full of slime pits; and the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah fled, and fell there; and they that remained fled to the mountain.” And because of the abundance of bitumen in the lake of Sodom, it was called of old, and is still called, Lacus Asphaltites. It is full of bitumen, which at certain seasons boils up from the bottom in bubbles like hot water. This bitumen is a very combustible matter.

It is in some places liquid, and in others firm; and not only lies near the surface of the earth, but lies sometimes very deep, and it is dug out of the bowels of it. So that the streams of fire that came from heaven set the very ground on fire; and therefore it is here, in the 28th verse, that Lot looked towards Sodom and Gomorrah, and towards all the land of the plain, and beheld, and lo, the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace.

So that the country burning was a very lively representation of the general conflagration; and by the melting of the bituminous ground in many places was probably a burning lake, and so was a lively image of hell, which is often called the lake of fire, and the lake that burns with fire and brimstone. Note, that bitumen is a sulphurous substance (see Bailey’s Dictionary), and therefore is fitly compared to hell fire in Scripture, Jude 7. “Even as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.” There seems to be an evident allusion to the manner of the destruction of this country in Isaiah 34:9-10 , “And the streams thereof shall be turned into pitch, and the dust thereof into brimstone, and the land thereof shall become burning pitch. It shall not be quenched night nor day: the smoke thereof shall go up forever; from generation to generation it shall lie waste; none shall pass through it for ever and ever.” Deuteronomy 29:23,“And the whole land thereof is brimstone, and salt, and burning, that it is not sown, nor beareth, nor any grass groweth therein, like the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboim, which the Lord overthrew in his anger, and in his wrath;” where we are expressly taught that the very ground of this country was burnt. The ground burning up sunk the land, and made this valley deeper, so that after that the waters of Jordan perpetually overflowed it; and besides, there was probably an earthquake at the same time, by which the ground subsided, as the tradition of the heathen was. It is probably that the same time as the meteors of their air were inflamed, the bitumen and other combustible matter that was in the bowels of their earth was also enkindled, or the fire that was first kindled on the top of the ground might run down in the bituminous and sulphurous veins deep into the earth, and being there pent up, might cause earthquakes, after those cities and inhabitants were all consumed, which might make the country to sink, and turn it into a bituminous and exceeding salt lake. The ground there was doubtless very likely to sink by an earthquake, being hollow, as it is evident it is still, in that since the surface of the earth hath been broken to let down water at the river Jordan and other streams, there is no outlet out of the lake above-ground, but they have a secret passage under the earth.

The bitumen there is mixed with abundance of nitre and salt, which by their repugnant quality might cause a more violent struggle in the fire that burnt down into the caverns of the earth to cause an earthquake. See many of these things in Complete Body of Divinity, p. 351, 352.

Gen. 19:26

Genesis 19:26

Gen. 19:26. Concerning Lot’s wife. Revelation Examined with Candour. “The unreasonable delay of Lot’s wife was without question occasioned by her solicitude for her children, which she left behind her. The story of Niobe weeping for her children, and being stiffened into stone with grief, is doubtless founded upon this history. Possibly, too, the fable of Orpheus being permitted to redeem his wife from hell, and losing her afterwards by looking unseasonably back, contrary to the express command given him, and then through grief deserting the society of mankind and dwelling in deserts, might be derived from some obscure tradition of this history. Sodom was now the liveliest emblem of hell that can be imagined.

It was granted to Lot by a peculiar privilege to deliver his wife thence. He was expressly commanded, Genesis 19:17, “Look not behind thee, neither stay thou in all the plain; escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed.” By her looking back, contrary to this command, his wife was lost; after which he quits the city, and dwells alone in the mountains. Here are all the main circumstances of the fable, and the poets had nothing to do but to vary and embellish as they liked best. But his wife looked back from behind her, and she became a pillar of salt. What happened to Lot’s wife when she looked back as she was flying out of Sodom, is typical of what commonly happens to men that are guilty of backsliding when they have begun to seek deliverance out of a state of sin and misery, and an escape from the wrath to come. The woman was there stiffened into a hard substance; which signifies the tendency that backsliding has to harden the heart. She became a senseless statue; which signifies the senselessness which persons bring on them by backsliding. There she was fixed, and never got any further; which typifies the tendency that backsliding has to hinder persons from ever escaping eternal wrath.

Gen. 21:8