Tuesday, July 1, 2025

¹⁵When the morning came, then the angels hurried Lot, saying, “Get up! Take your wife and your two daughters who are here, lest you be consumed in the iniquity of the city.” ¹⁶But he lingered; and the men grabbed his hand, his wife’s hand, and his two daughters’ hands, the LORD being merciful to him; and they took him out, and set him outside of the city. ¹⁷It came to pass, when they had taken them out, that he said, “Escape for your life! Don’t look behind you, and don’t stay anywhere in the plain. Escape to the mountains, lest you be consumed!” ¹⁸Lot said to them, “Oh, not so, my lord. ¹⁹See now, your servant has found favor in your sight, and you have magnified your loving kindness, which you have shown to me in saving my life. I can’t escape to the mountain, lest evil overtake me, and I die. ²⁰See now, this city is near to flee to, and it is a little one. Oh let me escape there (isn’t it a little one?), and my soul will live.” ²¹He said to him, “Behold, I have granted your request concerning this thing also, that I will not overthrow the city of which you have spoken. ²²Hurry, escape there, for I can’t do anything until you get there.” Therefore the name of the city was called Zoar. ²³The sun had risen on the earth when Lot came to Zoar. ²⁴Then the LORD rained on Sodom and on Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the LORD out of the sky. ²⁵He overthrew those cities, all the plain, all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew on the ground. ²⁶But Lot’s wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt. ²⁷Abraham went up early in the morning to the place where he had stood before the LORD. ²⁸He looked toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and toward all the land of the plain, and saw that the smoke of the land went up as the smoke of a furnace. ²⁹When God destroyed the cities of the plain, God remembered Abraham, and sent Lot out of the middle of the overthrow, when he overthrew the cities in which Lot lived.