2 Peter 2:6 says that God “reduced the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes and condemned them to extinction, making them an example of what is coming to the ungodly.” Scripture, therefore, definitely has Sodom existing, as a true life example of what God does to societies that have gone too far down the evil route.
But does Scripture also give us clues to Sodom being a real city in an actual location? Well, we know from Genesis 13:10 that Lot “saw that the whole plain of the Jordan was well watered, like the land of Egypt,” so he “set out toward the east” (11) and “lived among the cities of the plain and pitched his tents near Sodom” (12).
That helps pinpoint a location, because Abraham and Lot were camped between Bethel and Ai at the time (13:3, 5), which are north and west of the Dead Sea. From that high vantage point, Lot could look east to “the whole plain of the Jordan,” a lush circular area of prime fertile land north of the Dead Sea, watered by the River Jordan down its middle, much like the Nile River in Egypt (10). Lot chose his spot well.
Genesis 14:2 identifies five cities in that area: Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboiim and Zoar. All but Zoar would be burnt to a cinder according to Deuteronomy 29:23, so if they did exist then evidence of a catastrophic fiery end from “burning sulphur raining down out of the heavens” in sufficient quantity and power to “overthrow the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah and the entire plain, including the people and the vegetation,” leaving nothing but a smoking ruin (Genesis 19:24-28), should show up somewhere in the archaeology in that area. Which it has.
Digging into the largest site in that area has turned up evidence of an extinction event – similar in scale to a superheated cosmic airburst by a meteor – that melted pottery, created a layer of ash up to two metres deep, and blew down fortified walls up to six metres thick. The pottery, architecture and other items date the timing of the extinction to the Middle Bronze Age, 18th century BCE, when Abraham and Lot were alive.
If it is Sodom, then take it from Jesus in Luke 17:26-30 that a similar event is coming and for the same reason, when a society is so proudly evil it has become detestable to God (Ezekiel 16:49-50). But we’ve also got Abraham’s example, that when he begged God to spare the good people, “he remembered Abraham” (19:29) and spared them. So next blog, “Praying for the good people”….
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