Descendants of Terah

²⁷ Now these are the descendants of Terah. Terah was the father of Abram, Nahor, and Haran, and Haran was the father of Lot.

¹² they also took Lot, the son of Abram’s brother, who lived in Sodom, and his goods and departed.^(A)

⁴ So Abram went, as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran.^(A)

³¹ Terah took his son Abram and his grandson Lot son of Haran and his daughter-in-law Sarai, his son Abram’s wife, and they went out together from Ur of the Chaldeans to go into the land of Canaan, but when they came to Haran, they settled there.^(A)

⁷ and if he rescued Lot, a righteous man greatly distressed by the debauchery of the lawless^(A)

The Depravity of Sodom

19 The two angels came to Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting in the gateway of Sodom. When Lot saw them, he rose to meet them and bowed down with his face to the ground.^{(A) 2} He said, “Please, my lords, turn aside to your servant’s house and spend the night and wash your feet; then you can rise early and go on your way.” They said, “No; we will spend the night in the square.”^{(B) 3} But he urged them strongly, so they turned aside to him and entered his house, and he made them a feast and baked unleavened bread, and they ate.^{(C) 4} But before they lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, both young and old, all the people to the last man, surrounded the house, ⁵ and they called to Lot, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us, so that we may know them.”^{(D) 6} Lot went out of the door to the men, shut the door after him,^{(E) 7} and said, “I beg you, my brothers, do not act so wickedly. ⁸ Look, I have two daughters who have not known a man; let me bring them out to you, and do to them as you please; only do nothing to these men, for they have come under the shelter of my roof.”^{(F) 9} But they replied, “Stand back!” And they said, “This fellow came here as an alien, and he would play the judge! Now we will deal worse with you than with them.” Then they pressed hard against the man Lot and came near the door to break it down.^{(G) 10} But the men inside reached out their hands and brought Lot into the house with them and shut the door. ¹¹ And they struck with blindness the men who were at the door of the house, both small and great, so that they were unable to find the door.^(H)

Sodom and Gomorrah Destroyed

¹² Then the men said to Lot, “Have you anyone else here? Sons-in-law, sons, daughters, or anyone you have in the city—bring them out of the place.^{(I) 13} For we are about to destroy this place, because the outcry against its people has become great before the Lord, and the Lord has sent us to destroy it.”^{(J) 14} So Lot went out and said to his sons-in-law, who were to marry his daughters, “Up, get out of this place, for the Lord is about to destroy the city.” But he seemed to his sons-in-law to be jesting.^(K)

¹⁵ When morning dawned, the angels urged Lot, saying, “Get up, take your wife and your two daughters who are here, or else you will be consumed in the punishment of the city.”^{(L) 16} But he lingered, so the men seized him and his wife and his two daughters by the hand, the Lord being merciful to him, and they brought him out and left him outside the city.^{(M) 17} When they had brought them outside, they^[a] said, “Flee for your life; do not look back or stop anywhere in the plain; flee to the hills, or else you will be consumed.”^{(N) 18} And Lot said to them, “Oh, no, my lords; ¹⁹ your servant has found favor with you, and you have shown me great kindness in saving my life, but I cannot flee to the hills, for fear the disaster will overtake me and I die. ²⁰ Look, that city is near enough to flee to, and it is a little one. Let me escape there—is it not a little one?—and my life will be saved!” ²¹ He said to him, “Very well, I grant you this favor too and will not overthrow the city of which you have spoken.^{(O) 22} Hurry, escape there, for I can do nothing until you arrive there.” Therefore the city was called Zoar.^{[b] 23} The sun had risen on the earth when Lot came to Zoar.

²⁴ Then the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the Lord out of heaven,^{(P) 25} and he overthrew those cities and all the plain and all the inhabitants of the cities and what grew on the ground.^{(Q) 26} But Lot’s wife, behind him, looked back, and she became a pillar of salt.^(R)

²⁷ Abraham went early in the morning to the place where he had stood before the Lord,^{(S) 28} and he looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah and toward all the land of the plain and saw the smoke of the land going up like the smoke of a furnace.^(T)

²⁹ So it was that, when God destroyed the cities of the plain, God remembered Abraham and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow, when he overthrew the cities in which Lot had settled.^(U)

Abram and Lot Separate

13 So Abram went up from Egypt, he and his wife and all that he had and Lot with him, into the Negeb.^(A)

² Now Abram was very rich in livestock, in silver, and in gold. ³ He journeyed on by stages from the Negeb as far as Bethel, to the place where his tent had been at the beginning, between Bethel and Ai,^{(B) 4} to the place where he had made an altar at the first, and there Abram called on the name of the Lord.^{(C) 5} Now Lot, who went with Abram, also had flocks and herds and tents, ⁶ and the land could not support both of them living together because their possessions were so great that they could not live together. ⁷ Thus strife arose between the herders of Abram’s livestock and the herders of Lot’s livestock. At that time the Canaanites and the Perizzites lived in the land.^(D)

⁸ Then Abram said to Lot, “Let there be no strife between you and me and between your herders and my herders, for we are kindred.^{(E) 9} Is not the whole land before you? Separate yourself from me. If you take the left hand, then I will go to the right, or if you take the right hand, then I will go to the left.” ¹⁰ Lot looked about him and saw that the plain of the Jordan was well watered everywhere like the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt, in the direction of Zoar; this was before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.^{(F) 11} So Lot chose for himself all the plain of the Jordan, and Lot journeyed eastward, and they separated from each other.