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Genesis 19

1The two messengers came to Sodom in the evening, while Lot was sitting at Sodom's gate. Lot saw them, rose to meet them, and bowed with his face to the ground. 2He said, “Please, my lords, turn aside into your servant's house, spend the night, and wash your feet. Then rise early and go on your way.” They said, “No, we will spend the night in the square.” 3But he pressed them strongly, and they turned aside to him and entered his house. He made them a feast and baked unleavened bread, and they ate.

4Before they lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, surrounded the house, from young to old, all the people from every quarter. 5They called to Lot and said, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we may know them.” 6Lot went out to them at the entrance and closed the door behind him. 7He said, “Please, my brothers, do not act wickedly. 8Look, I have two daughters who have not known a man. Please let me bring them out to you. Do to them what is good in your eyes, but do nothing to these men, because they have come under the shadow of my roof.” 9They said, “Stand back!” They said, “This one came as a foreigner, and now he insists on acting as judge! Now we will do worse to you than to them.” They pressed hard against the man, against Lot, and drew near to break the door. 10But the men reached out their hands, brought Lot to them inside the house, and closed the door. 11They struck the men at the house entrance with blindness, from small to great, so that they wore themselves out trying to find the entrance.

12The men said to Lot, “Who else do you have here? A son-in-law, your sons, your daughters, anyone you have in the city—bring them out of this place. 13For we are going to ruin this place, because the outcry against them has grown great before Yahweh. Yahweh has sent us to ruin it.” 14Lot went out and spoke to his sons-in-law, who were to take his daughters, and said, “Get up! Leave this place, because Yahweh is going to ruin the city.” But in his sons-in-law's eyes he seemed to be joking. 15As dawn rose, the messengers urged Lot, saying, “Get up! Take your wife and your two daughters who are here, or you will be swept away in the city's punishment.” 16He lingered. The men seized his hand, his wife's hand, and the hands of his two daughters, because Yahweh had compassion on him. They brought him out and set him outside the city. 17When they had brought them outside, he said, “Escape for your life! Do not look behind you, and do not stop anywhere in the plain. Escape to the hill country, or you will be swept away.”

18Lot said to them, “Please, no, Lord! 19Look, your servant has found favor in your eyes, and you have shown me great steadfast love by keeping me alive. But I cannot escape to the hill country, or the disaster will overtake me and I will die. 20Look, this city is near enough to flee to, and it is a little one. Please let me escape there—is it not a little one?—and my life will be spared.” 21He said to him, “Look, I grant you this request too: I will not overthrow the city you have spoken of. 22Hurry! Escape there, because I can do nothing until you arrive there.” That is why the city was named Zoar. 23The sun had risen over the earth when Lot came to Zoar. 24Yahweh rained sulfur and fire on Sodom and Gomorrah, from Yahweh out of heaven. 25He overthrew those cities, the whole plain, all the cities' inhabitants, and the growth of the ground. 26His wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.

27Abraham rose early in the morning and went to the place where he had stood before Yahweh. 28He looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah and toward the whole surface of the land of the plain. He saw, and look, smoke was rising from the land like smoke from a furnace. 29When God ruined the cities of the plain, God remembered Abraham and sent Lot out from the middle of the overthrow, when he overthrew the cities where Lot had lived.

30Lot went up from Zoar and lived in the hill country, his two daughters with him, because he was afraid to live in Zoar. He lived in a cave, he and his two daughters. 31The firstborn said to the younger, “Our father is old, and there is no man in the land to come in to us in the way of all the earth. 32Come, let us give our father wine to drink and lie with him, so that we may keep offspring alive through our father.” 33They gave their father wine to drink that night. The firstborn came in and lay with her father. He did not know when she lay down or when she rose. 34The next day the firstborn said to the younger, “Look, last night I lay with my father. Let us give him wine to drink tonight as well. Go in and lie with him, so that we may keep offspring alive through our father.” 35They gave their father wine to drink that night as well. The younger rose and lay with him. He did not know when she lay down or when she rose. 36Both Lot's daughters conceived by their father. 37The firstborn bore a son and named him Moab; he is the father of Moab to this day. 38The younger also bore a son and named him Ben-ammi; he is the father of the sons of Ammon to this day.

Translation notes 5

19:1–11 — Knowing; violence. “Know” is sexual here, as the contrast with the daughters who have not known a man makes clear. The mob's demand threatens collective sexual violence against male guests. Lot's offer of his daughters is stated without approval or softening. Hospitality, sexual assault, and the treatment of foreigners are all features of this scene; a modern identity category is not supplied.

19:12–17 — Family; compassion. The sons-in-law can be men already married to Lot's daughters or their intended husbands. “Who were to take” adopts the latter interpretation, fitting the two daughters at home, without asserting that the text rules out other daughters. The rescue attributes compassion to Yahweh even while Lot hesitates.

19:18–24 — Lord; Yahweh. The address in verse 18 is pointed as the divine title Lord; the speech then uses singular forms after Lot first addresses “them.” The shifts are retained. Verse 24 repeats Yahweh's name in the account of fire from heaven; the draft does not remove it or make it a later theological explanation. Zoar echoes the word for little.

19:26–29 — Looking back; remembering. The text states the wife's transformation but gives no name or further description. Lot's rescue is related to God's remembering Abraham; no additional merit or motive is supplied.

19:30–38 — Daughters; origins. The statement about no man in the land is the older daughter's assessment. The narrative does not say that every man on earth had died. The repeated intoxication, intercourse, and Lot's unawareness are all retained. Moab evokes “from father,” and Ben-ammi means “son of my people,” linking these neighboring peoples to the story's kinship origins without assigning their later descendants collective moral guilt.