Genesis 19:17-29

17As soon as they had brought them out, one of them said, “Flee for your lives! Don’t look back, and don’t stop anywhere in the plain! Flee to the mountains or you will be swept away!”

18But Lot said to them, “No, my lords, please!

19Your servant has found favor in your eyes, and you have shown great kindness to me in sparing my life. But I can’t flee to the mountains; this disaster will overtake me, and I’ll die.

20Look, here is a town near enough to run to, and it is small. Let me flee to it—it is very small, isn’t it? Then my life will be spared.”

21He said to him, “Very well, I will grant this request too; I will not overthrow the town you speak of.

22But flee there quickly, because I cannot do anything until you reach it.” (That is why the town was called Zoar.)

23By the time Lot reached Zoar, the sun had risen over the land.

24Then the Lord rained down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah—from the Lord out of the heavens.

25Thus he overthrew those cities and the entire plain, destroying all those living in the cities—and also the vegetation in the land.

26But Lot’s wife looked back, and she became a pillar of salt.

27Early the next morning Abraham got up and returned to the place where he had stood before the Lord.

28He looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah, toward all the land of the plain, and he saw dense smoke rising from the land, like smoke from a furnace.

29So when God destroyed the cities of the plain, he remembered Abraham, and he brought Lot out of the catastrophe that overthrew the cities where Lot had lived.