Sodom

“ Nevertheless, Sodom was destroyed,—showing that there were not ten, and presumably not one individual in that city, who was not given up to sin and wickedness. That this was the case with all, old and young, is expressly stated, in the following chapter, where the people of Sodom are described as gathering round Lot's house, with purposes of violence: "The men of the city, the men of Sodom, compassed the house round, both old and young, all the people from every quarter." ”

“ Sodom and Samaria. Likewise ecclesiasticism, the clergy and their following of “best people”, will be in shame over the fact that their iniquity was an incentive to the evil doing of the baser elements of Christendom.
16:56-59. For thy sister Sodom was not mentioned by thy mouth in the day of thy pride. Before thy wickedness was discovered, as at the time of thy reproach of the daughters of Syria, and all that are round about her, the daughters of the Philistines, which despise thee round about. Thou hast borne thy lewdness and thine abominations, saith the Lord. ”

“ O thou that dwellest in the clefts of the rock, and endeavourest to lay hold on the height of the hill: but though thou shouldst make thy nest as high as an eagle, I will bring thee down from thence, saith the Lord.
17 And Edom shall be desolate: every one that shall pass by it, shall be astonished, and shall hiss at all its plagues.
18 As Sodom was overthrown and Gomorrha, and the neighbours thereof, saith the Lord: there shall not a man dwell there, and there shall no son of man inhabit it. ”

“ Sodom lay like Satan, flat upon the floor of the world. And far away and aloft, faint with height and distance, small but still visible, stood up the spire of the Ascension like the sword of the Archangel, lifted in salute after a stroke. ”

“ Who does not here adore the admirable judgment of God, in that it has been ordered that some should be born at Jerusalem, whence they presently pass to a better life, and that Sodom, the entrance of hell, should be the birthplace of others? ”

“ It is true the judgment of God came down on these cities, but bare judgments have never reformed the world. The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah removed the foulest stain-spot for the time, but it did not change the hearts nor the habits of the nations. It has seemed good to the Spirit of God to give us one glimpse of the foulness that had been reached at that early period, but not to multiply the filthy details at a future time,—after the long interval between Abraham and Joshua. But we know that if Sodom was bad, Jericho was no better. ”

“ For if Sodom, whose iniquity was not so great as that of Jerusalem, is not as yet inhabited, and if we say thus, that it will not be restored for ever, how shall Jerusalem be restored, whose iniquity is greater than that of Sodom and her daughters? ”

“ But, into whatever city ye enter where they do not receive you, go out into the streets of the same, and say, Even the very dust of your city, which cleaves to us, we wipe off against you and, be ye sure of this, the kingdom of God is come near to you. But I say to you, it shall be more tolerable in that day for Sodom, than for that city.
Woe to thee, Chorazin! woe to thee, Bethsaida! If the mighty works had been done in Tyre and Sidon, which have been done in you, they would have, long ago repented, sitting in sackcloth and ashes. ”

“ The burning of the wicked cities gives us a faint idea of that hell into which the impenitent Sodomites were cast for ever. The torments of the burning inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrha were very terrible; but the torments of the lost souls in hell are far more terrible. The fire of Sodom was kindled from heaven; the fire of hell is kindled by the anger of God. ”

“ Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?
26 And the LORD said, If I find in Sodom fifty righteous within the city, then I will spare all the place for their sakes.
27 And Abraham answered and said, Behold now, I have taken upon me to speak unto the LORD, which am but dust and ashes:
28 Peradventure there shall lack five of the fifty righteous: wilt thou destroy all the city for lack of five? ”

“ Those that are high may perhaps come to stand upon a level with those they contemn. Or "Sodom was not mentioned, that is, the warning designed to be given to thee by Sodom's ruin was not regarded." If the Jews had but talked more frequently and seriously to one another, and to their children, concerning the wrath of God revealed from heaven against Sodom's ungodliness and unrighteousness, it might have kept them in awe, and prevented their treading in their steps ”

“ For, after the fashion of Niobe, or, to express myself more mystically, like the Hebrew woman called by the ancients Lot's wife, are ye not turned into a state of insensibility? This woman, we have heard, was turned into stone for her love of Sodom. And those who are godless, addicted to impiety, hard-hearted and foolish, are Sodomites. Believe that these utterances are addressed to you from God. For think not that stones, and stocks, and birds, and serpents are sacred things, and men are not; but, on the contrary, regard men as truly sacred, and take beasts and stones for what they are. ”

“ The whole iniquity and final consequences of our disposition are not laid before us in the mass; but to give the rein to any evil disposition is to yield control of our own life and commit ourselves to guidance which cannot result in good, and is of a nature to result in utter shame and wretchedness.
Turning from the rescued to the destroyed, we recognise how sufficient a test of their moral condition the presence of the angels was. The inhabitants of Sodom quickly afford evidence that they are ripe for judgment. They do nothing worse than their habitual conduct led them to do. ”

“ Indeed, such monstrous impieties and iniquities have I both seen and heard of, within these three last years, during my sojourning in what is called the world, particularly the last winter, while I tarried in the great city, that while I verily believe we are the silliest nation under heaven in every other light, we are wiser than Sodom in wickedness. ”

“ Sodom, here named Jerusalem's (ecclesiasticism's) sister religion, is directly identified as churchianity in Rev. 11:8—“The great city which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified.” It types professed Christianity in its lowest phase.
16:47. Yet hast thou not walked after their ways, nor done after their abominations: but, as if that were a very little thing, thou was corrupted more than they in all thy ways.—As though the ill-fame of Sodom were not enough, (apostate) Christianity has excelled her in corruption ”

“ It is well worthy of our study. We find in it—
I. A Startling Description. ”Rulers of Sodom, . . . people of Gomorrah.” What an astonishing declaration is this, that Sodom, Gomorrah, and Jerusalem are synonymous terms! It reminds us—1. That man may be morally alike to those from whom they think themselves the furthest removed. Many a Protestant who hates the very name of Rome is himself a little Pope: he never doubts his own infallibility, and is ready to anathematise all who dare to dissent from him. Many a man who has never stood in the felon’s dock is a thief at heart. ”

“ And the king of Sodom went out to meet him after his return from the slaughter of Chedorlaomer, and of the kings that were with him, at the valley of Shaveh, which is the king's dale. And Melchizedek king of Salem brought forth bread and wine: and he was the priest of the most high God. And he blessed him, and said, Blessed be Abram of the most high God, possessor of heaven and earth: and blessed be the most high God, which hath delivered thine enemies into thy hand. And he gave him tithes of all. And the king of Sodom said unto Abram, Give me the person, and take the goods to thyself. ”

“ These kings had laid waste all Syria, and overthrown the offspring of the giants. And when they were come over against Sodom, they pitched their camp at the vale called the Slime Pits, for at that time there were pits in that place; but now, upon the destruction of the city of Sodom, that vale became the Lake Asphaltites, as it is called. However, concerning this lake we shall speak more presently. Now when the Sodomites joined battle with the Assyrians, and the fight was very obstinate, many of them were killed, and the rest were carried captive ”

“ The sinful inhabitants of the cities of the plain not only lost their life in this world, but also their share in the future world. As for the cities themselves, however, they will be restored in the Messianic time. [184]
The destruction of Sodom happened at the time at which Abraham was performing his morning devotions, and for his sake it was established as the proper hour for the morning prayer unto all times. ”

“ The king of Sodom alone escaped unharmed of all the five kings, by a miracle which God wrought, to exhibit His power to the dwellers in the plain, who had begun to doubt the truth of Abraham’s deliverance out of the burning, fiery furnace. ”

“ Jerusalem is kept many months upon the rack, in pain and misery, and dies by inches, dies so as to feel herself die. And, when the iniquity of Jerusalem is more aggravated than that of Sodom, no wonder that the punishment of it is so. Sodom never had the means of grace the Jerusalem had, the oracles of God and his prophets, and therefore the condemnation of Jerusalem will be more intolerable than that of Sodom, Matt. ”

“ Hence in Rome as in Egypt the temples of Isis (Inachidos limina, Isiacæ sacraria Lunæ) were centres of sodomy and the religious practice was adopted by the grand priestly castes from Mesopotamia to Mexico and Peru.
We find the earliest written notices of the Vice in the mythical destruction of the Pentapolis (Gen. xix.) , Sodom, Gomorrah (= ’Ámirah, the cultivated country) , Adama, Zeboïm and Zoar or Bela. The legend has been amply embroidered by the Rabbis who make the Sodomites do everything à l’envers: e.g. ”

“ If there were three of the true seed in Sodom, was Sodom the Church? or did not the three constitute the Church in Lot’s house, while the world raged around it like the troubled sea?
Some of Stier’s remarks are good: “The parable moves in quite a different sphere from that of the question concerning Church discipline.” “The householder forbids and will not allow what the servants wish. These would have all the tares removed entirely from their place among the wheat, from the kingdom of Christ (ver. 41) . ”

“ Fresh difficulties are raised respecting Abraham's victory near Sodom. It is said to be inconceivable that a stranger who drove his flocks to graze in the neighborhood of Sodom should, with three hundred and eighteen keepers of sheep and oxen, beat a king of Persia, a king of Pontus, the king of Babylon, and the king of nations, and pursue them to Damascus, which is more than a hundred miles from Sodom. ”

“ A silken purse cannot be made out of a swine's ear. What is bred in the bone seldom comes out of the flesh. All such proverbs show the necessity of early holy precepts, supported by suitable example.
Verse 46
Thine elder sister is Samaria, she and her daughters that dwell at thy left - It is supposed that the prophet by Sodom in this place means the Israelites that dwelt beyond Jordan, in the land or the Moabites and Ammonites; or rather of the Moabites and Ammonites themselves. Literally, Sodom could not be called the younger sister of Jerusalem, as it existed before Jerusalem had a name. ”

“ Yet we certainly cannot for a moment think of any earthly restoration of Sodom. For even if we could conceive of a restoration of the cities that were destroyed by fire, and sunk into the depths of the Dead Sea, it is impossible to form any conception of an earthly and corporeal restoration of the inhabitants of those cities, who ere destroyed at the same time ”

“ We are told in the Scriptures that the people were eating, drinking, buying and selling, planning and building until the very moment Lot went out of Sodom. Perhaps not a man in all Sodom took any account of his going out. ”

“ Now when the Sodomites saw the young men to be of beautiful countenances, and this to an extraordinary degree, and that they took up their lodgings with Lot, they resolved themselves to enjoy these beautiful boys by force and violence ”

“ That the Sodomites, giving themselves up to their wicked practices, and, as a consequence, suffering an eternal overthrow by fire rained down upon them from heaven, are thus set forth as an example to the ungodly of all coming ages, of the overthrow they will also experience if they follow the same course. ”

“ The origin of this vice (all peoples, savage and civilized, have been infected with it) is lost in the mists which shroud antiquity. The Old Testament contains many allusions to it, and Sodom was destroyed because a long-suffering deity could not find ten men in the entire city who were not addicted to its practice. So saturated was this city of the ancient world with the vice that the very name of the city or the adjective denoting citizenship in that city have transmitted the stigma to modern times. ”

“ There'll be thin and there'll be thick—plenty of them both—but it will be a question of the value of the individual. If there had been ten righteous men in Sodom and Gomorrah, they wouldn't have been destroyed. ”

“ They were pride, satiety, - i.e., superabundance of bread (vid., Pro 30:9) , - and careless rest or security, which produce haughtiness and harshness, or uncharitableness, towards the poor and wretched. In this way Sodom and her daughters (Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboim) became proud and haughty, and committed abominations לפני, i.e., before Jehovah (alluding to Gen 18:21) ; and God destroyed them when He saw this. The sins of Samaria (Eze 16:51) are not specially mentioned, because the principal sin of this kingdom, namely, image-worship, was well known. ”