Sodom and Gomorrah

And Lot lifted up his eyes and saw that the Jordan Valley 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.  Genesis 13:10

Abram dwelt in the land of Canaan, while Lot dwelt among the cities of the valley and moved his tent as far as Sodom.  Now the men of Sodom were wicked, great sinners against the Lord.  Genesis 13:12

The two angels came to Sodom in the Evening; and Lot was sitting in the gate of Sodom.  Genesis 19:1

And Abraham went early in the morning to the place where he had stood before the Lord, and he looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah and toward all the land of the valley, and beheld, and behold, the smoke of the land went up like smoke of a furnace.   Genesis 19:27, 28

The story of Lot, Abraham’s nephew, and the cities of the “valley” stand prominent within the four chapters containing the covenant.  The conflict between Abram and Lot, and the subsequent separation (chapter 13), comes right after Abram’s obedient journey into the land of promise (Chapter 12).  The institution of the covenantal sign of circumcision (chapter 17) is followed by the visitation of the mysterious guests and Abraham’s intercession for Sodom (chapter 18), and the destruction of Sodom (chapter 19).  This makes this awful judgment as essential to the covenant of Abraham as the judgement of the flood is to Noah and his covenant.  Both judgements are to be understood eschatologically, as a type of the final judgement at the end of time, as subsequent Scripture shows. 

As for location, two things are clear.  Abraham lived in and around Bethel and Ai at this time, approximately in the center of the land of Canaan (Genesis 12:8), not far from the edge of the sheer cliff the Jordan river carved out creating the valley and plain below, which is actually part of the great Rift Valley out of Africa.  The second thing is that this “valley” where the cities of the plain were located, lay right below this great wall off the Central Highlands and the Judean Plateau. The word for “valley” here in the Hebrew is kikkar, which is the word for circle, especially in reference to a round loaf of bread.  It strongly suggests that this kikkar is the round valley that opens up to the Jordan river right before it empties into the Salt Sea. For millennia this valley was well watered, just like the description we have in Genesis 13:10.  This kikkar lays due east of where Abram and Lot dwelt, and viewing the kikkar from on top of the Judean Plateau, we can understand Lot’s attraction and choice of this land as he gazed over this tropical paradise. 

When we descend into the kikkar from the top of the Judean Plateau above, {a drop of approx. 2,600′ elevation (Jerusalem) to -800′ (Jericho), 3,400′ in all, making the steepest decline on earth,} we find ourselves in and around Jericho, the oldest continually inhabited city in the world.  Once in the kikkar, facing north, Jericho is {approximately at 9 o’clock} on the west, the salt sea {6 o’clock} to the south, and at the far eastern edge, {at approximately 3 o’clock,} lies a massive mound named Tall el-Hammam, meaning “hill of the hot baths, 13 miles from Jericho on the opposite side.” The mound measures 100 square acres.  It is the remains of an ancient city of high elevation and gigantic 18-foot-thick walls reaching approx. 40 feet high with imposing towers {every fifty yards around its mile and a half circumference.   All this was sitting on a 35-degree rampart made of 150 to 200 million mug bricks covered over with a smooth layer of dried clay so no one could climb high enough to reach the walls.}

The city proved invincible, proudly towering over the Kikkar over 25 centuries without falling, the same houses and buildings within were inhabited and handed down for hundreds of years.  The main gate was monumental with its towers rising 45′ above the plaza below, where in the old world, business was transacted.  One can only imagine the city’s continuous culture of security, wealth, prosperity.  There is evidence that it’s culture had trading contact with the island of Crete and its ancient Minoan civilization. 

Sometime in the Middle Bronze Age, circa 1650 BC, which approximates the time of Abraham, the city and its surrounding cities and towns, were completely destroyed in an instant.  The destruction was so fierce and hot that only bone fragments of humans and animals, rather than whole skeletal remains, were found.  Even the sand melted into glass, pottery vessels into trinitite, a material created by super-heated atomic explosion at Los Alamos.  Everything was so thoroughly burnt into ash that nothing was every built on it for centuries.  Even to this day the smell of ash is evident.  What caused it?  An asteroid, breaking up in the atmosphere, creating superheated molecular debris, reaching the earth in a plasma like fireball?

This site, according to archeologist Steve Collins who did the field work, is, in fact, Sodom.  Tal el-Hammom is in the right place, the right time, with the right archeological evidence and remains.  Dr. John Bergsma of Franciscan University agrees.  The academic elite “guild” of university archeologists either ignore this most significant MB2 site, or deny out of hand its connection with Sodom without serious debate.  Politically, it is too hot to handle. 

Sodom, her near-by sister city Gomorrah, and their destruction as recorded in Scripture is no mere myth, no embellishment, no joke.  But why was it judged?  If we carefully read both the narrative and all subsequent mentioning of these cities in Scripture, we see that it was judged for a matrix of sins, ranging from violence, injustice, and the moral depravity sordidly described in Genesis 19:5, where all the men, from young to old, demanded that Lot’s visitors be given to them so that they might rape them.  Taking it all together, the city was not destroyed for any one particular sin, but the whole spectrum of sins, bringing down God’s judgement.  To argue that the city fell simply because of homosexuality is not the full picture.  Likewise, to argue that the cause was inhospitality, or violence, and not homosexuality per se, is not very convincing exegesis in light of the context and the rest of Scripture. “Sodomy” in any form was shockingly unnatural in ancient Hebrew culture.  The ruined mound stood as a vivid reminder of God’s judgement for all subsequent generations.        

Takeaway: Sodom and Gomorrah were major cities in the Kikkar region just north of the Dead Sea, and they were incinerated by a super-charged heat blast. 

Question: How do you react to the fact that archaeology most probably supports the Genesis narrative on Sodom and Gomorrah? 

 Resources   

Collins, Steven.  Discovering the City of Sodom, New York: Howard Books, 2013.

Collins, Steve, Kob, Carroll, Luddeni, Michael, The Tall al-Hammam Excavations, Vol. One, Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2015. 

Bergsma, John, Catholic Theologian Acknowledges Archaeologists Found Biblical Sodom in Israel 365 News, found on-line.