And the two beings came to Sodom in the evening, as Lot sat before the city gate. And when he saw them, he went up to them and made a deep bow. And he said, “Please, gentlemen, spend the night at my house, and wash your feet, and in the morning you can continue on your way.”
And they said, “No, we will spend the night in the square.”
But he kept pressing them until they agreed to go to his house. And when they got there, he made them a meal, and baked unleavened bread, and they ate.
Before they had gone to bed, the men of Sodom surrounded the house, young and old, down to the last man. And they called out to Lot, “ Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out here, so we can sleep with them.”
And Lot went out into the entrance and shut the door behind him. And he said, “Friends, I beg you, don’t do this wicked thing. Look, I have two daughters who have never slept with a man. Let me bring them out, and you can do whatever you want to them. Butdon’t do anything to these men, because they have come under the shelter of my roof.”
And someone said, “Out of our way!” And someone said, “This fellow just got here, and now he is telling us what to do! Watch out, or you’ll get it even worse than them!” And they pressed hard against Lot and moved in closer, to break down the door. But the beings reached out and pulled Lot inside and shut the door. And they struck the men at the entrance with a dazzling light, so that no one could find the door.
And the beings said to Lot, “Everyone in your family—your sons or daughters or anyone else — take them out of this place, because its outcry is so loud that the Lord has sent us to destroy it.”
And Lot went out and said to his sons-in-law, “Hurry, get out of this place: the Lord is about to destroy it.” But his sons-in-law thought he was joking.
And as soon as dawn came, the beings said to Lot, “Hurry, take your wife and the two daughters who are here, or you will be crushed in the punishment of the city.” And he still lingered. And the beings took him by the hand, and his wife and the two daughters also, since the Lord was merciful to him, and they led them out and left them outside the city. And one of them said, “Run for your lives! Don’t look back, don’t stop anywhere on the plain: run to the hills or you will be crushed!”
And the Lord rained sulfurous fire on Sodom and Gomorrah, and he obliterated those cities, and the whole plain, and all the cities’ inhabitants, and everything that grew on the ground.
And Lot’s wife looked back, and she turned into a pillar of salt.
And in the morning Abraham went back to the place where hehad stood in the Lord’s presence. And he looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah, across the whole plain, and the smoke from it was rising like the smoke from a furnace.