July 2, 2013, Reading

Genesis 19:15-29

15 When dawn broke the angels urged Lot on, ‘To your feet! Take your wife and your two daughters who are here, or you will be swept away in the punishment of the city.’

16 And as he hesitated, the men seized his hand and the hands of his wife and his two daughters — Yahweh being merciful to him — and led him out and left him outside the city.

17 When they had brought him outside, he was told, ‘Flee for your life. Do not look behind you or stop anywhere on the plain. Flee to the hills or you will be swept away.’

18 ‘Oh no, my lord!’ Lot said to them,

19 ‘You have already been very good to your servant and shown me even greater love by saving my life, but I cannot flee to the hills, or disaster will overtake me and I shall die.

20 That town over there is near enough to flee to, and is small. Let me flee there-after all it is only a small place — and so survive.’

21 He replied, ‘I grant you this favour too, and will not overthrow the town you speak of.

22 Hurry, flee to that one, for I cannot do anything until you reach it.’ That is why the town is named Zoar.

23 The sun rose over the horizon just as Lot was entering Zoar.

24 Then Yahweh rained down on Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire of his own sending.

25 He overthrew those cities and the whole plain, with all the people living in the cities and everything that grew there.

26 But Lot’s wife looked back, and was turned into a pillar of salt.

27 Next morning, Abraham hurried to the place where he had stood before Yahweh,

28 and looking towards Sodom and Gomorrah and the whole area of the plain, he saw the smoke rising from the ground like smoke from a furnace.

29 Thus it was that, when God destroyed the cities of the plain, he did not forget Abrahamand he rescued Lot from the midst of the overthrow, when he overthrew the cities whereLot was living.