When the Smoke Rose

Before reading this week’s reflection, I encourage you to slowly read Genesis 18:16 through Genesis 19.

Listen to the Reflection

When the Smoke Rose

The meal beneath Abraham’s tree is ending.

The visitors rise and look toward Sodom, and Abraham walks with them.

Then the LORD says something remarkable:

“For I have known him, in order that he may command his children and his household after him, that they keep the way of the LORD, to do righteousness and justice...”
— Genesis 18:19

And in the very next verse:

“Because the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great...”
— Genesis 18:20

I don’t think we should move past that too quickly.

Abraham’s household is being formed around righteousness and justice.

Sodom is producing an outcry.

Someone is hurting.

Something happening in that city has produced a cry terrible enough to reach heaven.

And once again, the Father hears.

What Had Sodom Become?

Most of us know the Sunday School version.

Sodom was evil. God judged it. Fire fell.

But Scripture gives us a fuller picture.

Centuries later, Ezekiel looked back at Sodom:

“Look, this was the iniquity of your sister Sodom: She and her daughter had pride, fullness of food, and abundance of idleness; neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy.”
— Ezekiel 16:49

Sodom had abundance.

But abundance had hardened into arrogance, and the vulnerable were suffering.

Ancient Jewish history and tradition preserve an even darker memory of Sodom—a wealthy society hostile toward strangers, cruel to the poor, and so hardened that acts of mercy themselves could be punished. One ancient account remembers a young woman killed for secretly feeding a starving man. Jewish teachers connected her cry with the outcry God heard from Sodom.

The Jewish memory of Sodom is remarkably consistent.

Cruelty had become part of the culture.

And Genesis has just shown us another kind of community.

When strangers arrived at Abraham’s home, he ran toward them. He gave them water, shade and food. He welcomed them beneath his tree.

Then those same visitors traveled toward Sodom.

At Abraham’s tent, the stranger was someone to be cared for.

In Sodom, the stranger became someone to be consumed.

Centuries later, Jesus would speak of the hungry, the thirsty, the naked and the stranger:

“Inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these... you did it to Me.”
— Matthew 25:40

Abraham could not have known everything about the strangers standing beneath his tree when he ran to welcome them.

But somehow, in welcoming the stranger, Abraham had welcomed God.

Shall Not the Judge of All the Earth Do Right?

Before the messengers enter Sodom, Abraham stands before the LORD.

And Abraham is troubled.

“Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?”
— Genesis 18:25

What if there are fifty righteous people?

Would You spare the city?

Yes.

Forty-five?

Forty?

Thirty?

Twenty?

Ten?

Each time, God agrees not to destroy the city.

What strikes me is what Abraham never says:

They’re wicked. Give them what they deserve.

Abraham pleads for them.

Ancient Jewish interpreters wrestled deeply with this conversation. Some even heard echoes of Noah’s flood in Abraham’s protest.

Judgment is difficult.

And apparently asking difficult questions about God’s judgment is not an act of rebellion.

Abraham did it standing before the LORD.

And God let him speak.

Abraham Was Still in Lot

By evening, the messengers arrive in Sodom.

Lot rises to meet them, brings them beneath his roof and prepares a meal.

That should sound familiar.

Something of Abraham was still alive in Lot.

But something of Sodom was there too.

When the men of the city surround his house and demand that the visitors be brought outside, Lot does something horrifying.

He offers them his daughters instead.

There is no reason to soften that. Whatever Lot thought he was doing to protect his guests, his moral judgment had become terribly distorted.

Lot had lived in Sodom long enough that Sodom had begun living in Lot.

That is frightening precisely because Lot is not a monster. He is Abraham’s nephew. He knows hospitality. He recognizes evil when it comes pounding at his door—and yet Sodom has changed the way he sees the world.

Perhaps the uncomfortable question is not, How do I keep bad people away from me?

It is:

What has become normal to me simply because it is normal where I live?

They Kept Looking for the Door

The situation becomes violent. The messengers pull Lot inside and strike the men outside with blindness.

But they don’t go home.

“And they struck the men who were at the doorway of the house with blindness, both small and great, so that they became weary trying to find the door.”
— Genesis 19:11

They wore themselves out trying to find it.

Blind. Confused. Unable to find the entrance that had been directly in front of them.

And still they kept reaching.

There is something terribly human about that picture.

Sometimes the most frightening blindness isn’t being unable to see the door, but being unable to imagine that perhaps we should stop looking for it.

Mercy Took Him by the Hand

Morning approaches.

The messengers tell Lot to take his family and leave.

But Genesis says:

“And while he lingered...”

Lot lingered.

After everything that happened during the night, after being warned that the city was about to be destroyed, he still had difficulty leaving.

So the messengers took hold of Lot, his wife and his daughters and brought them outside the city,

“the LORD being merciful to him.”
— Genesis 19:16

Lot did not run heroically toward salvation.

He hesitated.

So mercy took him by the hand.

Even this compromised man. Even after terrible choices. Even when told to run and still lingering.

The Father reached into Sodom and pulled him out.

Then the Fire Fell

And this is where I find the story difficult.

Sodom was wicked.

There were victims whose cries had reached heaven. There was violence, exploitation and cruelty.

But the people living there were still people.

Men. Women. Children. Families.

There were perpetrators and there were victims. There were people who had been born there and had never known another world.

It is easy for me to imagine myself safely standing beside Abraham.

I would have welcomed the strangers. I would never have become like those people.

But I don’t know that.

If I had been born in Sodom...

If my parents had been Sodomites...

If I had grown up breathing that air and learning those values...

I don’t know who I would have become.

And suddenly the people inside Sodom aren’t quite as easy to dismiss.

Then the fire fell.

“Then the LORD rained brimstone and fire on Sodom and Gomorrah, from the LORD out of the heavens.”
— Genesis 19:24

We could rush to explain it. We could build a theological defense of God or remind ourselves how wicked the city had become.

But Genesis doesn’t ask us to defend God.

It tells us what happened.

The fire fell.

And the cities were gone.