Lot, instead of cheerfully obeying the commandment of the Lord, appealed to the great mercy shown to him in the preservation of his life, and to the impossibility of his escaping to the mountains, without the evil overtaking him, and entreated therefore that he might be allowed to take refuge in the small and neighbouring city, i.e., in Bela, which received the name of Zoar (Gen 14:2) on account of Lot's calling it little. Zoar, the Σηγωìρ of the lxx, and Segor of the crusaders, is hardly to be sought for on the peninsula which projects a long way into the southern half of the Dead Sea, in the Ghor of el Mezraa, as Irby and Robinson ( Pal. iii. p. 481) suppose; it is much more probably to be found on the south-eastern point of the Dead Sea, in the Ghor of el Szaphia, at the opening of the Wady el Ahsa (vid., v. Raumer, Pal. p. 273, Anm. 14).
verses 23-25
“ When the sun had risen and Lot had come towards Zoar (i.e., was on the way thither, but had not yet arrived), Jehovah caused it to rain brimstone and fire from Jehovah out of heaven, and overthrew those cities, and the whole plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and the produce of the earth.” In the words “ Jehovah caused it to rain from Jehovah” there is no distinction implied between the hidden and the manifested God, between the Jehovah present upon earth in His angels who called down the judgment, and the Jehovah enthroned in heaven who sent it down; but the expression “from Jehovah” is emphatica repetitio, quod non usitato naturae ordine tunc Deus pluerit, sed tanquam exerta manu palam fulminaverit praeter solitum morem: ut satis constaret nullis causis naturalibus conflatam fuisse pluviam illam ex igne et sulphure ( Calvin). The rain of fire and brimstone was not a mere storm with lightning, which set on fire the soil already overcharged with naphtha and sulphur. The two passages, Psa 11:6 and Eze 38:22, cannot be adduced as proofs that lightning is ever called fire and brimstone in the Scriptures, for in both passages there is an allusion to the event recorded here. The words are to be understood quite literally, as meaning that brimstone and fire, i.e., burning brimstone, fell from the sky, even though the examples of burning bituminous matter falling upon the earth which are given in Oedmann's vermischte Sammlungen (iii. 120) may be called in question by historical criticism. By this rain of fire and brimstone not only were the cities and their inhabitants
