As the visitors looked toward Sodom and departed, Abraham walked with them. God said the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah was great and their sin was grave. He would examine whether their conduct matched the outcry that had reached him, and two of the visitors went toward Sodom.
Abraham remained before God and asked whether the righteous would be swept away with the wicked. He began with fifty righteous people, and God said he would spare the whole place for their sake. Abraham continued carefully, asking about forty-five, forty, thirty, twenty, and finally ten. Each time God said he would not destroy the city if that many righteous people were found.
Two angels reached Sodom that evening. Lot met them at the gate and persuaded them to stay in his house. Before they slept, the men of the city surrounded the house and demanded that the visitors be brought outside. When Lot resisted, the crowd threatened him as well. The angels pulled Lot inside and struck those at the doorway with blindness.
The angels warned Lot to gather his family because the city would be destroyed. His future sons-in-law thought he was joking. At dawn Lot still hesitated, so the angels grasped him, his wife, and his two daughters and led them out. They were told not to look back or stop in the plain. Lot pleaded to flee instead to the nearby small town of Zoar.
The sun had risen when Lot entered Zoar. Fire and sulfur fell on Sodom and Gomorrah, overturning the cities, the plain, the inhabitants, and the vegetation. Lot’s wife looked back and became a pillar of salt. The next morning Abraham saw smoke rising from the land like smoke from a furnace.
When God destroyed the cities of the plain, he remembered Abraham. He brought Lot out of the catastrophe that overwhelmed the cities where Lot had lived.