Genesis 19:4, commentary and pictures

Before the visitors lay down, the men of Sodom, old and young from every quarter, compassed Lot's house round as a lawless mob intent on seizing and abusing the strangers. Their gathering in full strength shows corruption had become universal, with all ages joined in sexual impurity that defiles body and soul. That ruin grew from pride, fullness of bread, abundance of idleness and failure to help the poor, which enfeebled mind and soul and opened the way to unrestrained lust and casting off God's law. Having passed the limits of divine forbearance, the city called for judgment by fire from heaven, yet holy angels came to rescue righteous Lot from its doom. The same universal impurity reappears in the last days, warning against choosing a home for outward advantage among corrupting associations that ruin children and require entire separation.

Words and Setting

Before the visitors had lain down, the men of the city, even the men of Sodom, compassed Lot's house round about. Both old and young took part, all the people from every quarter gathering together around the house. They came as a lawless mob driven by vile passions, intent on seizing the strangers within. Their conduct revealed the city's wickedness and the abuse that strangers faced there.

Their wickedness was so great that they intended to abuse the guests sheltered under Lot's roof. God's angels struck them with blindness so that they could not find the door. This mob forms the danger from which angels protected Lot and led him safely out of Sodom.

Corruption and Causes

The gathering of old and young together from every quarter around the house shows that corruption in Sodom had become universal, pervasive, and actively corrupting, with men of every age and from every part of the city joining in one collective assault. Virtue there lacked safeguards because moral license was taught, and evil practices spread as they were taught to others until even newcomers were drawn in. The city is thus marked by corrupt morals, pervasive corruption and crime, and a demoralized condition whose sins grew so great that they reached heaven, for which the city and its inhabitants were destroyed.

The conduct of that mob was sexual impurity and Sodomitish abuse that defiles those who practice it and degrades thought and morals, corrupting body and soul. It was followed even by married men and women, illustrating extreme corruption and a licentiousness that the world is becoming like again. That debased path of the Sodomites leads to bodily defilement and ruin, and those who persist in it may become unresponsive to reproof and warning.

To become like the Sodomites is to show bold, unrestrained sexual forwardness with old and young together, loss of modesty and real good decent behavior, young women making advances to young men, flirting, common cheap talk and ways, and breaking down all barriers of reserve and true decorum, as when youth sit in meeting exchanging notes while a message from God is presented and think only of getting into each other's society. Such conduct even among professed Christians and professed Sabbath-keepers is offensive to God, a mockery of the Christian name and perversity of character. It is being led and controlled by Satan the great adversary lifting his hellish banner in families, becoming destitute of the Spirit of God, misapplying powers and perverting privileges and opportunities. Unless the moral taste is refined and Christ becomes an abiding principle in the soul, those who venture upon the long forbearance of Jehovah in this way will lose their souls, with few ever seeing heaven, reaping an unwelcome harvest from what they have sown and facing God's close judgments and terrible things in righteousness.

Sodom chose to follow the imaginations of corrupt minds and dishonored God by wicked inventions and wicked works, dead in trespasses and sins and surrounded by a malarious, poisonous spiritual atmosphere, for which its people were to be destroyed and not live. They were steeped in licentiousness and destructive lusts through indulgence, unable to discern the difference between the pure affections and attributes of human nature given by God and corrupting lust. Their polluted and corrupt condition, like the corruption of the world in Noah's days, was linked to the desire to cast aside God's law and restraint. Whole families today are corrupting their way before God in the same way and becoming just as sinful as Sodom and those before the flood, and are in need of being terribly alarmed.

The ruin of the cities of the plain was caused by pride, fullness of bread, abundance of idleness, and failure to strengthen the hand of the poor and needy. Idleness brings terrible results, enfeebling the mind, debasing the soul, and perverting the understanding, and vice and crime follow in its train because Satan is most successful with men in idle hours, lying in ambush to surprise and destroy the unguarded. When wine-drinking blasphemers give tone to public opinion and lead the highest circles of society where money is god, a land of liberty and advantages comes to open degradation of reason and moral powers by wine and tobacco, bold public contempt of the Son of God, delight in infidel boasting, and excess of wild license prepared by the intoxicating cup.

Judgment and Rescue

Sodom had passed the limits of divine forbearance, and its wickedness called for judgment. Sin had kept steadily increasing after the flood because men had not learned that God means what He says, and Sodom was judged by bolts of fire from heaven just as the antediluvian world had been judged by the flood.

God does not exempt the disobedient from judgment while the righteous are saved. Only a few were saved when Sodom was destroyed, though they had been warned, which warns against following the majority. Lot warned his family, but his sons-in-law mocked his faith and perished when the city was destroyed, and he eventually had to flee a city marked by pervasive corruption and crime.

From lightness and frivolity the course degenerated to debasing sins, with the corrupt condition of old and young from every quarter surrounding Lot's house showing inclination and passion bearing sway over reason. Self was their god, and the knowledge of God was nearly obliterated through selfish indulgence of corrupt passions. Eating, drinking, buying, selling, planting, and building occupied thought and time to the neglect of eternal interests, with gluttony and drink prevailing, appetite ruling mind and conscience, health abused, mind unbalanced, and animal propensities strengthened. This sinful indulgence called forth the wrath of God in fire and brimstone that destroyed them all the same day Lot left Sodom, in order to rid the earth of the curse of their contaminating influence, and stands as a warning that the same infatuation with appetite and marriage will prevail in the days of the Son of Man. Sodom was destroyed for the same sin later found among the Canaanites, communion with evil spirits and the corrupt practices that followed from it, standing as a warning that even people who have witnessed God's power can fall into grave sin and face judgment.

Holy angels came to the gates of Sodom on a mission of mercy to a child of God to rescue righteous Lot from its fiery doom, one instance of how in all ages holy angels have ministered to God's people. Lot in the midst of hostile Sodom with the men of the city compassing the house was protected by angels and led out safely from the midst of the city, an example of how in all ages angels are near to Christ's faithful followers. The armies of heaven are encamped about all who love God to deliver them from dangers seen and unseen by the interposition of angels.

Even in a city steeped in sin and moral corruption there can be Lots who stand apart from the surrounding evil and remain faithful amid widespread evil. God had Lot in Sodom, and so in great and wicked New York He has a people who pant after the pure waters of truth as the hart pants after the water brooks, and that city is ready to be worked with the power of God carrying the truth there. Sodom serves as a picture of sinful cities, yet there are Lots in every such place, and God calls reformers to stand for His laws and uphold the training of the mind and the culture of the heart.

Last Days Parallel

The time of Lot was an age of impurity and licentiousness, when social wickedness had spread over all the cities of the plain, with both old and young and all the people from every quarter taking part in the defilement of youth and the corruption of age. That universal social impurity included licensed prostitution and traffic in human bodies, and its historic outlines reappear in the last days in crime, divorce, defilement of youth, corruption of age, and preparation for Armageddon. Christ's parallel of the days of Lot is thereby declared a reality, making the voice of warning urgent before earth's desperate sorrow and the harvest of evil. The verse means want of strict purity, carnality, being sold unto sin, and practicing adultery among men and women professing godliness, with old and young joining together in open carnal demand. That condition defined Sodom and Gomorrah, and the present world repeats it, becoming a second Sodom and Gomorrah and a society sunk in grave immorality as Sodom at large.

The moral condition of Sodom and Gomorrah is being repeated in cities and even country towns. The youth there were not educated to diligent habits but were trained to love excitement, to glorify themselves, and to follow the imagination of their own evil hearts, with lazy holidays treated as essential to health and happiness. That same training of children now produces the same result then and now of depravity, cruelty, violence, and crime.

Sodom and Gomorrah serve as a likeness for modern cities growing worse, whose pursuit of excitement and pleasure draws people from duty and leads to temptation, dissipation, and the weakening of religious and spiritual life. Their corruption was widespread, with men from every part of the city, both young and old, surrounding Lot's house. Their condition is a picture of the world's moral pollution when God's Spirit is withdrawn, warning of the destructive results of living for self and giving oneself to sin. Their polluted and corrupt state is compared with the corruption of the world in Noah's days and linked to the desire to cast aside God's law and restraint.

Home Children Separation

Lot looked only at outward advantage when he chose Sodom, drawn by its beauty and fertility and prosperity like a second Eden, without weighing the corrupting associations and spiritual influence of its people. He entered the city rich, fully intending to keep himself free from its iniquity and to command his household after him, but he signally failed. He left with nothing, led away by an angel's hand, while messengers of wrath waited to pour out fiery blasts to consume the inhabitants and blot out the entrancing beauty of that highly favored city and its suburbs, leaving bleak and bare what God had once made very beautiful. That loss and disaster stands as a warning against choosing a dwelling without regard to moral and spiritual associations.

The mob described — old and young, all the people from every quarter compassing the house — shows how universal the evil had become and reveals the influences among which Lot had placed himself and his family. A family dwelling in such a place is set in an atmosphere of worldliness and unbelief, where children are surrounded by temptation, breathe lax morality and unbelief and indifference to religious things, and constantly see rebellion against parental and divine authority that counteracts the parents. There youth form associations unfavorable to piety and right character, attach themselves to infidels and unbelievers, and cast in their lot with the enemies of God. Seeking worldly wealth and honor in that way ruins the children, weakens the father's own faith, binds up his interests with the inhabitants, and leaves the parents to barely save their own souls with their life-work lost at the cost of the immortal inheritance.

In choosing a home moral and religious influences must therefore come first, for voluntarily placing the family in worldliness and unbelief displeases God and drives holy angels from the home. None should settle like Lot among irreligious, worldly, self-indulgent people, whose molding influence undermines principles approved by God and hedges up the Lord's work. Such a place of moral pollution, perilous especially to one weak in moral power, must be fled as Sodom with no home made there and with entire separation from that class of associates through repentance and confession and forsaking of sin. Yet those whom duty places in trying positions will be enabled to stand uncorrupted if they watch and pray trusting in the grace of Christ, as Lot himself stood uncorrupted amid that pollution, though one carrying unsubdued appetite and passions cannot stand as he did nor expect prosperity and blessing there.

Taking the family into Sodom is the example of the danger of bringing youth into close association with worldly people of every social grade and every kind. The sins of Sodom, shared by men of every age and from every part of the city, are bound up with secret vice and sexual profligacy among children and youth when parents fail to teach and restrain them, while worldly influences allow the corruption to grow. Hence the eyes and ears must be guarded, purity protected, and young people kept away from depraved places and harmful associations. Selfish indulgence and neglected education in the home make hotbeds of iniquity like the wickedness acted out around Lot's dwelling, and only firm, kind discipline can guard youth from growing up in sin.

The sins exposed that night were vile sins that pollute both those who practice them and others with them and defile the temple of God, and those same sins are now cherished by many whose names are on the church books. God's judgments on such defilement have been long delayed but are sure and will soon fall to cut down those who keep polluting themselves and others. The bold and defiant licentiousness of old and young together, walking in the imaginations of their own hearts, was headstrong, independent, persistent despising of grace that mercy could not perpetuate, so that God proved Himself a God of vengeance in destroying them. That end warns those now on the very borders of the heavenly Canaan who with all advantages, light, and evidences of truth fail to purify their souls, showing that the same God who abundantly blesses, is full of compassion, ready to pardon, meets the returning prodigal and heals the bruised and smitten will show Himself strong to punish persistent, independent despisers of His grace.