Sodom and Gomorrah Destroyed

Genesis 19:1-21 (NIV)

 

1 The two angels arrived at Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting in the gateway of the city. When he saw them, he got up to meet them and bowed down with his face to the ground. 2 “My lords,” he said, “please turn aside to your servant’s house. You can wash your feet and spend the night and then go on your way early in the morning.”

“No,” they answered, “we will spend the night in the square.”

3 But he insisted so strongly that they did go with him and entered his house. He prepared a meal for them, baking bread without yeast, and they ate. 4 Before they had gone to bed, all the men from every part of the city of Sodom—both young and old—surrounded the house. 5 They called to Lot, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we can have sex with them.”

6 Lot went outside to meet them and shut the door behind him 7 and said, “No, my friends. Don’t do this wicked thing. 8 Look, I have two daughters who have never slept with a man. Let me bring them out to you, and you can do what you like with them. But don’t do anything to these men, for they have come under the protection of my roof.”

9 “Get out of our way,” they replied. “This fellow came here as a foreigner, and now he wants to play the judge! We’ll treat you worse than them.” They kept bringing pressure on Lot and moved forward to break down the door.

10 But the men inside reached out and pulled Lot back into the house and shut the door. 11 Then they struck the men who were at the door of the house, young and old, with blindness so that they could not find the door.

12 The two men said to Lot, “Do you have anyone else here—sons-in-law, sons or daughters, or anyone else in the city who belongs to you? Get them out of here, 13 because we are going to destroy this place. The outcry to the Lord against its people is so great that he has sent us to destroy it.”

14 So Lot went out and spoke to his sons-in-law, who were pledged to marry[a] his daughters. He said, “Hurry and get out of this place, because the Lord is about to destroy the city!” But his sons-in-law thought he was joking.

15 With the coming of dawn, the angels urged Lot, saying, “Hurry! Take your wife and your two daughters who are here, or you will be swept away when the city is punished.”

16 When he hesitated, the men grasped his hand and the hands of his wife and of his two daughters and led them safely out of the city, for the Lord was merciful to them. 17 As soon as they had brought them out, one of them said, “Flee for your lives! Don’t look back, and don’t stop anywhere in the plain! Flee to the mountains or you will be swept away!”

18 But Lot said to them, “No, my lords,[b] please! 19 Your[c] servant has found favor in your[d] eyes, and you[e] have shown great kindness to me in sparing my life. But I can’t flee to the mountains; this disaster will overtake me, and I’ll die. 20 Look, here is a town near enough to run to, and it is small. Let me flee to it—it is very small, isn’t it? Then my life will be spared.”

21 He said to him, “Very well, I will grant this request too; I will not overthrow the town you speak of. 22 But flee there quickly, because I cannot do anything until you reach it.”

 

This is the most used passage to knock down the gay community. The word sodomy was coined by some idiot in the 12th century as mentioned below, and ever since that time. Sodom and Gomorrah's doom has been linked to Sodomy.

 

First thing to notice is in Verse 4 the passage states that all men (young and old). We estimate in today's society that roughtly 10% of the population are either of a gay or bi-sexual nature, and even that is a high number. If this passage was about homosexuality, why is that all the men (not the 10%) but all the men were interested in raping and having sex with these two men? And if these men were homosexuals, why offer your daughters to them for sex? They would have no interest.

 

Forcing sex on a man was a way of humiliating them. During war, besides raping the women and slaughtering the children, the victors would often also "sodomize" the defeated soldiers. The idea behind this was to insult the men by treating them like women. The practice of male to male anal sex was that it made a macho man and made them as inferiour as women, and pieces of property at the service of men.

 

Then you probably saying to yourself, what a cruel man Lot was to offer his two virgin daughter's to be raped by all the men. As sad and corrupt as it is in our day, women in those times were simply possessions or objects and because of their low status, what Lot did was considered a minor transgression. However, it seems as though in this case, when the crowd wouldn't stop, the angels ended up saving lot and his daughters and blinded all the men.

 

Another example of inhospitality and women as objects can be found in scripture at Judges 19:20-26

 

Men on the other hand were obviously those who were in power. A man having sex with another man or of course forcing himself on another man, was a way to make one of them subserviant (less than) or effeminate. This was seen as detestable. Rape was seen as a way to humiliate enemies.

 

Although this passage clearly is somewhat about sex, the big picture here is that Sodom and Gommorah was destroyed due to severe wickedness, inhospitatilty and breaking the laws of God. The law to treat aliens well. Because the Israelites were once aliens in the land.  Deuteronomy 24:17-18   Leviticus 19:33-34

 

Jesus also had this to say about inhospitality in Luke 10:8-12

 

“When you enter a town and are welcomed, eat what is offered to you.

Heal the sick who are there and tell them,

‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’

But when you enter a town and are not welcomed, go into its streets and say,

‘Even the dust of your town we wipe from our feet as a warning to you.

Yet be sure of this: The kingdom of God has come near.’

I tell you, it will be more bearable on that day for Sodom than for that town.

 

Lot was the only one kind enough to offer the travelers a place to stay. The city of Sodom was located in the Desert and to stay outside in the cold of night, would have been deadly. The rule of Lot's society as well as those of the Semitic and Arabic cultures was to be hosbitable to travelers. It was a very strict rule of that day , that no one was to harm even an enemy who had been offered a place to stay.

 

The following scriptures clearly state the exact sin of Sodom and Gommorah:

Ezekial 16:48-50   Zephaniah 2:8-10  

 

According to the Wisdom of Solomon 19:13-14 the sin of Sodom was "bitter hatred of strangers...making slaves of guest who were their benefactors."

 

By the latter half of the 12th century, an increasingly conformist Europe found minorities of all kinds, including homosexuals, to be irritating. Tracts against them began to appear, and propaganda intended to incite anger became common. One of the favorites was the accusation that minorities were guilty of killing Christian children.

 

The rise of intolerance did not subside, but as the years ticked by, it actually increased, resulting in the witchhunts in France, which depopulated whole regions of that country, and the Spanish Inquisition, which continued it’s harsh repression into the 17th century. While the Spanish Inquisition was without a doubt the harshest, the Inquisition itself was a church-wide phenomenon whose harshly repressive hand was felt throughout the Catholic world.

 

The Muslims and Jews were, of course, not the only ones to feel the heavy hand of the Inquisition. Sexual minorities were particular targets, as the pressure to conform increased. Social critics began to single out gay people for special persecution. Peter Cantor (d. 1197) was the first to argue that Romans 1:26-27 referred specifically to gay people. The term “sodomy” came, for the first time and against all theological precedent, to refer exclusively to homosexual sex.

 

At Cantor’s urging, the Lateran III Council of 1179 became the first to rule specifically on homosexual acts, along with moneylending, heresy, as well as the arch-heresies of Judaism and Islam. Even though the wording of the regulations on sex meant to punish all non-procreative sex, it was eventually construed, particularly in later centuries, as referring to homosexual sex specifically. It passed into the permanent collections of canon law in the following century, and became the basis of the Catholic ban on homosexuality.

 

The sin of Sodom in today's society as quoted by Daniel A Helmeniak PH.D in his book, "What the Bible Really Says About Homosexuality"

 

Even Jesus understood the sin of Sodom as the sin of inhospitality. Other passages in the Bible

come right out and say the same thing. Yet people continue to cite the story of Sodom

to condemn gay and lesbian people.

 

There is a sad irony about the story of Sodom when understood in its own historical setting. People oppose and

abuse homosexual men and women for being different, odd, strange or, as they say, "queer." Lesbian women and gay men are just not allowed to fit in. They are made to be outsiders, foreigners in our society. They are disowned by their families, separated from their children, fired from their jobs, evicted from apartments and neighborhoods, insulted by public figures, denounced from the pulpit, vilified on religious radio and TV, and then beaten in the schools and killed on the streets and in the backwoods of our nation. All this is done in the name of religion and supposed Judeo-Christian morality.

 

Such wickedness is the very sin of which the people of Sodom were guilty. Such cruelty is what the Bible truly condemns over and over again.

 

So to those of you who oppress homosexuals because of the supposed "sin of Sodom" may yourselves be the real "sodomites," as the Bible understands it.

 

James 1:12

Blessed is the one who perseveres under trial because, having stood the test, that person will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love him.

 

Psalm 16:5-6

The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup; you hold my lot. The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance.

 

 

More reading to think about:   Bible abuse directed at Homosexuals

                        The Surprising History of Homosexuality and Homophobia

                        "Sodomy" Does Not Mean What You Think it Means