Genesis
14: 1-3
At
the time when Amraphel was king of Shinar, Arioch king of Ellasar,
Kedorlaomer king of Elam and Tidal king of Goyim,
these
kings went to war against Bera king of Sodom, Birsha king of
Gomorrah, Shinab king of Admah, Shemeber king of Zeboyim, and the
king of Bela (that is, Zoar).
All
these joined together in the valley of Siddim (the same is the Salt
Sea).
[Heb. Hamelach Yam]
NOTE:
Zoara,
the biblical Zoar, previously called Bela (Cp. Genesis
14:8),
was one of the five "cities of the plain" – a pentapolis
apparently
located along the lower Jordan
Valley and
the Dead Sea plain.
Genesis
14: 10a
Now
the Valley of Siddim was full
of tar pits
(bitumen), and when the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah fled, some
of the men fell into them.
NOTE:
Bitumen-
(also known as “asphaltum” or tar) is a black, oily, viscous form
of petroleum, a naturally-occurring organic byproduct of decomposed
plants. It is waterproof and
flammable,
and this remarkable natural substance has been used by humans for a
wide variety of tasks and tools for at least the past 40,000 years.
Natural
bitumen is the thickest form of petroleum
there
is, made up of 83% carbon, 10% hydrogen and lesser amounts of oxygen,
nitrogen, sulfur, and other elements.
It
is a natural polymer of low molecular weight with a remarkable
ability to change with temperature variations: at lower temperatures,
it is rigid and brittle, at room temperature it is flexible, at
higher temperatures bitumen flows. Bitumen deposits occur naturally
throughout the world--the best known are Trinidad's Pitch Lake and
the La Brea Tar Pit in California, but
significant deposits are found in the Dead Sea,
Venezuela, Switzerland, and northeastern Alberta, Canada. The
chemical composition and consistency of these deposits vary
significantly. In some places, bitumen extrudes naturally from
terrestrial sources, in others
it appears in liquid pools which can harden into mounds
(Cp. Genesis
14: 10a),
and in still others it oozes from underwater seeps, washing up as
tarballs along sandy beaches and rocky shorelines.
Genesis
19: 12-13
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,
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.”
Genesis
19: 15-17
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.”
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.
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!”
NOTE:
Why was there such an urgency?
Genesis
19: 18a 19b
But
Lot said to them, “No, my lords, please!
…and
you 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.
NOTE:Is
Lot now too elderly (infirm) or injured where he can't make the
journey? He mentions that the disaster will “overtake” him, so
does he know what kind of destruction it will be, and/or had it
already started initially?
Genesis
19: 21-22
He
said to him, “Very well, I will grant this request too; I will not
overthrow the town you speak of.
But
flee there quickly, because I cannot do anything until you reach it.”
(That is why the town was called Zoar.
NOTE:
The town of Zoar was promised to be saved and not destroyed.
Genesis
19: 23-26
By
the time Lot reached Zoar, the
sun had risen over the land.
Then
the Lord rained down burning sulfur/brimstone (Heb. gaph`r'ith) on
Sodom and Gomorrah—from the Lord out of the heavens.
Thus
he overthrew those cities and the entire plain, destroying all those
living in the cities—and also the vegetation in the land. But Lot’s
wife looked back, and she became a pillar
of salt.
(Heb. n'tsib melach).
NOTE:
The same Hebrew word here is also used in chapter 14, so lot's wife's
body was vaporized or disintegrated into some kind of form like a
pile salt crystals (glazed
over with a silicon-permeated saline crystallized substance??
COMMENTARY:
Sulfur
has been known since ancient times. In the Bible it is called
“brimstone.” It can be found in its elemental state around
volcano vents.
Sulfur
is also believed to have been a component of ‘Greek Fire,’ a
weapon similar to a flamethrower used by the Byzantine Empire.
Sulfur
burns with a very satisfying blue flame – its old name is
brimstone, which means ‘burn stone’ or ‘stone that burns.’
When
sulfur burns it produces sulfur dioxide, a poisonous gas. Let's just
imagine for a moment, outside of supernatural or divine judgment,
ancient catapults launching burning stones of sulfur, where the
explosive, fiery impact releases poisonous gas destroying all life;
human, animal, or vegetation. Not only, that, but since these cities
were in the vicinity of tar pits (bitumen), if a fiery missile of
sulfur hit those pools or mounds of tar, that could have been quite
frightening, as well as deadly. This bombardment would have possibly
engulfed the entire plain with dense smoke, exactly as described in
Genesis 19: 27-28, which reads: Early the next morning Abraham got up
and returned to the place where he had stood before the Lord.
He
looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah, toward all
the land of the plain, and he saw dense smoke rising from the land,
like smoke from a furnace.
This
reasoning has some merit, but a better scientific explanation is that
the destruction was caused by the ignition of combustible gases and
hydro-thermal explosions by earthquakes from shifting of tectonic
plates in the area; which can be found in the Open Source scientific
research paper below:
Reference:
Citation:
Gilat
AL, Vol A (2015) Sodom and Gomorrah: Fires Created by Ignition of
Combustible Gases by Earthquake-Impelled Thermobaric-Hydrothermal
Explosions. J Geol Geosci 4: 202. doi:10.4172/2381-8719.1000202
Robert Randle
776
Commerce St Apt 701
Tacoma,
WA 98402
January
29, 2018
robertrandle51@yahoo.com
