Who Really Tanked Sodom & Gomorrah?

Who really tanked Sodom & Gommorah?  Was it Chedorlaomer & the other kings, or was it the Cracker Barrel?

When we first meet Sodom & Gomorrah up close & personal, they are at war with each other & their neighbors.   Genesis, starting in Chapter 6, has already described life in that region of the world as life characterized by war, witchcraft, idolatry, & sorcery.


The kings go to war with each other & Lot gets caught in the crossfire.    Abraham, whose name at this point is still Abram, pulls together an extraction team, rescues Lot, & retreats, passing through Salem, where Abram meets Melchizedek, worships the LORD with him, tithes to Melchizedek out of the spoils of war, then meets Bera, the king of Sodom, sees through his offer & then returns home.


In Chapter 18 of Genesis the LORD visits Abraham & later confides to him, announcing His plans to destroy Sodom & Gommorah.   Abraham succeeds in dickering the LORD down to 10 righteous men from 50, & then in Chapter 19, the LORD rains down fire & brimstone upon the cities & turns them into an eternal proverb. 


Immediately beforehand, the angels, who have examined the city, searching for 10 righteous men, share a meal with Lot & his family only to be rudely & abruptly interrupted by the Cracker Barrel, a lynch mob put together by the locals, who profess to being angry because they feel judged, threaten to rape-murder the angels (and anyone else who gets in their way), call out Lot for his alleged hypocrisy (& probably his repentance for having remained among them for so long), & who are eventually struck blind by the angels & the LORD so that Lot & his family can escape. 


The kings provide the overarching cause of the destruction of Sodom & Gommorah — witchcraft, warmongering, idolatry, sorcery, gluttony — & the Cracker Barrel provide the straw that breaks the camels’ back — an act of idolatry, vengeance, & angry religiously motivated bigotry.   They are there in their own name & that of  sins & pseudodeities, & they — not the kings themselves & any standing military — sink Sodom’s ship, taking Gomorrah with them straight to hell itseif where they belonged. 


We live in evil times, & in the United States, our president speaks flippantly in public about prayer & loving our enemies.   We live in a nation in which armed men in masks with guns are manhandling & murdering people, a nation in which an armed group of functional vigilantes rose up in armed rebellion on January 6 & were pardoned by a man morally unqualified to hold office.    


The men of Sodom lived in a fortified city with walls.  They, like their kings, felt empowered to show out, & it wasn’t the kings who directly tanked Sodom & her sister, Gomorrah that day,  it was their Cracker Barrel.    The same thing happened in Gibeah in Judges 19, & it ought to have happened to Ephesus too (Acts 19).   

 

The Canaanite cities are lurking in the background in Leviticus 18 too, as is Egypt.    Ezekiel 16 makes it plain that whatever was going in Jerusalem & the Southern Israelite Kingdom was worse than what went on in Sodom, & Romans 1:18 - 32 makes it clear that Rome was on the same road.   Jude takes it a step further & analogizes between what was going on in Genesis both before & after the Flood & in Sodom in particular & the sorts of things demons do.  


5 So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great things.

How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire! 6 And the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness. The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by hell. 7 For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by mankind, 8 but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. 9 With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God. 10 From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be so. 11 Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and salt water? 12 Can a fig tree, my brothers, bear olives, or a grapevine produce figs? Neither can a salt pond yield fresh water.  (James 3:5–12, ESV)


O LORD, Hear our prayer(s)! 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Favorite Fallacies & Homosexuality

Thesis - The tradition bound view on homosexuality commits a number of logical, epistemic, & exegetical fallacies.  1-  Is - Ought Fallacy  - Human anatomy is said to provide    a blueprint for sexual ethics.  We examined this in my previous article.  A moral “ought” is derived from a physical “is.”  The disputant makes an illicit leap from what is to what ought to be. A classic example is the way some homosexuals defend their sexual ethics by appealing to their biology/genetics.  2 -  Vicious Circularity   - Human anatomy & physiology are raised to the status due a non-arbitrary epistemic warrant.    A non-arbitrary epistemic warrant must be necessary, reasoned, & principled.  In truth, the body is unnecessary to deduce sexual ethics. By way of contrast, God’s nature is definitionally necessary, insofar as God is a necessary being, &, since God is infinite, eternal, & unchangeable in being, w...
Read more

Romans 1:18 - 32 & Leviticus 18

  Paul is following the basic outline of a suzerain covenant in general     & the outline of Lev. 18 in particular.   Shema & Decalogue (Rom. 1:18 - 20)   God’s Image testifies to His attributes & Law.    God created people. His temple bears His Image & runs according to his Law & Gospel.    This corresponds to Lev. 18 : 1 & 2. A - Rom.    1:18 - 19.  God’s wrath falls on those who suppress His image.   B - Rom 1:20  - For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made so that people are without excuse.  What is the teleological intent of the created order?    To serve as an epistemic warrant on par with God Himself? No!  It’s purpose is to serve as a pointer to God who is Himself the only sufficient epistemic warrant for all faith & practice....
Read more

Covenant Theology In Outline Form (Part 11)

Isaiah 6:1- 13 Shema   In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!” And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. Historical Prologue   And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the  Lord  of hosts!” Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth and...
Read more