Bible Commentaries
Genesis 19

Verses 1-38

Genesis 19:0

Notice:

I. Sodom's sinfulness. Her sins were committed amidst an unbounded flush of prosperity; they were committed amidst scenes of much natural loveliness, Nature being outraged before the eye of her most beautiful forms; and they were committed not only in opposition to Nature's silent, but to God's spoken, warnings.

II. Notice Sodom's warnings. One was given by the entrance of Lot within its gates; another was given by the advent of Chedorlaomer and the invaders from the east. Abraham and Melchizedek cast their sublime and awful shadows from the King's Dale southward upon Gomorrah's walls; but the sinners within felt not the hallowing sense of their presence, trembled not at the steps of their majesty.

III. Notice Sodom's intercessor. Abraham's prayer shows: (1) the confidence that existed between himself and God; (2) it shows God's personal knowledge of evil; (3) it shows God's great reluctance to punish; (4) it gives proof of the tremendous guilt of Sodom.

IV. This terrible catastrophe lies in a bye-path of the Divine procedure; it did not relate immediately to the general course of the patriarchal dispensation, and yet what an awful "aside" did the fall of these cities utter! It must have struck Abraham with a new sense of the evil of sin and of the holiness and justice of God. In the Dead Sea, Israel felt, and we should feel too, that God's anger was, so to speak, sunk and slumbering on the outskirts of the land, and might at any moment awake and march out in all its fury on the impenitent.

G. Gilfillan, Alpha and Omega, vol. ii., p. 1.

References: Genesis 19:0 F. W. Robertson, Notes on Genesis, p. 43p; R. S. Candlish, Book of Genesis, vol. i., p. 313; Expositor, 2nd series, vol. i., p. 443; Expositor, 3rd series, vol. ii., p. 203, vol. iii., p. 69; J. Foster, Lectures, vol. i., p. 103.Genesis 19:12 . Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. x., No. 601.Genesis 19:12 , Genesis 19:13 . W. Harris, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xiv., p. 399. Genesis 19:12 , Genesis 19:26 . Preacher's Monthly, vol. iii., p. 107. Genesis 19:12-30 . Clergyman's Magazine, vol. iv., p. 91, and vol. xxii., p. 156. Genesis 19:14 . Weekly Pulpit, vol. i. (1877), p. 264; G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons, p. 120. Genesis 19:15 . Spurgeon, My Sermon Notes (1884), p. 9. Genesis 19:16 . Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xiv., No. 789; Bishop Ryle, Holiness, its Nature, etc., p. 212.Genesis 19:16 , Genesis 19:17 . S. Leathes, Truth and Life, p. 40. Genesis 19:17 . A. W. Hare, Sermons to a Country Congregation, vol. i., p. 201; S. A. Brooke, The Unity of God and Man, p. 143; F. O. Morris, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xvii., p. 251; G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons, p. 119. Genesis 19:17-19 . Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. x., No. 550. Genesis 19:20 . Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. v., No. 248; Homiletic Magazine, vol. xii., p. 81.Genesis 19:24 , Genesis 19:25 . Parker, vol. i., p. 222.Genesis 19:26 . Homiletic Magazine, vol. xiv., p. 171.Genesis 19:27 , Genesis 19:28 . Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. x., No. 602.Genesis 19:27-29 . R. S. Candlish, Book of Genesis, vol. i., p. 330. Genesis 19:29 . E. Cooper, Fifty-two Sermons, p. 93.

Verse 26

Genesis 19:26

This is the whole of the record. The offence consisted only in a look; and that a look directed towards a city which may have been her birthplace, and which contained many that were dear to her by relationship and by friendship. The vengeance taken was most signal and appalling. Here is a case in which there seems a want of proportion between the sin and its recompense. But the fact that our Lord uses the admonition "Remember Lot's wife" shows that a moral end was to be subserved by the Divine interference. Lot's wife was meant to be an example to the men of every generation.

I. God's moral government required the interference. The punishment took its measure, not so much from the greatness of the sin, as from the nature of the lessons to be given.

II. Consider the sin committed by Lot's wife. She looked back; it may be she attempted to turn back. She, a rescued one, had no right to pause and grieve for such sinners as were left behind in Sodom. She was guilty of a positive act of disobedience, for the parting injunction of the angel had been "Look not behind thee."

III. Her fate teaches a great lesson as to the duty of decision in religion. Deliverance is conditional. If we flee as those who hear behind them the tramp of the destroyer, if we rush as those who see the daylight hastening away, we shall be saved; but if our heart is with the stuff, or the friends that remain behind in Sodom, then "Remember Lot's wife." "No man having put his hand to the plough and looking back is fit for the kingdom of heaven."

H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit, No. 2445.

References: Genesis 19:26 . R. M. McCheyne, Additional Remains, p. 249; R. W. Evans, Parochial Sermons, p. 30; Preacher's Monthly, vol. v., p. 99.