SODOM AND GOMORRAH AND THE CITIES OF THE PLAIN
The eastern border of the Mediterranean Sea or Syria, with that part
of Arabia forming the Sinai Peninsula and which lies between the two
northern arms of the Red Sea, is a region formerly characterized by
extreme volcanic activity. This region includes the greater part of
the land promised, according to the Old Testament, to the Children
of Israel. Through a large part of this region flows that historic
river, the Jordan, until it empties into the Dead Sea, also called the
Salt Sea, the Sea of the Plain, and by some Lake Asphaltites because
of asphalt or bitumen so abundant on its shores. This river has its
source in the Mountains of Lebanon, some distance north of the Sea of
Chinnerth, Tiberius, or the Sea of Galilee, which empties into the
River Jordan.
As the map in Fig. 50 shows, this famous, though small river, flows
between ranges of high hills, or low mountains, that lie on both its
eastern and western boundaries; and these parallel ranges extend
down to the Gulf of Akaba, which forms the eastern boundary of the
Sinai Peninsula. The Sea of Galilee, the valley of the Jordan and the
country between the Dead Sea and the Gulf of Akaba, are all, for the
most part, considerably below the level of the Mediterranean or the
Red Sea; the Sea of Galilee being about 626 feet and the Dead Sea 1312
feet below that line.
[Illustration: FIG. 50. SYRIA]
That this country has been the scene of great volcanic activities is
evident from the volcanic rocks found over different portions of its
surface. Moreover, the remains of several craters are still visible.
On the western banks of the Jordan numerous dikes and streaks of
basalt occur in the limestone that covers parts of the region. Besides
there are thermal springs whose waters are at a temperature, according
to Daubeny, of 114° F. Then, too, in the neighborhood of the Dead
Sea, as well as in the neighborhood of the adjoining mountain ranges,
there are quantities of sulphur and asphaltum or bitumen, while on the
Dead Sea asphaltum is found floating in sufficient quantity to be a
source of considerable revenue to the boatmen who collect it. It was
in this region that Sodom, Gomorrah, and other cities of the plain
were situated; cities so wicked that God utterly destroyed them by
volcanoes and earthquakes.
Volcanic activity was evidently common in this land of the Bible
during the times of the prophets of Israel; for in their poetic
writings are frequent references to such phenomena--beautiful and
majestic similes and metaphors derived from contemplation of live
volcanoes.
Jeremiah says:
"Behold, I am against thee, O devouring mountain, saith the
Lord, which destroyeth all the earth; and I will stretch
out mine hand upon thee, and roll thee down from the rocks,
and will make thee a burnt[4] mountain.
"And they shall not take of thee a stone for a corner,
nor a stone for foundations; but thou shalt be desolate
forever, saith the Lord." (Jer. li, 25-26.)
So, too, the prophet Isaiah says:
"Oh that thou wouldst rend the heavens, that thou wouldst
come down, that the mountains might flow down at thy
presence!
"As when the melting fire burneth, the fire causeth the
water to boil, to make thy name known to thine adversaries,
that the nations may tremble at thy presence!
"When thou didst terrible things which we look not for,
thou cameth down, the mountains flowed down at thy
presence." (Is. lxiv, 1-2.)
So, too, the prophet Nahum says:
"The mountains quake at him, and the hills melt, and the
earth is burned at his presence, yea, the world, and all
that dwell therein.
"Who can stand before his indignation? And who can abide in
the fierceness of his anger? His fury is poured down like
fire, and the rocks are thrown down by him." (Nahum, i,
5-6.)
Let us now examine briefly the description Moses gives of the
destruction of Sodom, Gomorrah, and other cities of the plain. This
destruction occurred during the life time of Abraham and his nephew
Lot. The record says that God told Abraham He intended to destroy
them because of their wickedness. Then follows in the 18th chapter
of Genesis the eloquent pleading of Abraham for one of the doomed
cities. At Abraham's earnest plea God promises to spare Sodom if
fifty righteous men can be found therein. Obtaining this respite,
Abraham repeatedly asks further mercy for the city, and at last
receives the sacred promise that the city shall not be destroyed, if
but ten righteous people can be found there. An evidence of the great
wickedness of the city is seen in the fact that not even ten could be
found. Whereupon the Lord gives notice to Lot that the cities were
doomed and commands Lot to leave at once with his family.
"Escape for thy life; look not behind thee, neither stay
thou in all the plain; escape to the mountain, lest thou be
consumed!"
Moses describes what happened as follows:
"The sun was risen upon the earth, when Lot entered into
Zoar.
"Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah
brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven;
"And he overthrew those cities and all the plain, and all
the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the
ground.
"But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a
pillar of salt.
"And Abraham gat up early in the morning to the place where
he stood before the Lord:
"And he looked toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and toward all
the land of the plain, and beheld, and lo, the smoke of
the country went up as the smoke of a furnace." (Gen. xix,
23-28).
This is clearly the description of a volcanic eruption, for throughout
the Bible things are described as they appear to be. When Moses speaks
of brimstone and fire being rained upon Sodom and Gomorrah out of
heaven, he is describing the phenomenon as it would appear to one
looking at it. Of course, we know that in volcanic eruptions such
things come to the earth through the crater of the volcano. The lava
is thrown high into the air, and the hardening, but still red hot,
ashes, rain down on the earth from the ash cloud that forms over the
mountain. But, looked at from a distance they appear to fall or be
rained down from the skies. In exactly the same way, Livy, the Roman
historian, tells about showers of stones that fell from heaven on
Mt. Albano near Rome for two whole days during the second Punic War.
So, too, even Pliny, who had some pretensions to be considered a
naturalist, in describing the appearance of Mt. Vesuvius during the
terrible eruption of A. D. 79, when Herculaneum and Pompeii
were destroyed, speaks of the red hot stones and ashes as falling
from above. So, in reality, they did, although, as in the case of the
cities of the plain, the materials forming the cloud came from the
crater of the volcano below.
As to brimstone falling from the sky, this is by no means an unusual
occurrence during many volcanic eruptions, since sulphur is a common
material, often thrown out of the craters of some volcanoes.
Note also the statement that, when Abraham rose early in the morning
and looked toward the place where Sodom and Gomorrah stood, he saw
the smoke of the country go up like the smoke of a furnace. This was,
probably, the smoke caused by the burning of the city, or even by the
destruction of the crops in their fields, when ignited by the falling
red hot ashes. It might also have been partly due to the burning of
asphalt thrown out from the fissures in the ground, or to the showers
of volcanic ashes that fell from the cloud formed during the eruption.
That the cities there were destroyed by a volcano far in the past
appears from things outside of the Bible proper; for Strabo,
the Greek geographer, refers to Jewish traditions that thirteen
flourishing cities were swallowed up by a volcano, and this finds fair
corroboration in the ruins along the western borders of the Dead Sea.
A writer referring to these eruptions says:
"The eruptions themselves have ceased long since, but the
effects, which usually succeed them, still continue to be
felt at intervals in this country. The coast in general is
subject to earthquakes, and history notes several which
have changed the face of Antioch, Laodicea, Tripoli,
Berytus, Tyre, and Sidon. In 1793 there happened one which
spread the greatest ravages. It is said to have destroyed
in the valley of Balbec upwards of 20,000 persons."
Attention has already been called to the fact that the valley of the
Jordan occupies a depressed or sunken region far below the level
of the Mediterranean and the Red Seas. It is the belief of some
geologists that this depression was caused by an earthquake which
accompanied the volcanic eruption that destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah
and the cities of the plain. Indeed, some contend that the present
site of the valley of the Jordan, including the Sea of Tiberius and
the Dead Sea, is a great fissure that was made in the limestone of the
valley during the time of that earthquake.
It would appear from the peculiar geography of this section of country
that the Jordan River has not always emptied into the Dead Sea, but
that before the time of the destruction of the Cities of the Plain the
greater part of the country now occupied by the Dead Sea was a fertile
valley, and the Jordan emptied directly into the Red Sea at the Gulf
of Akaba; that during the disturbance through changes in the valley,
or possibly by a lava stream flowing across a portion of the bed of
the lower Jordan, or even by a huge accumulation of stones or ashes
thrown out from a neighboring volcano, the discharge of the river into
the Red Sea was cut off, and that in this way the waters of the rivers
began to accumulate and to flow over the plain, thus forming the basin
of the Dead Sea.
There is no difficulty in accounting for the saltness of the Dead
Sea. There are large quantities of salt, and salty matters generally,
in the volcanic rocks of the region, but, even if this were not so,
when a river empties into a lake with no outlet to the sea, and
which therefore loses its water by evaporation only, the water will
gradually become very salt, since the remaining waters of such a lake
contain more or less salt, while the water they lose by evaporation
contains none.
The waters of the Dead Sea are very salt, but not the saltest in
the world. In every 100 pounds of Dead Sea water twenty-four pounds
consist of salty matters. The waters of the Great Salt Lake, in Utah,
contain eighteen per cent of salty matters. Lake Van, in eastern
Turkey, is, perhaps, the saltest lake on earth, it containing no less
than thirty-three pounds of salty substances in every 100 pounds of
water.
Daubeny, an authority on volcanoes, and quite competent to give an
opinion concerning what is possible in this line, describes what he
believes took place, as follows:
"Briefly then to recapitulate the train of phenomena by
which the destruction of the cities might have been brought
about, I would suppose that the River Jordan, prior to
that event, continued its course tranquilly through the
great longitudinal valley, called El Arabah, into the
Gulf of Akaba; that a shower of stones and sand from some
neighboring volcano first overwhelmed these places; and
that its eruption was followed by a depression of the whole
of the region, from some point apparently intermediate
between the lake of Tiberius and the mountains of Lebanon,
to the watershed in the parallel of 30°, which occurs in
the valley of El Arabah above-mentioned. I would thence
infer that the waters of the Jordan, pent-up within the
valley by a range of mountains to the east and west, and a
barrier of elevated table-land to the south, could find no
outlet, and consequently by degrees formed a lake in its
most depressed portion, which, however, did not occur at
once, and therefore is not recorded by Scripture as a part
of the catastrophe, though reference is made in another
passage of its existence _in what was before the valley of
Siddim_."
As regards the turning of Lot's wife into a pillar of salt, Henderson,
who has carefully studied this part of the country, remarks: "How
natural is the incrustation of his wife on this hypothesis! Remaining
in a lower part of the valley, and looking with a wistful eye towards
Sodom, she was surrounded, ere she was aware, by the lava, which
rising and swelling, at length reached her, and (whilst the volcanic
effluvia deprived her of life) incrusted her where she stood, so that
being, as it were, embalmed by the salso-bituminous mass, she became a
conspicuous beacon and admonitory example of future generations."