It was very early in the morning when Lot came forth from the city—not far from the break of day. As soon as he was without the walls, the messengers urged him not to tarry there or imagine that he was yet safe, but to press forward with all speed, until he reached the mountain. "Escape for thy life," said they "Look not behind thee, neither stay thou in all the plain; escape to the mountain lest thou be consumed." Lot was, however, afraid to go into the mountains. They were wild and desolate. His wife and his daughters were with him and it was yet dark. To take so helpless a company into such solitudes at such a time, seemed awful to him, and he begged to be permitted to retire to Zoar. Zoar was a small town on the eastern side of the plain, just at the foot of the mountains, at a place where a lateral valley opened, through which a stream descended to the plain. Lot begged that he might be permitted to go to Zoar, and that that city might be spared. His prayer was granted. A promise was given him that Zoar should be saved, and he was directed to proceed thither without delay. He accordingly went eastward across the plain and reached Zoar, just as the sun was rising. His wife, instead of going diligently on with her husband, lingered and loitered on the way, and was lost. The words are, "She became a pillar of salt." Precisely what is intended by this expression is somewhat uncertain; at any rate she was destroyed, and Lot escaped with his daughters alone into Zoar. Immediately afterward Sodom and Gomorrah were overwhelmed. The description of the catastrophe is given in the following words:
"The Lord rained upon Sodom and 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.
"And Abraham got 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. 24, 25, 27, 28.
THE PLAIN.