Search

1The two angels came to Sodom at evening. Lot sat in the gate of Sodom. Lot saw them, and rose up to meet them. He bowed himself with his face to the earth, 2and he said, “See now, my lords, please come into your servant’s house, stay all night, wash your feet, and you can rise up early, and go on your way.”

They said, “No, but we will stay in the street all night.”

3He urged them greatly, and they came in with him, and entered into his house. He made them a feast, and baked unleavened bread, and they ate. 4But before they lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, surrounded the house, both young and old, all the people from every quarter. 5They called to Lot, and said to him, “Where are the men who came in to you this night? Bring them out to us, that we may have sex with them.”

6Lot went out to them through the door, and shut the door after himself. 7He said, “Please, my brothers, don’t act so wickedly. 8See now, I have two virgin daughters. Please let me bring them out to you, and you may do to them what seems good to you. Only don’t do anything to these men, because they have come under the shadow of my roof.”

9They said, “Stand back!” Then they said, “This one fellow came in to live as a foreigner, and he appoints himself a judge. Now we will deal worse with you than with them!” They pressed hard on the man Lot, and came near to break the door. 10But the men reached out their hand, and brought Lot into the house to them, and shut the door. 11They struck the men who were at the door of the house with blindness, both small and great, so that they wearied themselves to find the door.

12The men said to Lot, “Do you have anybody else here? Sons-in-law, your sons, your daughters, and whomever you have in the city, bring them out of the place: 13for we will destroy this place, because the outcry against them has grown so great before Yahweh that Yahweh has sent us to destroy it.”

14Lot went out, and spoke to his sons-in-law, who were pledged to marry his daughters, and said, “Get up! Get out of this place, for Yahweh will destroy the city!”

But he seemed to his sons-in-law to be joking. 15When the morning came, then the angels hurried Lot, saying, “Get up! Take your wife and your two daughters who are here, lest you be consumed in the iniquity of the city.” 16But he lingered; and the men grabbed his hand, his wife’s hand, and his two daughters’ hands, Yahweh being merciful to him; and they took him out, and set him outside of the city. 17It came to pass, when they had taken them out, that he said, “Escape for your life! Don’t look behind you, and don’t stay anywhere in the plain. Escape to the mountains, lest you be consumed!”

18Lot said to them, “Oh, not so, my lord. 19See now, your servant has found favor in your sight, and you have magnified your loving kindness, which you have shown to me in saving my life. I can’t escape to the mountain, lest evil overtake me, and I die. 20See now, this city is near to flee to, and it is a little one. Oh let me escape there (isn’t it a little one?), and my soul will live.”

21He said to him, “Behold, I have granted your request concerning this thing also, that I will not overthrow the city of which you have spoken. 22Hurry, escape there, for I can’t do anything until you get there.” Therefore the name of the city was called Zoar.

23The sun had risen on the earth when Lot came to Zoar. 24Then Yahweh rained on Sodom and on Gomorrah sulfur and fire from Yahweh out of the sky. 25He overthrew those cities, all the plain, all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew on the ground. 26But Lot’s wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.

27Abraham went up early in the morning to the place where he had stood before Yahweh. 28He looked toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and toward all the land of the plain, and saw that the smoke of the land went up as the smoke of a furnace.

29When God destroyed the cities of the plain, God remembered Abraham, and sent Lot out of the middle of the overthrow, when he overthrew the cities in which Lot lived.

30Lot went up out of Zoar, and lived in the mountain, and his two daughters with him; for he was afraid to live in Zoar. He lived in a cave with his two daughters. 31The firstborn said to the younger, “Our father is old, and there is not a man in the earth to come in to us in the way of all the earth. 32Come, let’s make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, that we may preserve our father’s family line.” 33They made their father drink wine that night: and the firstborn went in, and lay with her father. He didn’t know when she lay down, nor when she arose. 34It came to pass on the next day, that the firstborn said to the younger, “Behold, I lay last night with my father. Let’s make him drink wine again tonight. You go in, and lie with him, that we may preserve our father’s family line.” 35They made their father drink wine that night also. The younger went and lay with him. He didn’t know when she lay down, nor when she got up. 36Thus both of Lot’s daughters were with child by their father. 37The firstborn bore a son, and named him Moab. He is the father of the Moabites to this day. 38The younger also bore a son, and called his name Ben Ammi. He is the father of the children of Ammon to this day.

Place

Bethlehem

Type
City
Location
31.704, 35.207

The Town of Bethlehem

Site Study | Hershel Wayne House | Bethlehem

The town of Bethlehem (House of Bread) lies in the Judean hills about five miles south of Jerusalem. We find the first mention of Bethlehem of Judea in Genesis 35:19 and 48:7.  In Scripture, it is sometimes also called Ephrathah (Mic 5:2). 

This is where Rachel died and was buried according to Genesis 35:19. Her grave now resides in the town of Bethlehem, guarded by the state of Israel. 

The town is also known as the City of David (Luke 2:4), because of his birth there, and also where Samuel anointed David as king (1 Sam 16:4-13). 

Bethlehem takes on special significance because it is to this Judean town that Joseph and Mary traveled to be registered, since Joseph was a descendant of David, under the decree of Caesar Augustus. This is where Jesus was born in fulfillment of Scripture (Luke 2:1-7; Mic 5:2).  Also, Herod sent his soldiers to Bethlehem to have the child Jesus put to death since he viewed him as a rival to his kingdom.

Shepherds in the Fields

Site Study | Hershel Wayne House

About a mile east of Bethlehem, near the village of Beit Sahur is the Greek Orthodox church commemorating the place where the angels appeared to the shepherds. An archaeological survey was conducted at the site in 1972 by Vassilios Tzaferis, who identified evidence that the cave over which the church was built was used as early as the second half of the fourth century A.D. In the cave, he found that the natural rock floor had been leveled, and a mosaic floor was put in. The mosaic floor contained an eight pointed star and equilateral crosses. The presence of crosses means the floor was made before 427, when Emperor Theodosius II forbade this practice.

See also Bethlehem

Bibliography. Finegan, Jack, The Archaeology of the New Testament: The Life of Jesus and the Beginning of the Early Church, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), 40, 42.

Bethlehem (בֵּ֥ית לָֽחֶם, bēṯ lāḥem)

Site Study | Brian Kvasnica

Bethlehem resides in the hill country of Judah on the ridge route between Jerusalem and Hebron. To the West of Bethlehem is ample agricultural land and to the east is the Judean Desert – good for shepherding--- which descends down to the Dead Sea. It may be that its location with good farming land brought about the name Beit Lechem – “house of bread,” or the name in Arabic related to shepherding, Beit Lacham, “house of meat.” Both traditions of farming and shepherding play an important place here in the Biblical stories: Boaz had a field which Ruth gleaned from (Ruth 2), David tended Jesse’s sheep (1 Sam 17), and was anointed here by Samuel (1 Sam 16). And, shepherds heard the good news about the Messiah’s birth (Luke 2).

Tel Beit Lehem today is mainly covered by the Nativity Square and the Nativity Church but a small portion of the tel on the east side is still bare and was surveyed in 1969 by Gutman and Berman, confirming both Bronze and Iron Age occupation. While tradition points to a well north of the tel where three of David’s mighty men drew water for David after breaking through the Philistine garrison (2 Sam 23:14,16), the only real water sources came from the southeast in the area of “Solomon’s Pools” or “Artas,” likely biblical Etam (2 Chr 11:6; Greek Apan/Aitan).

Not only was Yeshua (Jesus) born in Bethlehem as Micah 5:2 foretold, but Herod murdered the innocents in the area (Matt 2:8, 16) and Hadrian built a sacred grove to Adonis after pounding the messianic Bar Kochva supporters into submission (Jerome, Ep. ad Paul, lviii.3). Jerome, supported by Paula and her daughter Eustochium, came permanently to Bethlehem in AD 382 to study Hebrew and translate the Hebrew Bible into the common language, Latin. His translation remained the foundation for all Western Scriptural reading for 1600 years.

Multiple excavations by Harvey, Vincent and Abel in the early 1900’s and subsequent studies have revealed three main levels of architectural remains of the Church of the Nativity: an early Roman church represented by floor mosaics from Constantine’s era (about AD 325), a Byzantine Church built by Justinian in the sixth century AD which amazingly still stands today, and Crusader restorations in the twelfth-century AD, as seen in the mosaic decoration on the high walls of the nave. The altar of the Church of the Nativity is built upon a large cave structure that was the venerated place of the Yeshua’s birth already from the second century AD (Justin Martyr and the Protoevangelium of James).

Bethlehem (House of Bread)

Site Study | Daniel G Garland

Bethlehem (House of Bread) is a town in the Judean hills about five miles south of Jerusalem.  In Scripture, it is sometimes called Ephrathah (Micah 5:2).  Rachel died and was buried near Bethlehem, according to Genesis 35:19.  It is the town to which Naomi returned with Ruth (Ruth 1:1, 19).  Called the City of David (Luke 2:4) because of his birth there, Bethlehem is also where Samuel anointed David King (1 Sam 16:4-13).  Because both Joseph and Mary descended from David, Bethlehem is the town to which they traveled to register for taxation under the decree of Caesar Augustus, and where Jesus was born in fulfillment of Scripture (Luke 2:1-7; Micah 5:2).  When Herod tried to kill Jesus by ordering the deaths of male infants two years old and under, Bethlehem became the grisly scene for what has been called the massacre of innocents (Matt 2:16-18).  Bethlehem’s location on the road south to Egypt facilitated Mary and Joseph’s escape with Jesus when warned by an angel of the Lord (Matt 2:13-15)—DG.

Person & place data: Theographic Bible Metadata by Robert Rouse (Viz.Bible), CC BY-SA 4.0.