Genesis 19 (WEB)
Dr. Steve Collins, Professor of Archaeology at Trinity Southwest University, and director of the dig at Tall el-Hammam in Jordan, speaks to several Jordanian students about the reasons he believes the site to be the location of ancient Sodom.
The Bible says that Abraham went down into the southern desert.
It says that he came back and went from place to place with Lot.
Abraham and Lot.
They went from place to place until they came to Bethel and Ai.
Now where are Bethel and Ai?
Bethel and Ai are ten miles north of Jerusalem.
So like, what is that?
15 kilometers north of Jerusalem on the highest hill.
Do you see the highest hill on the horizon?
That's where Bethel and Ai are located.
Now, it says that from that location, Lot and Abraham decided their clans and their flocks were too big to stay together.
So Abraham says to Lot, okay, if you go to the left, I will go to the right.
If you go to the right, I will go to the left.
Then it says, from that hill, Lot lifted up his eyes and saw that the circle of the Jordan, little word kikar in the text, the word kikar, circle,
was well watered.
Like the Garden of God, like the Garden of Eden, okay?
Like Egypt.
Egypt is watered by the Nile that overflows.
This does the same thing.
So from that hill, then it says, Lot could see all of the cities of the Kikar, the plain, and see them.
And it says he came eastward from there and pitched his tent as far as Sodom.
Is that possible?
Yeah, it's easy to walk.
One day, one day walk.
Down, across, here.
This is the main trade route.
The main trade route passes here, right here.
It's even in the Egyptian texts.
Oh, wow.
Okay, come on.
This is the trade route that goes through here.
So…
From there, Lot comes only eastward.
He doesn't go south.
So a lot of people think Bab-edh-Dhra, Numeira, the southern part of the Dead Sea, is where Sodom is located.
It's impossible.
Because number one, it says Lot could see the entire Kikar of the Jordan.
And the Jordan is defined in the Old Testament in five different passages, it says that the Jordan starts up in the Lebanon mountains, flows into the Sea of Galilee, the Kinneret,
comes down through the channel.
By the way, what does Hayarden mean?
What does Jordan mean?
Jordan is the river.
It means descent.
In the ancient language, it means the descent.
So it says that the Jordan then, the descent, of that water comes to the Bay of the Dead Sea at the mouth of the Jordan below Pisgah Nebo.
So the Jordan does not end past the Dead Sea.
Why?
Because it means descent.
If you hit the lowest part, the descent ends.
And the Bible specifically says that that's where the Jordan Valley ends, right there.
The Dead Sea is not in the Jordan part of the Rift Valley.
It's called the Sea of the Desert.
It's called the Sea of the Salt.
It's called many things.
But this is fresh water.
That is dead water.
Okay?
So they are not the same.
And so the cities of the plain, Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboim, are all on the Jordan plain.
Not just any old plain, but the word means a circle.
In fact, that word in the Old Testament and in Egyptian, in Akkadian, in every Near Eastern language means either a talent, like a flat circular metal.
A talent of gold is a flat circular piece of metal.
Or it means a flat circular loaf of bread, which we all do, right?
Pita bread.
There's about ten different names for bread, but it's flat, circular bread.
That's what that word kikar means.
Flat loaf of bread, circular ingot of metal.
In Hebrew, in Egyptian.
Yeah, but kikar is in which language?
It's Hebrew.
Oh, it's Hebrew.
It's also in Arabic.
There's a similar word for circle or roundabout.
In fact, in Jerusalem, if you go to Jerusalem, the traffic circles…
You'll see that this…
Why do they call this the circle?
Because it looks like a great big green disk.
And if you come down from the north, the hills of the valley are very narrow, to the river.
And you can see by the Dead Sea, the hills narrow down to the Dead Sea.
Like this.
But right here is a big 25 kilometer wide bulge.
And this is what it's talking about.
Now, the Bible also lists all of the cities on this side of the river.
All the Transjordan cities, it lists in south to north order.
Same as the Egyptian.
All the ancient Egyptians, they had lists of the cities in this area, and they're all listed in south to north order.
The Bible does the same thing.
Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboim.
It's the southernmost of the major cities in this area, which it is.
This one, by the way, remember the hill we parked at a while ago where we picked you up?
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
That's a good candidate for, it's another Bronze Age city, for…
Amora.
Right there.
Around the corner, you get the other cities.
And they're all along the same trade route.
Going south, here, starting here, to north.
Now, the Bible also says that Sodom is the largest.
Okay, let's just stop at Sodom because I need to translate this before I forget anything.
The book of Genesis in the Bible also says that Sodom is the largest of the cities because it's always listed first.
It's the only one ever mentioned by itself.
The others are always in a list.
Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboim.
But Sodom is mentioned several times by itself.
And the king of Sodom is the only one that speaks in the story.
So he's the spokesman for all the others.
So now, if we can conclude that the Bible says that Sodom is the largest Bronze Age city on the eastern side of the Jordan disk, visible from Bethel and Ai,
which it is.
We've taken pictures of this site from there.
We've excavated there for six years.
Then I suppose if you wanted to find Sodom, you would come here and look for the biggest Bronze Age city on the eastern side of the Jordan.
And that's what you're standing on.
This is it.
If this isn't Sodom, then the Bible is totally wrong about the location of it.
Because this is where it specifies it is located.
Now, not only that, but the archaeology confirms it was destroyed.
And I say three things.
It's in the right place.
It's in exactly the right time.
And it has all the right stuff.
It has the destruction layers.
It has the walls.
It says, Lot sat in the gateway of Sodom.
It's a fortified stone.
So, it has all of the features, and it's exactly where the Bible says it should be.
By the way, all the other archaeologists and scholars down through history, except for the 19th century, in the 19th century, they followed the Bible to Sodom, and they stood on the top of this tall.
Wilson, Conder, Thompson, Selah Merrill, all these old scholars back in the 1800s, they came to this area looking at their Bibles, looking for all the biblical sites.
Of course, there was no archaeology then.
They just saw this big pile of ruins.
And they said, well, which one of these ruins is Sodom?
We don't know, but it has to be one of these because it's in the right place.
And they didn't pick up anything?
No, archaeology didn't even exist in the 1870s.
It didn't even exist.
But they saw the ruins, and they were sure that they were in the right place.
So how did Sodom get that way, in the Dead Sea?
Some people put it in the Dead Sea, some people put it to the south.
How did Sodom get there?
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 on 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.