The Rescue of Lot from the Destruction of Sodom: God finds it necessary to execute judgment again, and as was the case in the deluge, God rescues those who are righteous. The great difference in these two accounts of judgment is that this time God punishes only a small region where wickedness had increased intolerably, rather than the entire inhabited land.

The narrator tells about Lot’s fleeing Sodom (vv. 1–29) and the children of Lot’s daughters (vv. 30–38). In the first section there are five scenes, in which Lot extends hospitality to the two messengers (vv. 1–11), Lot prepares to flee Sodom (vv. 12–15), Lot’s family flees (vv. 16–23), the cities of the plain are destroyed (vv. 23–26), and Abraham learns about the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah (vv. 27–29).

19:1–2  Two of the three messenger…