1 At this time, the Sodomites grew arrogant from their riches and good fortune. They sinned against men and offended God, forgetting His favors, hating foreigners,⁠a and engaging in perversions. God was therefore indignant and resolved to punish them for their pride, destroying both their city and their country so nothing would grow from it. 2 Once God decided the fate of the Sodomites, Abraham was sitting near the Oak of Mambre at his tent’s door and saw three angels, mistaking them for travelers. He ran to greet them, urging them to accept hospitality and dine with him. They agreed, so he had fresh cakes made and roasted a calf, serving it under the oak. While they feasted, they asked for his wife Sarah, and when he replied she was inside, they foretold that she would bear a son on their next visit. Sarah, overhearing, laughed, thinking it impossible at her age of ninety—and with Abraham at one hundred. The angels then revealed themselves as divine messengers: one came about the child, two to destroy Sodom. 3 Hearing this, Abraham was distressed for the Sodomites and approached God, begging Him not to destroy the innocent with the guilty. God assured him He would spare all if only ten good people could be found. Seeing no such men existed, Abraham was silent. The two angels entered the city, and Lot invited them to stay with him, for he was generous and hospitable, imitating Abraham’s goodness. When the men of Sodom saw the strangers’ extraordinary beauty, they plotted to abuse them. Although Lot urged them to be decent and honor his houseguests (even offering his own daughters in despair), they refused his pleas. 4 God was angry at their audacious acts and inflicted them with blindness, dooming the Sodomites to destruction. God told Lot of their coming devastation, so he fled with his wife and two virgin daughters; his sons-in-law, believing none of it, stayed behind. God rained lightning upon Sodom, incinerating the city and wiping out the surrounding land. Lot’s wife looked back at the city out of curiosity, though God had forbidden it, and turned into a pillar of salt. I have seen it; it still stands to this day. As for Lot and his daughters, they settled in a small place still called Zoar (Hebrew for “little”). There he lived miserably, short on food and companions. 5 Believing all mankind destroyed, his daughters got Lot drunk and approached him in order to preserve the human race. They conceived sons: the elder daughter named her child Moab (meaning from the father), the younger named hers Ammon (meaning from a relative). Moabites and Ammonites are both in the region of Celesyria, and that is how Lot departed from Sodom.