Deuteronomy 29:23

Hebrew Bible

21 The Lord will single him out for judgment from all the tribes of Israel according to all the curses of the covenant written in this scroll of the law. 22 The generation to come—your descendants who will rise up after you, as well as the foreigner who will come from distant places—will see the afflictions of that land and the illnesses that the Lord has brought on it. 23 The whole land will be covered with brimstone, salt, and burning debris; it will not be planted nor will it sprout or produce grass. It will resemble the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboyim, which the Lord destroyed in his intense anger. 24 Then all the nations will ask, ‘Why has the Lord done all this to this land? What is this fierce, heated display of anger all about?’ 25 Then people will say, ‘Because they abandoned the covenant of the Lord, the God of their ancestors, which he made with them when he brought them out of the land of Egypt.

Lamentations 4:6

Hebrew Bible

4 ד (Dalet) The infant’s tongue sticks to the roof of its mouth due to thirst; little children beg for bread, but no one gives them even a morsel. 5 ה (He) Those who once feasted on delicacies are now starving to death in the streets. Those who grew up wearing expensive clothes are now dying amid garbage. 6 ו (Vav) The punishment of my people exceeds that of Sodom, which was overthrown in a moment with no one to help her. 7 ז (Zayin) Our consecrated ones were brighter than snow, whiter than milk; their bodies more ruddy than corals, their hair like lapis lazuli. 8 ח (Khet) Now their appearance is darker than soot; they are not recognized in the streets. Their skin has shriveled on their bones; it is dried up, like tree bark.

 Notes and References

"... Mark was not the first writer to employ the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah as an example in predicting the judgement of God upon Jerusalem, as similar uses occur in Lamentations 4:6; Deuteronomy 29:23; Isaiah 1:9–10. Both Matthew and Luke use Sodom and Gomorrah in a number of woe statements against those who reject Jesus’ message (Matthew 10:15; 11:23–24; Luke 10:12; 17:29) suggesting that this was a popular motif in Christian thinking. Indeed, Paul had cited Sodom and Gomorrah in writing to the Roman Christians: he cited Isaiah 1:9, which originally referred to the survivors of the invasion of the Assyrians, but he used it to explain that God saved a ‘remnant’ (the Gentiles) after Israel had failed (Romans 9:29) ..."

Incigneri, Brian J. The Gospel to the Romans: The Setting and Rhetoric of Mark’s Gospel (pp. 136-137) Brill, 2003

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