Lessons from Sodom and Gomorrah - What the Old Testament Writers Saw

Ask most people why God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah and they will tell you that it was homosexuality.  In fact, homosexuality has become so popular of an answer that its own popularity has established it as absolute.  It's one of those issues that if you say something enough it becomes unquestioned fact.   In the following study, I am not looking to justify or attack homosexuality;  I am only looking at how the Bible writers used the story of Sodom and Gomorrah to speak to the issues of their own day.

But examine everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good...(1 Thessalonians 5:21).

What I am looking for in this study is what the Old Testament tells us about Sodom and Gomorrah.  Does it tell us that homosexuality was the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah?  Does it mention its brutality and gang rape?  What did those two cities do that deserved total destruction?  What sins destroy any country?

GENESIS

Genesis never comments on or explains anything about what happened at Sodom and Gomorrah; it never gives us a commentary.  We get no further lessons or explanations...just the story.

Although Genesis offers us nothing more than the story, Genesis does give us a look into why God would destroy the entire world and all of its civilizations.  

In the story of Noah, there was one sin mentioned that caused the destruction of the entire world.  I'm sure there were plenty of other sins not mentioned, but only one was clearly pointed out - violence (Genesis 6:11-13).   Other sins relating to the flood were generic in nature and give us no clear definition of what sin or sins were prevailent.  They simply state that human thoughts were evil and they committed evils.  What were those thoughts?  And what were those evils?  Any further definitions are human interpretations - our own reading into the passage.

In following the Genesis context, the context of why God destroyed the first time, violence was repeated both in Noah's day and with Sodom and Gomorrah as well.  So in the very least we can start there.  Violence is found both in Noah's day and in Lot's day.  And in both stories, God destroyed and killed people.

A closer look at Sodom and Gomorrah tells us that the violence of those cities were sexual in nature, and homosexual in particular.  It is imoportant here to point out that the sexual violence of the mob in Lot's daywas what sealed the doom of Sodom and Gomorrah.   However, the angels came to Sodom and Gomorrah, not because of that sin, but rather because of the sins of those cities that had already been committed before the angels visited.  What those sins were, were never mentioned in Genesis.

Here is how the rest of the Hebrew scriptures comment on the sin and destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.  For clarity, seperate the destruction from the sin, because as you will see, the Old Testament writers do seperate the two.  In fact, most writers comment more on the destruction of those cities more than the sins of those cities.

DEUTERONOMY

In Deuteronomy God warned His people to stay away from idolatry, breaking the Covenant of Moses, and following other gods.  To emphasize this point, Moses told he people that if they followed other gods and broke God's covenant, their land would become like Sodom and Gomorrah (IE: it would be uninhabitable and unable to produce).  

Using Sodom and Gomorrah as an example of how powerful God's wrath can be is typical for most of the Old Testament.  Deuteronomy is also a good template for the Old Testament, because it says nothing about why God destroyed the two cities.  Instead, the OT writers used the Sodom and Gomorrah story as a lesson against the sins of their own day.  In the day Deuteronomy was written, the issue of homosexuality was not as important as the issue of idolatry or breaking the covenant that Israel had with God.  So Moses saw Sodom and Gomorrah as an example of the destruction that God can accomplish.  Moses did not see it as a lesson against homosexuality or violence.

We will see from other OT passages that when the OT writers thought about Sodom and Gomorrah, they looked at their own day and saw how their own issues (issues usually unrelated to homosexuality) led to a "Sodom and Gomorrah like, fire and brimstone/wrath of God" kind of destruction.

ISAIAH

The very look on their faces gives them away. They display their sin like the people of Sodom and don't even try to hide it. They are doomed! They have brought destruction upon themselves (Isaiah 3:9).

Like Deuteronomy, Isaiah uses the Sodom and Gomorrah story as a lesson for his own people in his own time.  Isaiah said that God's people paraded their sins just like Sodom and Gomorrah, thus giving an indirect warning of destruction with the rebuke.  Besides being bold about their sins, what was the sin or what were the sins in Isaiah's day?  The verse immediately before Isiah 3:9 stated that what the people were saying and doing were evil... but what were they saying and doing?  Isaih didn't give us any more detail.  But the verses following summarized what was on Isaiah's heart from the very beginning of the book:

The LORD comes forward to pronounce judgment on the elders and rulers of his people: "You have ruined Israel, my vineyard. Your houses are filled with things stolen from the poor. How dare you crush my people, grinding the faces of the poor into the dust?" demands the Lord, the LORD of Heaven's Armies (Isaiah 3:14-15).

Isaiah 1 also uses the example of the two cities for the same purpose and because of the same sin.  In a nutshell, according to Isaiah, Israel's sin was their bad treatment of the poor.
In other Isaiah passages:

1.  In chapter one (verse 10), Isaiah called the leadership of Israel "Rulers of Sodom and Gomorrah," who practiced God's Law in sacrificing and festivals but ignored the needs of the poor and the powerless.  
2.  In the same chapter (1:9), Isaiah used Sodom and Gomorrah as examples of what Israel would become if the Lord did not intervene and leave behind a remnant of survivors.
3.  Babylon would be destroyed like Sodom and Gomorrah because of its pride and because it conquered Jerusalem and its temple (Isaiah 13-14).

JEREMIAH

Chapter 23

Like Isaiah, Jeremiah used the story of Sodom and Gomorrah for the sins of his own time.  The sins in Jeremiah 23 were: 
1.  Prophets committed adultery.
2.  Prophets lied.
3.  Prophets led people astray.
4.  Prophets didn't warn people about the consequences of their sins, instead they encouraged them.
5.  Prophets didn't warn people of God's coming wrath.
6.  Prophets said they spoke for God when they did not know what God really wanted to say.  In other words they spoke from what was on their own hearts.

In other Jeremiah passages:
1.  Because Edom terrified people and was proud, God would make it like Sodom and Gomorrah - nobody would live there again (Jer. 49:15-19).
2.  Because Babylon gloated over the taking of Jerusalem, destroyed the temple, and grew fat from the spoils, God would make them like Sodom and Gomorrah - nobody would live there again (Jer. 50).

EZEKIEL

Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.  They were haughty and did detestable things before me.  Therefore I did away with them as you have seen
(Ezekiel 16:49-50).

Although every other biblical writer mentioned above and below focused on the sins of their own day, and compared those sins to the undefined evil of Sodom and Gomorrah; Ezekiel took this to a whole new level.  Indeed, we will see that in other verses Ezekiel used the Sodom and Gomorrah story in the same way as the other writers - pointing out that like Sodom and Gomorrah they would be destroyed by the wrath of God, and like those two cities, evil permeated his present era - but in this passage, Ezekiel saw the sins of his own day, and said those same sins are the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah.  In doing this, Ezekiel was the first and only Old Testament writer to tell us the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah were.    

What were the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah?   

1.  The sins were the same sins we see everywhere in our own day - people in Sodom and Gomorrah were living a good life while they were unconcerned about the needs of the poor and the needy.
2.  They were arrogant.
3.  They practiced detestable things.

Even though detestable things were not defined, I would assume that they are related to Sodom's men wanting to rape the two visitors of Sodom. Notice I said, "assume," because there is no clear definition of what Ezekiel meant when he said they practiced detestable things.  For all I know, he may have been referring to idolatry, which was considered detestable. 

At this point one might say that the context of Genesis nowhere stated idolatry; but the context of Genesis likewise nowhere stated anything about the rich and the poor which Ezekiel did say was the sin of Sodom and her sisters. It is possible that Ezekiel felt that homosexuality was considered detestable (Leviticus conisidered it an abomination), but homosexuality was not openly stated by Ezekiel.  And to make homosexuality the "detestable thing" in Ezekiel's mind is to put it there artificially from our own judgments.

It is possible that Ezekiel didn't mention homosexaulity in particular because it had gone underground in his day and was therefore not considered a big deal in his day.  Remember, the prophets (like us) were mostly concerned with the sins of their own day - not with the sins of the past or the future.

In the end, Ezekiel was the only one who named the sins that compelled two angels to come into Sodom in order to judge whether or not to destroy the cities.  The sins that Ezekiel named that were committed before the angels came were the sins that compelled angels to come down from heaven.  They were the sins that reached to the heavens because they were so evil.  And they were the sins that had built up to an incredibly burdensome amount.  Homosexual rape was only the outward manifestation of deeper evil that had been brooding within the culture of Sodom and Gomorrah... the sins of injustice and pride and the sin that was considered detestable - whatever sin that was.

THERE ARE SINS WORSE THAN SODOM AND GOMORRAH'S

You not only walked in their ways and copied their detestable practices, but in all your ways you soon became more depraved than they (Ezekiel 16:47).

In the same context of the previous section, Ezekiel told his audience that Israel's sinfulness, corruption and depravities are worse those of Sodom and Gomorrah's.  This means there were sins that were worse than neglecting the poor and worse than homosexual rape.  In fact, Israel's sins during the time of Ezekiel were so bad than it made Sodom and Gomorrah righteous in comparison (Ezekiel 16:51-52).

WHAT IS THE SIN WORSE THAN SODOM AND GOMORRAH'S?

Ezekiel 16:59 briefly mentioned breaking the Covenant, which is possibly the sin that Ezekiel believed was worse than Sodom and Gomorrah's sin.  I say "possibly" because although it is the only sin mention in this section, it is very possible that Ezekiel was generalizing about all types of sin.  And yet, it is intriguing that he does mention breaking the covenant....

If breaking the covenant is worse than any sin of Sodom and Gomorrah, we have a whole new can of worms, a whole new study.  How was Israel breaking the covenant?  For that you will need to look elsewhere.

OTHER BOOKS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

Amos 4:11 uses Sodom and Gomorrah as comparisons to the overthrow of Jerusalem.  
"I destroyed some of your cities, as I destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. Those of you who survived were like charred sticks pulled from a fire. But still you would not return to me," says the LORD.

In Zephaniah 2:9, Moab was compared to Sodom, and Edom was compared to Gomorrah because they would be destroyed. 

Neither of these two verses reveal anything new about Sodom and Gomorrah.

CONCLUSIONS

The story of Sodom and Gomorrah must have been a popular story in Israel.  After Genesis the writers of the Bible never needed to retell the story because their audience knew it already.

We cannot go back and ask the common person what lessons and warnings they gleened from the story of the two cities; but we do have a few writers who gave their own commentaries on the story.  For these writers the lessons were not about homosexuality, violence, treatment of the stranger or rape.  For them the lessons from Sodom and Gomorrah were precisely this:  God can and will destroy a city or a nation when it becomes too sinful. 

The sins that destroy any nation depended upon the time the writer was writing.  Throughout the Old Testament, idolatry, breaking God's covenant, corrupt leadership and neglecting the needs of the poor were on top of the list of the sins that best mirrored the evil of Sodom and Gomorrah.

The only place in the Old Testament that clearly mentioned the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah was found in Ezekiel.  Surprisingly, Ezekiel did not point to the rape, homosexuality, or violence of Sodom; rather he focused on the economic immorality going on in Sodom and Gomorrah more than anything else.  As a sidenote he mentioned that they also committed detestable things.  Unfortuneately, "detestable things' is left undefined, leaving us to our assumptions.