God tells Abraham that the city of Sodom is said to be wicked, that the sins of the citizens are the worst of all. If He finds this rumor to be true, He will demolish every last piece of the city. Abraham asks God if He plans on destroying the entire city's population or if he will only kill the evil ones. So he gets God to promise that if He can find 50 innocent men there, He will leave the entire city in peace. Kind-hearted Abraham gets God to whittle the number down to 10. Two angels arrive at Sodom, and meet a guy named Lot. Lot seems to be a pretty decent guy (there's the first of our needed 10) and offers a place for them in his home; he won't hear of them sleeping out in the street. After he prepares for them a nice hot meal, men from all over Sodom crowd Lot's house and demand him to hand over the visitors so that they may have their way with them. Lot doesn't wish this fate upon his guests, so he offers his two virgin daughters to them instead. They laugh at this. The ruthless men won't take no for an answer, and just as they are about to attack, the angels pull Lot back into the house, locking the door behind him. The angels blind the men outside, leaving them to wonder aimlessly back home. The angels then tell Lot to take his family and leave the city so they might escape the smiting that will occur. When he hears of this planned destruction of Sodom, he tells his daughters' fiances; they take this warning as a joke and laugh it off. So the angels take Lot and his family out of the city, and tell him to run away as far as possible, into the mountains. Lot is afraid of what is out there, and begs them to allow them to run to the next city over, Zoar. They agree to this, and promise not to destroy his new homeland. Then God rained down that famous fire and brimstone and destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. Lot's wife looked back at this destruction and turned into a pillar of salt.
http://www.israel-a-history-of.com/images/SodomSetting2.jpg
It's nice to note that Sodom is directly below the Dead Sea.
I don't think this was unfair punishment. I mean, God made Abraham a promise that He only had to find 10 good people in the entire city in order to save it all, and He couldn't. They kind of all sucked except for Lot. He's the only noted good guy here. And for those that argue this in the Christian-anti-gay war, don't even start here. No no. Not here. Go outside and do that where you can dirty up the grass with your fighting. Digressing. If we get into hypotheticals, unfair would have been if God had let Lot be destroyed with the city; he didn't do anything to deserve that. That would be like a teacher giving the class extra homework because of that one kid every hates, the one that never shuts up and always calls out and won't sit down for more than 2 seconds. Now, it may not be that bad, but if it's only one kid messing around, punish that one kid. Don't take it out on the rest of us. And don't give me that crap about trying to show the kid the weight of one's actions. This is no place for that life lesson. Try that when it matters so he REALLY learns from his mistakes. I shouldn't have to suffer for him to learn that right now in this moment. Make him learn it on his time, not mine.
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