How Lot’s Wife Became a Pillar of Salt - The BAS Library (2024)

Abraham famously argued with God about his decision to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah: “Will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked?” the patriarch asks the Master of the Universe. “Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city; will you then sweep away the place and not forgive it for the fifty righteous who are in it?” God agrees for the sake of the innocent fifty. A superb negotiator, Abraham bargains with the Lord until he agrees to save the city even for only ten righteous souls (Genesis 18:23–32). But there were not even ten. “The Lord rained […]

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For a technical geological account of the material in this article, see Amos Frumkin, “Formation and Dating of a Salt Pillar in Mount Sedom Diapir, Israel,” Bulletin of the Geological Society of America 121 (2009), pp. 286–293.

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C. Migowski, A. Agnon, R. Bookman, J.F.W. Negendank and M. Stein, “Recurrence Pattern of Holocene Earthquakes along the Dead Sea Transform Revealed by Varve-counting and Radiocarbon Dating of Lacustrine Sediments,” Earth and Planetary Science Letters 222 (2004), pp. 301–314.

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G.M. Harris & A.P. Beardow, “The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah; a Geotechnical Perspective,” Quarterly Journal of Engineering Geology 28 (1995), pp. 349–362. See also D. Neev & K.O. Emery, The Destruction of Sodom, Gomorrah, and Jericho (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1995).

4.

W.E. Rast, “Bab edh-Dhr’a and the Origin of the Sodom Saga,” in L.G. Perdue, L.E. Toombs and G.L. Johnson, eds., Archaeology and Biblical Interpretation (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1987), pp. 185–201.