CHAPTER XXX

SODOM AND GOMORRAH AND THE CITIES OF THE PLAIN

The eastern border of the Mediterranean Sea or Syria, with that part of Arabia forming the Sinai Peninsula and which lies between the two northern arms of the Red Sea, is a region formerly characterized by extreme volcanic activity. This region includes the greater part of the land promised, according to the Old Testament, to the Children of Israel. Through a large part of this region flows that historic river, the Jordan, until it empties into the Dead Sea, also called the Salt Sea, the Sea of the Plain, and by some Lake Asphaltites because of asphalt or bitumen so abundant on its shores. This river has its source in the Mountains of Lebanon, some distance north of the Sea of Chinnerth, Tiberius, or the Sea of Galilee, which empties into the River Jordan.

As the map in Fig. 50 shows, this famous, though small river, flows between ranges of high hills, or low mountains, that lie on both its eastern and western boundaries; and these parallel ranges extend down to the Gulf of Akaba, which forms the eastern boundary of the Sinai Peninsula. The Sea of Galilee, the valley of the Jordan and the country between the Dead Sea and the Gulf of Akaba, are all, for the most part, considerably below the level of the Mediterranean or the Red Sea; the Sea of Galilee being about 626 feet and the Dead Sea 1312 feet below that line.

That this country has been the scene of great volcanic activities is evident from the volcanic rocks found over different portions of its surface. Moreover, the remains of several craters are still visible. On the western banks of the Jordan numerous dikes and streaks of basalt occur in the limestone that covers parts of the region. Besides there are thermal springs whose waters are at a temperature, according to Daubeny, of 114° F. Then, too, in the neighborhood of the Dead Sea, as well as in the neighborhood of the adjoining mountain ranges, there are quantities of sulphur and asphaltum or bitumen, while on the Dead Sea asphaltum is found floating in sufficient quantity to be a source of considerable revenue to the boatmen who collect it. It was in this region that Sodom, Gomorrah, and other cities of the plain were situated; cities so wicked that God utterly destroyed them by volcanoes and earthquakes.

Volcanic activity was evidently common in this land of the Bible during the times of the prophets of Israel; for in their poetic writings are frequent references to such phenomena--beautiful and majestic similes and metaphors derived from contemplation of live volcanoes.

Jeremiah says:

"Behold, I am against thee, O devouring mountain, saith the Lord, which destroyeth all the earth; and I will stretch out mine hand upon thee, and roll thee down from the rocks, and will make thee a burnt[4] mountain.

"And they shall not take of thee a stone for a corner, nor a stone for foundations; but thou shalt be desolate forever, saith the Lord." (Jer. li, 25-26.)

So, too, the prophet Isaiah says:

"Oh that thou wouldst rend the heavens, that thou wouldst come down, that the mountains might flow down at thy presence!

"As when the melting fire burneth, the fire causeth the water to boil, to make thy name known to thine adversaries, that the nations may tremble at thy presence!

"When thou didst terrible things which we look not for, thou cameth down, the mountains flowed down at thy presence." (Is. lxiv, 1-2.)

So, too, the prophet Nahum says:

"The mountains quake at him, and the hills melt, and the earth is burned at his presence, yea, the world, and all that dwell therein.

"Who can stand before his indignation? And who can abide in the fierceness of his anger? His fury is poured down like fire, and the rocks are thrown down by him." (Nahum, i, 5-6.)

Let us now examine briefly the description Moses gives of the destruction of Sodom, Gomorrah, and other cities of the plain. This destruction occurred during the life time of Abraham and his nephew Lot. The record says that God told Abraham He intended to destroy them because of their wickedness. Then follows in the 18th chapter of Genesis the eloquent pleading of Abraham for one of the doomed cities. At Abraham's earnest plea God promises to spare Sodom if fifty righteous men can be found therein. Obtaining this respite, Abraham repeatedly asks further mercy for the city, and at last receives the sacred promise that the city shall not be destroyed, if but ten righteous people can be found there. An evidence of the great wickedness of the city is seen in the fact that not even ten could be found. Whereupon the Lord gives notice to Lot that the cities were doomed and commands Lot to leave at once with his family.

"Escape for thy life; look not behind thee, neither stay thou in all the plain; escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed!"

Moses describes what happened as follows:

"The sun was risen upon the earth, when Lot entered into Zoar.

"Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven;

"And he overthrew those cities and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground.

"But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.

"And Abraham gat up early in the morning to the place where he stood before the Lord:

"And he looked toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and toward all the land of the plain, and beheld, and lo, the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace." (Gen. xix, 23-28).

This is clearly the description of a volcanic eruption, for throughout the Bible things are described as they appear to be. When Moses speaks of brimstone and fire being rained upon Sodom and Gomorrah out of heaven, he is describing the phenomenon as it would appear to one looking at it. Of course, we know that in volcanic eruptions such things come to the earth through the crater of the volcano. The lava is thrown high into the air, and the hardening, but still red hot, ashes, rain down on the earth from the ash cloud that forms over the mountain. But, looked at from a distance they appear to fall or be rained down from the skies. In exactly the same way, Livy, the Roman historian, tells about showers of stones that fell from heaven on Mt. Albano near Rome for two whole days during the second Punic War. So, too, even Pliny, who had some pretensions to be considered a naturalist, in describing the appearance of Mt. Vesuvius during the terrible eruption of A. D. 79, when Herculaneum and Pompeii were destroyed, speaks of the red hot stones and ashes as falling from above. So, in reality, they did, although, as in the case of the cities of the plain, the materials forming the cloud came from the crater of the volcano below.

As to brimstone falling from the sky, this is by no means an unusual occurrence during many volcanic eruptions, since sulphur is a common material, often thrown out of the craters of some volcanoes.

Note also the statement that, when Abraham rose early in the morning and looked toward the place where Sodom and Gomorrah stood, he saw the smoke of the country go up like the smoke of a furnace. This was, probably, the smoke caused by the burning of the city, or even by the destruction of the crops in their fields, when ignited by the falling red hot ashes. It might also have been partly due to the burning of asphalt thrown out from the fissures in the ground, or to the showers of volcanic ashes that fell from the cloud formed during the eruption.

That the cities there were destroyed by a volcano far in the past appears from things outside of the Bible proper; for Strabo, the Greek geographer, refers to Jewish traditions that thirteen flourishing cities were swallowed up by a volcano, and this finds fair corroboration in the ruins along the western borders of the Dead Sea.

A writer referring to these eruptions says:

"The eruptions themselves have ceased long since, but the effects, which usually succeed them, still continue to be felt at intervals in this country. The coast in general is subject to earthquakes, and history notes several which have changed the face of Antioch, Laodicea, Tripoli, Berytus, Tyre, and Sidon. In 1793 there happened one which spread the greatest ravages. It is said to have destroyed in the valley of Balbec upwards of 20,000 persons."

Attention has already been called to the fact that the valley of the Jordan occupies a depressed or sunken region far below the level of the Mediterranean and the Red Seas. It is the belief of some geologists that this depression was caused by an earthquake which accompanied the volcanic eruption that destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities of the plain. Indeed, some contend that the present site of the valley of the Jordan, including the Sea of Tiberius and the Dead Sea, is a great fissure that was made in the limestone of the valley during the time of that earthquake.

It would appear from the peculiar geography of this section of country that the Jordan River has not always emptied into the Dead Sea, but that before the time of the destruction of the Cities of the Plain the greater part of the country now occupied by the Dead Sea was a fertile valley, and the Jordan emptied directly into the Red Sea at the Gulf of Akaba; that during the disturbance through changes in the valley, or possibly by a lava stream flowing across a portion of the bed of the lower Jordan, or even by a huge accumulation of stones or ashes thrown out from a neighboring volcano, the discharge of the river into the Red Sea was cut off, and that in this way the waters of the rivers began to accumulate and to flow over the plain, thus forming the basin of the Dead Sea.

There is no difficulty in accounting for the saltness of the Dead Sea. There are large quantities of salt, and salty matters generally, in the volcanic rocks of the region, but, even if this were not so, when a river empties into a lake with no outlet to the sea, and which therefore loses its water by evaporation only, the water will gradually become very salt, since the remaining waters of such a lake contain more or less salt, while the water they lose by evaporation contains none.

The waters of the Dead Sea are very salt, but not the saltest in the world. In every 100 pounds of Dead Sea water twenty-four pounds consist of salty matters. The waters of the Great Salt Lake, in Utah, contain eighteen per cent of salty matters. Lake Van, in eastern Turkey, is, perhaps, the saltest lake on earth, it containing no less than thirty-three pounds of salty substances in every 100 pounds of water.

Daubeny, an authority on volcanoes, and quite competent to give an opinion concerning what is possible in this line, describes what he believes took place, as follows:

"Briefly then to recapitulate the train of phenomena by which the destruction of the cities might have been brought about, I would suppose that the River Jordan, prior to that event, continued its course tranquilly through the great longitudinal valley, called El Arabah, into the Gulf of Akaba; that a shower of stones and sand from some neighboring volcano first overwhelmed these places; and that its eruption was followed by a depression of the whole of the region, from some point apparently intermediate between the lake of Tiberius and the mountains of Lebanon, to the watershed in the parallel of 30°, which occurs in the valley of El Arabah above-mentioned. I would thence infer that the waters of the Jordan, pent-up within the valley by a range of mountains to the east and west, and a barrier of elevated table-land to the south, could find no outlet, and consequently by degrees formed a lake in its most depressed portion, which, however, did not occur at once, and therefore is not recorded by Scripture as a part of the catastrophe, though reference is made in another passage of its existence _in what was before the valley of Siddim_."

As regards the turning of Lot's wife into a pillar of salt, Henderson, who has carefully studied this part of the country, remarks: "How natural is the incrustation of his wife on this hypothesis! Remaining in a lower part of the valley, and looking with a wistful eye towards Sodom, she was surrounded, ere she was aware, by the lava, which rising and swelling, at length reached her, and (whilst the volcanic effluvia deprived her of life) incrusted her where she stood, so that being, as it were, embalmed by the salso-bituminous mass, she became a conspicuous beacon and admonitory example of future generations."