What Does Genesis 19:25 Mean?

Thus he overthrew those cities and the entire plain, including all those living in the cities, and also the vegetation of the land. The scope of the destruction is total: not only the cities but the entire plain, not only the inhabitants but the vegetation. The cities of the plain, which Lot had chosen over Abraham's covenant partnership because they were "well watered, like the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt" (Genesis 13:10), are now so completely overthrown that the vegetation itself is destroyed. The garden-like landscape that attracted Lot's choice no longer exists; the well-watered plain is ash and sulfur.

The comparison of the cities of the plain to the garden of the Lord in Genesis 13 makes the destruction of chapter 19 a kind of anti-creation. The well-watered garden is destroyed by fire; the lush vegetation is burned; the land that resembled Eden becomes the barren wasteland that travelers would observe for generations. The Dead Sea region, where modern scholars locate the cities of the plain, is one of the most desolate landscapes on earth, and the biblical account's explanation for its desolation is the destruction of Genesis 19. The landscape preserved the theological memory of the judgment in its geology.

The total nature of the destruction, including vegetation, is the Old Testament's category of cherem or devoted destruction: total consecration to divine judgment that leaves nothing untouched. The same total destruction will be commanded against certain Canaanite cities in the conquest narratives; the precedent for total destruction in response to total wickedness is established at Sodom and Gomorrah. The theological principle that enables the disciples of Jesus to shake the dust from their feet and move on from cities that reject the message is the Genesis 19 precedent: there is a point at which a city's rejection becomes so complete that the divine response is removal rather than reformation.