Sodom and Gomorrah – cities totally obliterated by fire from heaven. So states your Bible.
And now, so states archeological evidences.
The scriptural account of Sodom and Gomorrah’s divine devastation is famous. “Sodom and Gomorrah” is a term generally recognized to represent sin, sexual license, immorality – and horror and devastation.
The scriptural account is far from being simply a myth, nevertheless. Researchers have actually now discovered archeological evidence of a catastrophic occurrence clearly comparable to the one explained in the book of Genesis.
The Dead Sea zone was one time residence to a flourishing civilization– especially the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, according to the Bible. Genesis 13:10 explains the area as a genuine “garden of the Lord,” “well watered every where.”
Archeological evidence has actually uncovered thriving wealth in this area– right up till it reached an abrupt, disconcerting end around 3,700 years earlier. This is the same time frame at which the Bible puts the “fire and brimstone” devastation. In the centuries following this abrupt end of civilization, the area has actually stayed lifeless and uncultivatable. To this day it is entirely saline and rather pretty much dead.
According to the Bible, because of the prevalent evil in Sodom, God condemned it to intense devastation, sparing just Lot and his household. Genesis 19:24 -25:
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.
God destroyed the landscapes, and merged Lot’s wife into salt after she looked back longingly at the city. The Bible associates salt with complete devastation; as an example, after Shechem was dominated, salt was spread throughout the city (Judges 9:45). Appropriately, the location is residence to what is referred to as the Salt Sea (Dead Sea), the world’s deepest active saline lake; 10 times saltier than the ocean.
Jordan’s Tall el-Hammam is a possible area of scriptural Sodom. Excavations there have exposed utter devastation and an instant end of civilization, dating approximately to the 1700s b.c. More devastation was discovered at 5 neighboring excavated sites, and shown by ground surveys at 120 other, smaller sized settlements in the area.
Mud brick structures were discovered to have all of a sudden vanished, leaving just scorched stone structures. Bricks revealed indications of incineration. Skeletons lay mangled. Clay pottery pieces were found to have actually melted into glass. Zircon crystals in the pottery, upon analysis, were revealed to have actually formed within 1 second, the outcome of superheating to temperature levels possibly as hot as the surface area of the sun. A “giant wave” of boiling hot salt had actually swept over the land. There was archeological evidence that mineral grains had actually poured down, brought by sweltering, high-force winds. Ash and particles, multiple feet thick, were left within the broader 193-square-mile location of devastation– a scene of utter carnage of biblical proportions. The approximated local population of 40,000 to 65,000 men and women would have been eliminated instantaneously by the unusual occurrence.
While researchers can discuss whether such amazing devastation was triggered by a meteor-type occurrence or other divine phenomena, what is not arguable is the impact. And that devastation– in area, time and description– precisely matches the biblical occurrence.
To this point, archeological evidence has actually verified loads of characters in the Hebrew Bible (53, according to this count), loads of locations, loads of wars, and so on. Here, at the northern tip of the Dead Sea, we have scientific corroboration for a scriptural wonder. The New Living Translation of verses 24-28 read:
Then the Lord rained down fire and burning sulfur from the sky on Sodom and Gomorrah. He utterly destroyed them, along with the other cities and villages of the plain, wiping out all the people and every bit of vegetation. But Lot’s wife looked back as she was following behind him, and she turned into a pillar of salt. Abraham got up early that morning and hurried out to the place where he had stood in the Lord’s presence. He looked out across the plain toward Sodom and Gomorrah and watched as columns of smoke rose from the cities like smoke from a furnace.
The discoveries at Tall el-Hammam and the surrounding location have actually affirmed exactly such an occurrence. Some type of divine firestorm instantaneously incinerated not just the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, but all the “other cities and towns of the plain,” carbonizing them with temperature levels possibly comparable to the surface area of the sun.” Every bit of plant life” was eliminated, and archeological evidence reveals that the land stayed uncultivable and unwelcoming for the next 500 years (see also Deuteronomy 29:23). Even today, the area stays associated with death.
Given that much of the location was blanketed in boiling salt in the blaze, it’s not unexpected that Lot’s wife would likewise be cemented into a superheated column of salt for her sin of looking back in longing for the immoral cities. And most certainly, the damage would have produced rippling clouds of smoke noticeable for hundreds of miles around– such as what Abraham saw.
Not merely does the Bible provide a witness of intense judgment for sin, so too does archeological evidences. Probably these current discoveries are in fact a prophecy of what is very soon to come upon us.
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