The problem with Sodom was its arrogant indifference to the poor and vulnerable, as shown by the violent hate crime it attempted to commit against two visiting angels. This arose, in turn, from its affluence and its sensual focus. All of these problems characterize the modern world, including the Church (where they lead to often-violent divisions). The traditional Christian interpretation of the Sodom story prevents us from seeing this.
Both Jude and 2 Peter 2 speak of Sodom and its destruction in the context of false teachers and the division and destruction they cause. But what was the problem that led to Sodom’s destruction?
A long-standing Christian tradition identifies the capital sin of Sodom as mere tolerance of individuals’ homosexual behavior–identifying homosexuality as a sin “other people” commit that must be severely punished, whether they are believers or not, or God is liable to destroy everyone in the community. This tradition refuses to consider the possibility that the cause of Sodom’s destruction was an inward attitude that the poor and vulnerable were placed among them for their exploitation. However, as will be shown below, the interpretation that Sodom was destroyed because of its exploitation of the needy is actually supported by all biblical references to Sodom, only a few of which weakly and inferentially support the traditional interpretation.
I would submit that, by converting the references to Sodom in Jude and 2 Peter into instructions to forcibly suppress the outward behaviors of “other people” rather than as a call to carefully consider our own attitudes–and those of the people who assume to lead us–several of the Church Fathers missed the point Peter and Jude were making, and much of modern Christianity also misses the point.
(How the assumed moral imperative to regulate the sexual behavior of unbelievers and other imperatives to enforce individual morality by secular law gradually became a part of official Christian teaching are the subject of my ongoing series on the Politicization of Christianity).
In discussing the reasons for Sodom’s destruction, it should first be recalled that neither 2 Peter 2 nor Jude deal primarily with sexual behavior. As discussed briefly in a previous section of this work, the main thrust of 2 Peter 2 is that false teachers have crept in among the church, just as false prophets crept in among Israel, creating division and leading people away from salvation. These false teachers only sometimes appear to be licentious, but instead often outwardly appear to be morally strict and super-pious (see 1 Timothy 4:1-5, Matthew 23:23-28). What characterizes these false teachers is not their outwardly wild (or super-pious) living but their underlying motivation: greed. While they are, in fact, unstable, and cannot keep their “eyes” from adultery, and they pursue greed and their other lusts as well, they usually do so stealthily. Similarly, the previous section on False Believers and Divisive Persons in Jude shows that the thrust of Jude is the divisions caused by false believers–people who profess faith in Christ to gain entry to the organized Church for their own self-centered purposes, but do not know him. It will be recalled that Jude identified the core motivations of false believers who create divisions for their own ends as 1) arrogant self-sufficiency (example: Cain), 2) greed (example: Balaam) and 3) lust for recognition and power (example: Korah).
With that introduction, it should come as no surprise that the prophet Ezekiel identified the underlying problem with Sodom that led to its destruction as its wealthy arrogance and indifference to the suffering of the poor:
Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had arrogance, plenty of food, and carefree ease, but she did not help the poor and needy. So they were haughty and committed abominations before Me. Therefore I removed them when I saw it.
Ezekiel 16:49-50 (NASB).
The theme of chapter 16 of Ezekiel is that God had previously destroyed Jerusalem’s “sisters,” Sodom and Samaria, because of their arrogance, indifference and “lewdness,” yet he had, until now, tolerated Jerusalem, even though her sins were much greater than those of Sodom and Samaria. In the quoted verses, God clearly identifies the sins for which Sodom was destroyed–which Samaria and Jerusalem shared–as arrogance toward him and affluent indifference to the poor–which led them to commit “abominations.” But these behavioral “abominations” were only symptoms of an attitude of arrogance and indifference.
In the rest of the chapter, Ezekiel discusses the specific abominations seen in Jerusalem. The very first of these was idolatry–also described as “adultery” toward God–abandoning God in order to invite other “lovers” to come. These other “lovers” are identified as the human leaders of the nations around Jerusalem, which Jerusalem trusted to protect them and keep them wealthy, and the idols of the nations around them, which Jerusalem set up and worshiped. Idolatry was also the principal sin for which Samaria was judged. God not only accuses Jerusalem of idolatry, but of idolatry that became ever more brazen as time went on, and came to include a lust after the rulers, power, wealth and idols of all of her neighbors. Jerusalem, God said through Ezekiel, was a prostitute to her own wealth and to the gods and the power of the nations around her, but was not like other prostitutes–other prostitutes are paid for their work, but Jerusalem paid her lovers to sleep with her! Ezekiel 16:30-34. But idolatry, per se, would not have been an issue between God and Sodom, a gentile city-state to whom the true God had not directly revealed himself.
However, in another sense, prostitution to wealth, power and the gods believed to be responsible for these was at the heart of the greatest issue between God and Jerusalem, which was also at the heart of the issue between God and Samaria and Sodom: “You slaughtered my children and sacrificed them to the idols… you gave them [idols] your children’s blood… You are a true daughter of your mother, who despised her husband and her children; and you are a true sister of your sisters [Sodom and Samaria], who despised their husbands and their children…” Ezekiel 16:20-21, 36, 45. God says Sodom and Samaria did these things, but Jerusalem did even worse and was more brazen and depraved than her sisters. Ezekiel 16:47-48. Sodom and Samaria, before their destruction, and Jerusalem in Ezekiel’s day, all had Canaanite cultures and similar cultural practices and idols. All three practiced child sacrifice. As practiced in Jerusalem, this took an extremely cruel form–throwing babies and young children into the “arms” of a red-hot metallic statue of the idol Milcom–but all of them had similar practices. But there is more than literal child sacrifice in view.
It is exactly at this point in his indictment of Jerusalem that Ezekiel identifies Sodom’s fatal sin which Jerusalem copied and amplified. This sin was arrogant trust in her own prosperity and resulting indifference to suffering. It led to child sacrifice, which is–at the level of outward practices–the ultimate show of greedy indifference toward suffering (remember that it was practiced in the hope of buying a deity’s favor toward the worshipper). See, “Idols = Gods We Can Manipulate (Do ut Des).” But, in diagnosing Sodom’s sin, the prophet does not mention child sacrifice, he only identifies the underlying attitude. He identifies the outworking of this attitude in the world: greed, lust for power (likened to sexual lust), brazen idolatry and child sacrifice–only in his indictment of Jerusalem, which had been given God’s Law as a standard. Compare, Romans 2:5-16 and Romans 7:7-13, which explain that God holds Gentiles accountable for their response to the knowledge he has given them, not for transgression of the Law. Sodom was properly condemned, apart from the Law, merely because they were arrogant toward the knowledge of the good that God had placed within them, greedy, and indifferent to the suffering of others. “[F]or those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger.” Romans 2:8 As we will see, this same accusation is the key to all of the other accounts of Sodom’s destruction.
SODOM INTERPRETED IN LIGHT OF GIBEAH
This section will briefly compare the reasons for the destruction of Sodom as illustrated in Genesis 18 and 19 with the reasons for the destruction of Gibeah in Judges 19 and 20 to show that the attitudes of the entire city toward the vulnerable was at issue in both situations and that the behaviors of individuals were not the issue in either situation. In Genesis 18, God appears to Abraham and Sarah in the form of three angels to announce the coming birth of their son Isaac, the son of the promise, and to announce the impending destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, because their “outcry” has come up before him. Abraham, aware that his nephew Lot lives in Sodom, pleads with God to spare Sodom, and receives God’s assurance that he will spare that city if he finds even ten righteous people there when he “visits” it. Genesis 18:23-33. The implication of all of God’s dialogue with Abraham about Sodom was that the people of Sodom knew their way of life was wrong and had been given an opportunity to repent.
In fact, Sodom had previously been given an opportunity to repent through the ministry of Abraham. In Genesis 14, a coalition of ten cities defeated and plundered Sodom, and carried off many of its people, including Lot, as captives. Abraham responded to this by putting together a small army from his own household and his neighbors, pursuing the the force that was holding Lot, defeating them, recovering the plunder and rescuing Lot. Abraham then gave a tithe of the plunder as an offering to the mysterious Melchizedek, “king of Salem” and “priest of God Most High” (14:18). He then returned the rest of his share of the plunder from Sodom to the King of Sodom, keeping none for himself, declaring: “With raised hand I have sworn an oath to the Lord, God Most High, Creator of heaven and earth, that I will accept nothing belonging to you, not even a thread or the strap of a sandal, so that you will never be able to say, ‘I made Abram rich.’” (14:22-23). This simultaneously declared to the Sodomites that there was one God higher than all of their gods and in that God’s name rebuked their greed. Sodom had been warned. They had ignored their wake-up call.
The visitation of which God had told Abraham occurred at the beginning of Chapter 19. Two of the three angels who visited Abraham now arrived at Sodom in the evening. They proposed to prepare to spend the night in the city square–something a poor, and, therefore, vulnerable stranger would do. Genesis 19:1-2. Lot instead insisted that they come to his house rather than spend the night in the square, as they had proposed to do, thereby evidencing his own righteousness in the situation, and they complied. Genesis 19:2-3. (“Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it.” Hebrews 13:2). These angels appeared to the men of Sodom to be merely two “men”—hā·’ă·nā·šîm–apparently meaning plural male humans–not angels. Genesis 19:5. That night, the narrative continues, “all” the “people” of Sodom appeared outside Lot’s house, demanding that he send out the two “strangers” so that they might have forcible sexual relations with them. Genesis 19:4-5.
Due to the very strong tradition that the story of Sodom is a story about God’s disapproval of homosexuality, all of the “people” words in verse 4 are always translated “men,” implying male. Indeed, though the Hebrew text uses two different words referring to the people of Sodom a total of three times in verse 4, some English translations only translate one of these three words, and translate it “men,” much like the NIV: “Before they had gone to bed, all the men from every part of the city of Sodom—both young and old—surrounded the house.” But a machine-like translation that translates all of the Hebrew words in verse 4 and follows the Hebrew word order would read something like this: “Now before they lay down then the men of the city the men of Sodom compassed over the house from young and to old all the people from every quarter…” (This is copied directly from the English line of of the Bible Hub interlinear version of verse 4). All English translations this writer is aware of that translate all three “people” words translate at least the first two “men,” implying males.
However, the first two occurrences of “people” words in verse 4 in the Hebrew use the same word: ‘anšȇ, a (grammatically) masculine plural construct of either ‘enoš (‘enosh) or ‘iš (‘ish). Although ‘enosh is gramatically masculine, and can properly be translated “man”, it is a generic term–the singular can often be correctly be translated “humankind” or even “(one) another.” Similarly, “‘iš“, though grammatically masculine, is sometimes used generically. (Indeed, the distinction between masculine man (‘iš) and feminine man (‘iššah), which is shown by grammatical gender only, was made by the first male human–not by God–at a time when God called them both “man” (‘adam) (singular), together comprising God’s own image without distinction. See Genesis1:26-27 and 2:23, and “Humans, Male and Female, and Marriage as Pictures of God’s Unity in Diversity”). The third “people” word in the Hebrew of this verse–’ām–in this verse presented with the article attached, “ha’am“–is very clearly generic: the people. It is a generic collective singular that treats an undifferentiated group–“the people” of a place–as a grammatical singular unity. (Its usage is entirely analogous to the words “the people” in the Preamble of the Constitution of the United States, “We the people,” which makes no gender reference). So what verse 4 is saying is not just that all of the male residents of Sodom (the “all” may be a hyperbole) were lined up at Lot’s door. Instead, it appears really to be saying that all of the residents of Sodom–including the women–wanted a piece of these two strangers. However, the remainder of this article will assume, for the sake of argument, that the traditional translation of these words as “men,” implying males only, is correct.
But even if it is conceded that all of the “men” who surrounded Lot’s house were male, the real point that verses 4 and 5 intend to make does not involve their gender. Instead, it involves their collective character, capacity and purpose. To state the matter in modern terms, the Sodom mob attempted to commit a violent hate crime against Lot’s guests. It was not only one or two “men” who came to Lot’s door without the knowledge of the city and its authorities to ask the two angels for a date. Rather, it was a unified crowd, at least representing and possibly containing “all the people” of Sodom (except, obviously, those of Lot’s household). Their demand to be permitted to gang-rape the angels was a demand made, not by a few individual “men,” but by the City of Sodom corporately. It was made because the angels were foreigners, and, when Lot attempted to intervene to stop the crowd, the crowd reminded Lot that he, too, was a “foreigner” in Sodom. (19:9). It represented the heart of the whole city. And it was much more a xenophobic demand to be allowed to oppress two apparently-defenseless foreigners than it was a demand for sexual gratification. This demand graphically confirmed the “outcry” of the oppressed God had “heard” from Sodom and had visited them to investigate.
In response to public demand, Lot offered the people of the city his two virgin daughters instead–an offer which the people rejected. Their rejection of a substitute sexual gratification was predictable given that their primary purpose was the humiliation and injury of the two foreigners rather than sex. Quite significantly, the two angels also vetoed Lot’s offer of his daughters. Genesis 19:6-10. The angels protected Lot’s family by striking the people of the city with blindness and urged Lot and his family to flee Sodom immediately, which Lot and his two unmarried daughters did when forced a bit. Genesis 19:10-17. After Lot was safely out of town, God sent fire from heaven to destroy Sodom and its neighbor Gomorrah. Genesis 19:23-26.
At first blush, Judges 19 and 20 would appear to be a narrative unrelated to the story of Sodom. It is the story of a civil war centuries after Sodom’s fall which destroyed the city of Gibeah and most of the tribe of Benjamin in Israel. But the incident which incited the civil war is thematically similar to the incident which brought on the destruction of Sodom, and the attitudes of the “men” of Gibeah are, I would submit, morally identical to those of the “men” of Sodom in Genesis 20.
In Judges 19, a Levite who lived somewhere in the territory of Ephraim left a visit with his concubine’s family in Judah to return to Ephraim. At nightfall, he and his concubine found themselves near the city of Gibeah in the territory of Benjamin. Judges 19:1-14. Like the angels who visited Sodom, they at first prepared to spend the night in the city square–but, unlike the angels, they really were defenseless strangers in town. Judges 19:15. Again parallel to story of the angels in Sodom, they were found by a fellow Ephraimite who was living in Gibeah and invited to stay at his house. Judges 19:16-21. Then, again like the events in Sodom, “some” of the “men” of Gibeah appear outside the Ephraimite’s door, insisting that he put the Levite out of the house so that they may have forcible sexual relations with him. Judges 19:22. Similar to what Lot did in Sodom, the Levite and his host offer the men of Gibeah women instead–the Levite offers his concubine, and his host offers his daughter. Judges 19:23-24. This offer reflects the deplorably low status of women in most ancient cultures, but is not the point of the story in its original context.
However, here the story of Judges 19 diverges from that of the angels in Sodom. There was no angelic visitation in Gibeah. The men of Gibeah accepted the Levite’s concubine as a substitute (there is no further mention of his host’s daughter) and fatally gang-raped her. Judges 19:25-26. The Levite took his dead concubine home and notified all of the tribes of Israel of what had happened in a particularly gruesome and attention-grabbing way. Judges 19:27-30.
This brings us to the crucial point–God’s response to Gibeah’s and Benjamin’s complicity in heterosexual gang-rape of a vulnerable female stranger is essentially identical to his response to his response to Sodom’s insistence on collective (possibly only) homosexual violence against two apparently-vulnerable male strangers: if the city doesn’t repent, destroy it. In Genesis 20, God sent fire on Sodom and Gomorrah after removing “righteous” Lot and his family from it. In Judges 20, after being informed of the outrage that happened in Gibeah, all of the tribes of Israel except Benjamin assembled for war. Judges 20:1-11. First they asked the tribe of Benjamin to turn over to them the men who had done the wrong for judgment. Judges 20:12-13. When the Benjamites refused this request, the other tribes sought guidance from God three times. Each time God told them to attack Benjamin to execute judgment for the act, and for that tribe’s defense of it, and gave them military instructions. Judges 20:18-35. In the ensuing civil war Benjamin’s towns (not just Gibeah) were destroyed and all but 600 of its people were killed. Judges 20:36-48.
From this comparison of the destruction of Gibeah with that of Sodom, it can be seen that what brought down God’s wrath was not the decisions of individuals to voluntarily engage in sexual activities that violated an assumed universal scriptural code of moral values applicable to Jew and Gentile alike. It was these cities’ collective arrogance and indifference to the needs of others, which led naturally to an attitude that the vulnerable were placed among them for their exploitation. This was evidenced by the decisions of gangs of men in both cities to seek to sexually exploit particular strangers–the two male-appearing angels in Sodom and the female concubine of the Levite in Gibeah. It was also evidenced by the fact that Sodom, as a city, obviously condoned what its men were doing, and that the whole tribe of Benjamin showed up with weapons in hand to defend the “right” of its men to do what they had done. But the sexual aspect of each of these situations was only evidence, or, perhaps more accurately, a symptom of a deeper, underlying problem. The underlying problem was that the people collectively were affluent, arrogant, and indifferent to suffering, including suffering they caused. God hates this attitude. Ezekiel’s diagnosis of Sodom also applied to Gibeah, even though the victim of the “men” of Gibeah was a woman.
ISAIAH 1 AND 3
The prophet Isaiah commented briefly on the causes of Sodom’s destruction twice, in chapters 1 and 3 of the book that bears his name. In both places, Isaiah, like Ezekiel later, applies his observations to Judah and its people. Sexual sins are not even mentioned anywhere in chapters 1 or 3 of Isaiah, so it is clear that the sin of Judah which Isaiah decries as being like that of Sodom is not homosexuality. Rather, Isaiah’s view of Sodom–and Judah–in both places agrees with Ezekiel’s diagnosis of Sodom. The basic sin in view is arrogance, arrogance which ignores God, oppresses others, and is indifferent to their suffering.
In Isaiah 1:9-10, the prophet, declaring God’s words to “Judah and Jerusalem” (v. 1), says:
Unless the Lord Almighty
had left us some survivors,
we would have become like Sodom,
we would have been like Gomorrah.
Hear the word of the Lord,
you rulers of Sodom;
listen to the instruction of our God,
you people of Gomorrah!
Isaiah, like Ezekiel, compares Jerusalem and Judah directly to Sodom. Isaiah 1 uses different imagery than Ezekiel 16, but makes essentially the same points. God raised up Judah as his own children, but they did not recognize him. Instead, “they have rebelled against me,” God said “and do not understand.” Isaiah 1:2-3. They have “given themselves to corruption” and “turned their backs on me.” Isaiah 1:4. Therefore, God allowed them to be beaten by the nations around them, to turn them from their rebellion, but they had only rebelled more, until there was now no place left that can be stricken–the nation was all covered with sores. But still they went on in their rebellion. Isaiah 1:5-8. If it were not for God’s mercy, they would have been destroyed as thoroughly as Sodom. (Isaiah 1:9, quoted above).
At that point, the prophet began to address the rulers of Judah as the “rulers of Sodom” and the people of Judah as the “people of Gomorrah.” (Verse 10). He told them first that all of their religious observances are meaningless and detestable to him. Isaiah 1:11-15. Why does God detest their religion and their religious acts, even those that are done in his name (not in the name of another God)? He explained:
When you spread out your hands in prayer,
I hide my eyes from you;
even when you offer many prayers,
I am not listening.
Your hands are full of blood!
Isaiah 1:15. So, just as in Ezekiel 16, God’s issue with Judah is their attitude toward each other, which grows out of their rebellious attitude toward him, and is demonstrated by bloodshed. He went on to explain:
Wash and make yourselves clean.
Take your evil deeds out of my sight;
stop doing wrong.
Learn to do right; seek justice.
Defend the oppressed.
Take up the cause of the fatherless;
plead the case of the widow.
“Come now, let us settle the matter,”
says the Lord.
“Though your sins are like scarlet,
they shall be as white as snow;
though they are red as crimson,
they shall be like wool.
If you are willing and obedient,
you will eat the good things of the land;
but if you resist and rebel,
you will be devoured by the sword.”
For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.
Isaiah 1:16-20. Judah’s sin was their arrogant resistance against God, but what showed that sin was their treatment of each other. God’s wrath was coming on Judah for the same reason it had come on Sodom–they had blood on their hands from the oppression of the vulnerable. God’s challenge to Judah (“Sodom”) in this chapter of Isaiah was to humbly permit God (“if you are willing and obedient”) to cleanse both their attitude toward him and their attitude and actions towards others. Once God has made their heart right, they will cease oppressing and actively seek justice, defend the oppressed and take up the cause of the vulnerable.
Isaiah 3 contains a prophecy of the day of judgment of Judah, likely fulfilled by the destruction of Jerusalem by the armies of Babylon in 587 BCE. The comparison to Sodom is found in verse 9:
Jerusalem staggers,
Judah is falling;
their words and deeds are against the Lord,
defying his glorious presence.
The look on their faces testifies against them;
they parade their sin like Sodom;
they do not hide it.
Woe to them!
They have brought disaster upon themselves.
But what is the “sin” Judah paraded like Sodom? And in what ways did their words and deeds defy God’s glorious presence among them? For those answers, we have to look to the context. Verses 4 and 5 identify two aspects of that “sin” as the loss of respect for all authority, with the result that “people will oppress each other–man against man, neighbor against neighbor.” The decay of respect for authority will lead to a situation in which, in the time of Judah’s destruction, authority will be forced on people unworthy of it, Isaiah 3:6-7, 12, because those capable of bearing leadership will have already been “taken away” because of their sin . Isaiah 3:1-4.
When God finally judges the leaders of Judah, it will not be for copying the sexual sins of Sodom, nor even for idolatry, but for oppressing the poor and weak:
The Lord takes his place in court;
he rises to judge the people.
The Lord enters into judgment
against the elders and leaders of his people:
“It is you who have ruined my vineyard;
the plunder from the poor is in your houses.
What do you mean by crushing my people
and grinding the faces of the poor?”
declares the Lord, the Lord Almighty.
This agrees perfectly with Isaiah 1 and Ezekiel 16 in their identification of the “sin” of Sodom and Judah as showing rejection of God through mistreatment of the poor and the vulnerable.
When it comes, God’s final judgment will be completely just. Isaiah 3:10-11.
JEREMIAH 23 AND LAMENTATIONS 4:6
Chapter 23 of Jeremiah is a prophecy directed mostly against the “shepherds” of God’s people–its leaders–which included priests, prophets, judges, kings and princes. It only secondarily addresses the sins of the people, who have been led astray by their shepherds. The shepherds of Israel, God said, had “scattered my flock and driven them away and have not bestowed care on them,” thereby “destroying” them. Jeremiah 23:1-2. As a result, God said he would judge the shepherds, and, after the shepherds were judged, would regather his flock under faithful shepherds “who will tend them.” Jeremiah 23:2-4. He follows this with the prediction of the future arrival of a “Righteous Branch” of David that he would ultimately set up as King, a prophecy Christians have always believed pertains to Jesus Christ:
The days are coming,” declares the Lord,
“when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch,
a King who will reign wisely
and do what is just and right in the land.
In his days Judah will be saved
and Israel will live in safety.
This is the name by which he will be called:
The Lord Our Righteous Savior.
Jeremiah then further predicted that, in the days of the Righteous Branch of David, God will regather all Israel from the places he scattered them, and they will live in safety in their own land. Jeremiah 23:7-8; reaffirmed Jeremiah 33:14-18..
The rest of the chapter deals with the unfaithfulness of the religious leaders of Jeremiah’s day, the priests and, especially, the prophets, who “who prophesy lies in my name” and “prophesy the delusions of their own minds.” Jeremiah 23:25, 26. The result of the delusional falsehood of the prophets and the unfaithfulness of the priests was that the people were also unfaithful and were scattered. Jeremiah’s description of this compares all of the prophets to Sodom and all of the people of Jerusalem to Gomorrah:
The land is full of adulterers;
because of the curse the land lies parched
and the pastures in the wilderness are withered.
The prophets follow an evil course
and use their power unjustly.
“Both prophet and priest are godless;
even in my temple I find their wickedness,”
declares the Lord.
“Therefore their path will become slippery;
they will be banished to darkness
and there they will fall.
I will bring disaster on them
in the year they are punished,”
declares the Lord.
“Among the prophets of Samaria
I saw this repulsive thing:
They prophesied by Baal
and led my people Israel astray.
And among the prophets of Jerusalem
I have seen something horrible:
They commit adultery and live a lie.
They strengthen the hands of evildoers,
so that not one of them turns from their wickedness.
They are all like Sodom to me;
the people of Jerusalem are like Gomorrah.”
While this passage speaks of a sexual sin–“adultery”–as a part of the sin of Judah and of Jerusalem’s prophets, it is paired with living a lie, and made directly parallel to the past sin of prophets of the by-then-defunct northern kingdom of Israel, who had prophesied by Baal and thus led the people of that kingdom “astray” to worship a lie. The effect of this error, over which God mourns, was that the prophets “use their power unjustly” to “strengthen the hands of evildoers, so that not one of them turns from their wickedness.” Thus, the false prophets “strengthened the hands” of the other “shepherds” discussed in verses 1-4, who refused to “bestow care” on the sheep, but, instead, “destroyed” them. The real issue was not the individual sins of the prophets or of the people, but the arrogance of the prophets leading the people astray, strengthening their hands to live a lie like the prophets did, for the prophets’ own profit. This is exactly parallel to Ezekiel’s diagnosis of Sodom and the indictment of the false teachers and false believers in 2 Peter 2 and Jude. It was this arrogance that made Jerusalem and its prophets “like” Sodom and Gomorrah before God.
This is further clarified later in the chapter:
“Do not listen to what the prophets are prophesying to you;
they fill you with false hopes.
They speak visions from their own minds,
not from the mouth of the Lord.
They keep saying to those who despise me,
‘The Lord says: You will have peace.’
And to all who follow the stubbornness of their hearts
they say, ‘No harm will come to you.’…
I did not send these prophets,
yet they have run with their message;
I did not speak to them,
yet they have prophesied.
But if they had stood in my council,
they would have proclaimed my words to my people
and would have turned them from their evil ways
and from their evil deeds.
The error of these false prophets was to run where God did not send them, proclaiming a message God did not give them, promising God’s favor on a people who rebelled against God. They filled people with “false hopes” of God’s continued blessing and protection, thereby strengthening evildoers–doing this at least implicitly to receive the approval and financial support of the people to whom they gave these false hopes. But if they had stood in God’s counsel, they would have proclaimed God’s words and turned the people away from their evil ways.
Jeremiah’s final word about his people as compared to Sodom is in his Laments for his people:
6 The punishment of my people
is greater than that of Sodom,
which was overthrown in a moment
without a hand turned to help her.
In this verse, Jeremiah mourns the punishment of Judah, “greater than” that of Sodom, but does not identify its cause.
DEUTERONOMY 29:23 AND 32:32
In the second giving of the Law, Moses twice speaks of Sodom. In both places, Sodom is mentioned as a picture of the judgment God will later send on his people, the children of Israel, because of their idolatry. The first instance is in a directly prophetic passage, in which Moses predicts that, in the future, God’s people will become arrogant, assuring themselves of God’s blessing even though they stubbornly go their own way. (Compare Jeremiah 23:17, quoted above). This arrogance will spread to the whole nation and will lead to idolatry, which will, in turn, lead to a judgment like that of Sodom:
When such a person hears the words of this oath and they invoke a blessing on themselves, thinking, “I will be safe, even though I persist in going my own way,” they will bring disaster on the watered land as well as the dry. The Lord will never be willing to forgive them; his wrath and zeal will burn against them. All the curses written in this book will fall on them, and the Lord will blot out their names from under heaven. The Lord will single them out from all the tribes of Israel for disaster, according to all the curses of the covenant written in this Book of the Law.
Your children who follow you in later generations and foreigners who come from distant lands will see the calamities that have fallen on the land and the diseases with which the Lord has afflicted it. The whole land will be a burning waste of salt and sulfur—nothing planted, nothing sprouting, no vegetation growing on it. It will be like the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboyim, which the Lord overthrew in fierce anger. All the nations will ask: “Why has the Lord done this to this land? Why this fierce, burning anger?”
And the answer will be: “It is because this people abandoned the covenant of the Lord, the God of their ancestors, the covenant he made with them when he brought them out of Egypt. They went off and worshiped other gods and bowed down to them, gods they did not know, gods he had not given them. Therefore the Lord’s anger burned against this land, so that he brought on it all the curses written in this book. In furious anger and in great wrath the Lord uprooted them from their land and thrust them into another land, as it is now.”
Deuteronomy 29:19-28
The second mention of Sodom is in the Song God told Moses to teach the people in Deuteronomy 32. In the Song of Moses, the predicted progression is from affluence to arrogance to idolatry, and from there to loss of all perception of God’s working, much as in Ezekiel 16. This loss of “sense” will be shown by the fact that God will bring judgment on them only gradually, but they will not perceive that it was God working against them in defeating them before weaker enemies. The reference to Sodom in this passage speaks to the character of the people being judged rather than to the harshness of the judgment. Their “wine,” their attitude, arrogantly abandoning God in their prosperity to follow idols, and then arrogantly refusing to perceive God’s role in the reversal of their fortunes so as to return to him, “comes from the vines of Sodom.” This vintage is “filled with poison” and “bitterness:”
Jeshurun grew fat and kicked;
filled with food, they became heavy and sleek.
They abandoned the God who made them
and rejected the Rock their Savior.
They made him jealous with their foreign gods
and angered him with their detestable idols.
They sacrificed to false gods, which are not God—
gods they had not known,
gods that recently appeared,
gods your ancestors did not fear.
You deserted the Rock, who fathered you;
you forgot the God who gave you birth.
The Lord saw this and rejected them
because he was angered by his sons and daughters.
“I will hide my face from them,” he said,
“and see what their end will be;
for they are a perverse generation,
children who are unfaithful…
They are a nation without sense,
there is no discernment in them.
If only they were wise and would understand this
and discern what their end will be!
How could one man chase a thousand,
or two put ten thousand to flight,
unless their Rock had sold them,
unless the Lord had given them up?
For their rock is not like our Rock,
as even our enemies concede.
Their vine comes from the vine of Sodom
and from the fields of Gomorrah.
Their grapes are filled with poison,
and their clusters with bitterness.
Their wine is the venom of serpents,
the deadly poison of cobras.
“Have I not kept this in reserve
and sealed it in my vaults?
It is mine to avenge; I will repay.
In due time their foot will slip;
their day of disaster is near
and their doom rushes upon them.”
Thus, both of the mentions of Sodom in Deuteronomy are also entirely consistent with that aspect of Ezekiel’s diagnosis of Sodom that saw that city’s fatal problem as affluence leading to arrogant rejection of what they knew of God in order to follow their own desires.
SODOM IN THE MINOR PROPHETS
.Amos compares the destruction God has already brought on some of his people to the destruction he brought on Sodom, and declares that God destroyed them for the purpose of moving the rest to repentance. He then decries their failure to return to him, despite the examples of his judgment they had seen:
“I sent plagues among you
as I did to Egypt.
I killed your young men with the sword,
along with your captured horses.
I filled your nostrils with the stench of your camps,
yet you have not returned to me,”
declares the Lord.
“I overthrew some of you
as I overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah.
You were like a burning stick snatched from the fire,
yet you have not returned to me,”
declares the Lord.
“Therefore this is what I will do to you, Israel,
and because I will do this to you, Israel,
prepare to meet your God.”
But what was the sin for which God’s judgment was then in progress? It was boasting about their sacrifices, their pious religious acts, which God hated, while at the same time oppressing and crushing the poor and needy so they could have their own pleasures:
Hear this word, you cows of Bashan on Mount Samaria,
you women who oppress the poor and crush the needy
and say to your husbands, “Bring us some drinks!”
The Sovereign Lord has sworn by his holiness:
“The time will surely come
when you will be taken away with hooks,
the last of you with fishhooks.
You will each go straight out
through breaches in the wall,
and you will be cast out toward Harmon,”
declares the Lord.
“Go to Bethel and sin;
go to Gilgal and sin yet more.
Bring your sacrifices every morning,
your tithes every three years.
Burn leavened bread as a thank offering
and brag about your freewill offerings—
boast about them, you Israelites,
for this is what you love to do,”
declares the Sovereign Lord.
All acts of outward piety and worship done to appease the conscience of the worshiper and provide cause for boasting while excusing the oppression of the poor are sin. This once again agrees with Ezekiel’s diagnosis of Sodom.
The last reference to Sodom in the Old Testament is in Zephaniah, and applies to Israel’s eastern neighbors, Moab and Ammon, the descendants of Lot (the righteous survivor of Sodom):
“I have heard the insults of Moab
and the taunts of the Ammonites,
who insulted my people
and made threats against their land.
Therefore, as surely as I live,”
declares the Lord Almighty,
the God of Israel,
“surely Moab will become like Sodom,
the Ammonites like Gomorrah—
a place of weeds and salt pits,
a wasteland forever.
The remnant of my people will plunder them;
the survivors of my nation will inherit their land.”
10 This is what they will get in return for their pride,
for insulting and mocking
the people of the Lord Almighty.
What characterized the nations of Ammon and Moab at the time of the destruction of Judah was that they came allied to Judah’s enemies and “mocked” God’s people, as Zephaniah says. Other Old Testament writers also implicate Ammon and Moab in opposing the children of Israel when they came out of Egypt, even hiring Balaam to curse them, in plundering, oppressing and doing violence to the people of Israel and Judah, and in killing refugees from Judah. Numbers 22:3-4; Isaiah 16:3-7; Jeremiah 48:26-30 & 49:1-5; Ezekiel 25:1-11; Amos 1:13-2:3. Even in the case of Ammon and Moab, God’s ultimate issue with them was the way they treated the defenseless as they were suffering judgment, again in agreement with Ezekiel’s diagnosis of Sodom.
But it is notable that, in the end days, God has promised to restore the fortunes of a remnant of Ammon, Moab and Sodom, along with Israel. Ezekiel 16:53-56 (Sodom); Jeremiah 49:6 (Ammon); Jeremiah 48:47 (Moab). Even in destruction, there is hope!
SODOM MENTIONED BY JESUS IN THE GOSPELS
But the question may still be asked whether Ezekiel’s diagnosis of Sodom’s underlying sin is consistent with what the New Testament says about the destruction of Sodom.
Jesus appears to have mentioned Sodom rarely, and only as an example of God’s judgment in contexts that did not directly speak to (and did not need to speak to) the reasons for Sodom’s judgment. Matthew 10:14-15 and Luke 10:10-12 are nearly identical, though spoken to different groups of disciples on different occasions. Luke 10:13-15 appears to be parallel to Matthew 11:21-24 in content, though the occasion may have been different, and Luke’s version mentions Sodom whereas Matthew’s does not. Luke 17:25-30 uses Sodom as an example in a very different context.
Matthew 10:14-15 and Luke 10:10-12 contain instructions Jesus gave in sending out groups of disciples to go before him. Matthew 10 contains instructions to the Twelve; Luke 10 contains instructions to a group of 72 disciples who were sent out on another occasion. Jesus instructs both of these groups to go out in pairs, not to take extra money or clothing, and to to choose a house that is “worthy” to stay in while they are in each village they visit. He then gives, to each group of missionaries an identical warning about the fate of any house or town that does not welcome their message: “it will be more bearable for Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town.” Matthew 10:15; Luke 10:12. Why? As Jesus’ words in Luke explain “the Kingdom of God has come near” (Luke 10:11) and you had the arrogance to reject it.
In Matthew 11:21-24, Jesus speaks of the towns in Galilee in which the bulk of his ministry and miracles had occurred, and judges them because they had seen his miracles and had not repented and followed him. He then compares them unfavorably to the Gentile cities of Tyre, Sidon and Sodom:
Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I tell you, it will be more bearable for Tyre and Sidon on the day of judgment than for you. And you, Capernaum, will you be lifted to the heavens? No, you will go down to Hades. For if the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Sodom, it would have remained to this day. But I tell you that it will be more bearable for Sodom on the day of judgment than for you.
Matthew 11:21-24
The point of this passage is that, in seeing Jesus’ miracles and nevertheless resisting his message, the named towns in Galilee showed even greater arrogance toward God than Sodom had, and will therefore receive a greater judgment. Luke 10:13-15 makes a very similar point about the towns in which Jesus ministered, and compares them unfavorably to Tyre and Sidon, but not Sodom. These are passages about towns’ collective arrogant failure to repent, but say nothing about the identity of any “sin”–other than arrogant unrepentance–of which Chorazin, Bethsaida, Capernaum, Tyre, Sidon or Sodom should have repented and for which they will be judged.
Luke 17:25-30. uses the coming of the Flood in the days of Noah and the destruction of Sodom as examples of the suddenness with which Jesus will return, while people are going about business as usual unaware of what is about to happen. But it says nothing about the moral causes of either the Flood or the destruction of Sodom.
ROMANS 9:29
The overall theme of Romans 9, 10 and 11 is God’s answer to the Apostle Paul’s “unceasing anguish” (9:2) and prayers (10:1) for his own people, the Jews. The first part of that answer, developed in these chapters, is that, in the present time, God is, by his own election and plan, saving a remnant of both the Jews and the Gentiles, united in faith in His Son in His Church. There is also coming a time, at the end of the present age, when “all Israel will be saved” by coming to faith in their Messiah along with us. Romans 11:25-32.
It is in this midst of laying out the greatness of God’s plan, which includes both Jews and Gentiles, that Paul quotes Isaiah 10:22-23 (LXX) and Isaiah 1:9 for the proposition that God spared and will spare the remnant of Israel, in contrast to Sodom, only by his merciful choice:
Isaiah cries out concerning Israel:
“Though the number of the Israelites be like the sand by the sea,
only the remnant will be saved.
For the Lord will carry out
his sentence on earth with speed and finality.”
It is just as Isaiah said previously:
“Unless the Lord Almighty
had left us descendants,
we would have become like Sodom,
we would have been like Gomorrah.”
The reasons for the destruction of Sodom are not in view in this passage, but, instead, only the mercy of God.
2 PETER 2:6-14
The twin themes of chapter 2 of 2 Peter are 1) false teachers in the Church and 2) their followers. As was discussed in the previous article. False Teachers and “Damnable Heresies” in 2 Peter 2, false teachers create divisions in the Church, not so much through the objective content of their teachings as through their insistence on maintaining their own separate bands of followers. False teachers, of whom Balaam is named as the Old Testament exemplar, are inwardly arrogant, boastful, and do not recognize the authority of the Lord they outwardly claim to serve. They act with hidden motivations–primarily greed, the desire to monetize their followers–“make merchandise” of us, 2 Peter 2:3, KJV–but their arrogance and their commercial motivation are usually cleverly hidden. (See, The Real Issue with False Teachers is their Hidden Motivations). Thus, false teachers create division for their own profit.
While the reference to Sodom in 2 Peter 2 has an application to the false teachers themselves, it applies even more directly to their followers (compare, Matthew 23:15, “twice as much a child of hell as” their mentors) and to God’s ability to rescue his true children from their corruption:
…if he [God] condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah by burning them to ashes, and made them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly; and if he rescued Lot, a righteous man, who was distressed by the depraved conduct of the lawless (for that righteous man, living among them day after day, was tormented in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard)— if this is so, then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials and to hold the unrighteous for punishment on the day of judgment.
2 Peter 2:6-9 (NIV).
What is immediately said in this passage about the people of Sodom–and the followers of false teachers in the Church–is that they were “ungodly” (ἀσεβέσιν) (v.6), that they showed “conduct” (ἀναστροφῆς, anastrophes) that was “depraved” (ἀσελγείᾳ, aselgia) and were “lawless” (ἀθέσμων, athesmon) “in” that conduct (v. 7), that their “lawless deeds” (ἀνόμοις ἔργοις, anomois ergois) tormented righteous Lot (v. 8), and that they were “unrighteous” (ἀδίκους, adikous) (v. 9).
Taking these descriptions one at a time, verse 6 describes the people of Sodom as “unholy”–asebēs. This adjective is formed from the negative particle “a-” and the adjective sebēs, which means reverent toward God or reverent toward holy things. Thus, asebēs basically means “irreverent,” lacking due regard for God and the things he calls holy. This description ties to verses 9 and 10 of 2 Peter 2, that deal with the arrogance of false teachers specifically toward the things of God. But it also connects this to the arrogant indifference of Sodom toward the vulnerable, their irreverence toward the lives of the two human-appearing angels in Genesis 19 and the lives of others generally. Human life, even that of the poor and vulnerable, bears the image of God, and is, therefore, holy. (Genesis 1:26-27; Genesis 9:4-6).
Verse 7 describes the “conduct” (anastrophēs) of the people of Sodom as being “depraved” or “lawless” (athesmōn) “in” its “sensuality” (aselgia). A person’s anastrophē is defined as that person’s “dealing with other men, conduct, life, behavior, manner of life” (per Strong). It is a simple but very broad word that covers one’s entire way of life. The word here usually translated “depraved” or “lawless,” athesmos, of which athesmōn is the genitive plural, a legal term, is composed of the negative particle “a-” and “thesmos,” something enacted, which, in turn, is derived from the verb “tithēmi,” to “enact, ordain, establish” (in a legal setting), “put , place, fix.” This word, by itself, would only describe the people of Sodom as being without the enacted law, a reference to the Law of Moses, as are all Gentiles. (See, again, Romans 2:12-16). It modifies anastrophes, and asserts that the way of life of the people of Sodom was not governed by the Law.
But, in this context, athesmos does not stand by itself. Instead, it is modified by the adverbial phrase “en aselgia.” IThe people of Sodom lived out their state of being without the Mosaic Law “in,” surrounded or immersed in, “aselgia.” “Aselgia” is the the conduct and character of one who is ἀσελγής (“aselgēs”), a word which is of somewhat disputed derivation. A person who is aselges is one who is “brutal,” one who (per Helps Word Studies on Bible Hub) shows “violent spite which rejects restraint and indulges in lawless insolence.” This certainly describes the crowd in Sodom. But the abstract noun aselgia is commonly translated, as it is in this verse, “sensuality” or “licentiousness,” and it does carry a connotation of sensuality. However, “sensuality” is not the same thing as “sexuality.” “Sensuality” is the state of following our own senses, of indulging the desires aroused by our senses. It includes uncontrolled sexuality, but it also includes outbursts of anger, xenophobic communal rage (as in Sodom), and even coveting.
Coveting is the example of sensuality used by Paul in Romans 7. It is an example of sensuality because it is aroused by our senses. We see, or perceive with our senses, that someone else has something, and we want it. The teaching of Romans 7 is that the Law was given to Moses, not to give us rules to live by, but to show us that we are sinners, in rebellion against God. Before we had the Law, we wanted things other people had. Everyone needs food, clothing and shelter, and the desire for security in the provision of these things is natural and good, as long as it leads us to seek and rely on God and accept his method of providing these things. It becomes a source of evil when we reject God’s provision and start to desire to make our own provision from the things other people have. Unfortunately, all of us do this sometimes. But we were not aware that it was evil until we were told this. Then, when God’s commandment came that we should not covet, we became aware that we were coveting, and that God did not like it. After that, instead of ceasing to covet, we started coveting just to be coveting, desiring to take from other people things that were not even useful to us, things we would not have coveted without the commandment against coveting, just to insolently declare to God that we do not think ourselves bound by his will. In this way, the law against coveting caused us to demonstrate to ourselves and others our rebellion against God–our inner “sin.”
The same can be said of the other “sensual” desires God tells us we must let him control. For instance, sexual desire is right and good in its place, but wrong when we desire to satisfy it in the wrong way–and we had to be told what ways were wrong before we realized their evil and started to desire them excessively. Likewise, the desire to feel significant or important is also right in its place, which is to cause us to seek significance derived from God as his children living as members of his Kingdom. But the desire for significance and importance, out of its right place, leads to anger, jealousy, envy, divisiveness, superiority and the discriminatory rage that was seen in Sodom. In this way, the people of Sodom showed themselves to be “sensual” when they joined in an angry, demanding mob seeking to humiliate two foreigners.
Verse 8 then says that, although Lot’s soul (psyxē) was righteous (dikaios)–the breath of life God had given Lot was correct and just–that righteous soul was continuously tormented by observing the “lawless deeds” (anomois ergois) of the people around him in Sodom. That is, the things into which the people of Sodom put their energy and efforts were lawless. (Yes, the English word “energy” is derived from the Greek ergon, the noun used here). Their works were, strictly, “without law,” anomos, a– + nomos. But it must be noted that Abraham and Lot lived centuries before Moses, so verse 8 cannot be referring to disregard for the written Law given to Moses. Instead, it must be referring to the “requirements of the law [that] are written on [the] hearts” of Gentiles without the written Law (Romans 2:15 NIV ), requirements to which the lives of Abraham and Lot had given witness. So, what tormented righteous Lot about the works of the people among whom he lived was that they were living in defiance of what they knew of the good, in utter defiance of the law God had placed within them. This, too, was graphically demonstrated by the vengeful mob that descended upon Lot’s house the night before Sodom’s destruction.
Finally, verse 9 says that the people of Sodom were “unrightous” (adikous)–just the opposite of Lot, who was “righteous” (dikaios) in verse 8. Where Lot was correct and just in his dealings, the people of Sodom were incorrect, in error and unjust–indeed “without right” and “without justice” (adikos: a- + díkē). This was also demonstrated by their rush to judgement concerning the strangers in Lot’s house.
So what is in view in Peter’s use of Sodom as an example of God’s deliverance of his true children from false teachers is that the way of life of false teachers is inherently lawless–since they have rejected the Gospel, a much greater revelation of God’s will than Sodom ever had–and that they stealthily live in defiance of the truth they have rejected, for their own worldly profit. In so doing, they encourage sensuality (living in accordance with our senses, with appearances) in heir followers and create division and strife. But God is able to deliver his own from them, just as he delivered Lot from Sodom.
JUDE 1:7-10
Unquestionably, Jude 1:7 associates both false believers in the Church through the centuries (the overall subject of Jude) and Sodom’s destruction with gross sexual immorality, although, as the variations in the translations show, the language used to describe this immorality is notoriously difficult to translate:
In a similar way, Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding towns gave themselves up to sexual immorality and perversion. They serve as an example of those who suffer the punishment of eternal fire.
Jude 1:7 (NIV)
… just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, since they in the same way as these angels indulged in sexual perversion and went after strange flesh, are exhibited as an example in undergoing the punishment of eternal fire.
Jude1:7 (NASB)
Even as Sodom and Gomorrha, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.
Jude 1:7 (KJV)
…just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.
Jude 1:7 (ESV)
This verse does not answer the question of what sexual perversion it is specifically referring to. There are two sources from which this information can be sought: the language used and the context. I will begin with the context, because, as all of the translations show, the context is important. Whatever Sodom’s perversion was, it was similar in some way (“… just as…”) the rebellion against God exhibited by the people God led out of Egypt who really did not believe (Jude 5) and the angels that left their proper place (Jude 6). All of these are also said to be similar to the false believers of Jude 4, the ungodly people who have snuck in among us.
Starting with verse 4, the false believers who have stealthily snuck in among us (see the prior article on False Believers and Divisive Persons in Jude) are said to be “ungodly”–asebēs— which, just as in 2 Peter, basically means “irreverent,” lacking due regard for God and the things he calls holy. The next thing that is said of them is that they are transposing (metatithentes, present participle of metatithemi) the grace (charis) *of God that is ours into (eis) brutal, lawless insolence or sensuality (aselgeia). The meaning of aselgia in the similar context in 2 Peter 2 was discussed above. Basically, these false believers look at God’s grace, which gives us the freedom to live according to his Holy Spirit, and see instead freedom to live according to their senses–which leads to all of the acts of the flesh named in Galatians 5:19-21. They then teach others to see God’s grace in the same twisted way, thus denying Jesus.
In the Greek, verse 5 is the beginning of a single long sentence or single linked thought which ends at the end of verse 8. Verse 5 starts by saying that Jude wants to remind his readers of certain things they once knew. There follows a list of three groups to which false believers are being compared, starting in the second half of verse 5. The second half of verse 5 starts with “that” (hoti), showing that what follows is the things of which Jude wanted to remind his readers, and verses 6 and 7 also open with a linking word, in verse 6 te and in verse 7 hōs, showing that each of them is a part of the same list and is being presented for comparison. Further, each example has the same general grammatical structure–it names a group of people or angels, then describes each with one or more adjectival active aorist participles or adjectival phrases built around an adjectival aorist participle, describing, through the verb used, the continuous past attitude or way of life of the group named, followed by an active indicative verb that shows God’s response to each group’s past way of life or attitude. Finally, verse 8 starts with the phrase homoiōs mentoi kai –“yet likewise”, “yet in the same manner as”– the three groups just discussed, these “dreaming ones,” a reference to the false believers and false teachers, presently have a way of life characterized by certain named attitudes or actions (all of them introduced with active indicative verbs).
In verse 5, false believers are compared to the people God “at one time… delivered out of Egypt,” but later “destroyed” because “they had not believed” or “were not believing.” (pisteusantas, aorist participle active). This group is referenced again in verse 16“: “grumblers and faultfinders.” This group actually includes all of the Israelites and the mixed “multitude” that left Egypt with them, except for the two faithful spies, Joshua and Caleb. All the rest died in the wilderness, leaving their children to enter the promised land, Numbers 14:29-33. There were also numerous individual instances of unbelief, grumbling against God and Moses, and faultfinding recorded mostly in Numbers. The most significant of those incidents, in terms of causing the people to be excluded from God’s promise, occurred at Mount Sinai and at Kadesh Barnea.
The Israelites’ manifestation of unbelief at Mount Sinai came in three stages. Recall that just three months earlier (Exodus 19:1-2) the people had seen God’s plagues on Egypt and his miraculous deliverance at the Red Sea. God’s first words to them through Moses at Mount Sinai reminded them of the wonders they had seen, and that God had “carried them on eagles’ wings” to bring them to himself. He then declared his intention to make them “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation,” if only they would obey him fully and keep his covenant. (Exodus 19:3-7) Their response to God’s declaration of intent sounded good, but actually missed God’s point: “We will do everything the Lord has said.” (Exodus 13:8). God said he wanted to guide them personally and make them all priests–but they wanted fixed instructions they could do, not the Lord’s immediate voice in their lives.
God then demonstrated to them that this was what they had chosen by appearing to them in a cloud on the mountain and speaking to them directly, giving them the Ten Commandments. (Exodus 19:9-19, 20:1-17). Their response to God’s recitation of the commandments in their hearing was dread, and a request to Moses that God would not speak to them directly any more: “Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die.” (Exodus 20:19). This also sounds good, but expressed unbelief: recall that what God wanted to give them was not a Law, but himself, and he wanted to make them all a nation of priests. But now they were begging him to involve himself in their lives only through commandments delivered by intermediaries. Note also that, though they feared they would die if God spoke to them, he had just been speaking to them and they were not dead. God then granted their request, for the time being, and Moses was summoned to go up the mountain to receive the Law from God. (Exodus 20:21, 24:12-17).
This leads to the third and greatest manifestation of unbelief at Sinai. The first three commandments God himself had recited in the people’s hearing were “you shall have no other gods before me,” “you shall not make for yourself an image… you shall not bow down to them or worship them…” and “you shall not misuse the name of the LORD (YHWH) your God…” Exodus 20:3, 4, 5, 7. But when Moses remained on the mountain out of their sight for 40 days (Exodus 24:18), the people concluded Moses was not going to return, panicked, and asked Aaron to fashion them a god to lead them. (Exodus 32:1). Aaron then fashioned them a golden calf–which, to a pastoral people would have been a symbol of the fertility of their herds and the success of their own work–and began to worship it, saying “this is your god, who brought you up out of Egypt.” (Exodus 32:2-8). This broke the first two commandments. Then Aaron broke the third commandment, and led the people also to do so, by announcing “Tomorrow there will be a festival to the LORD (YHWH).” (v. 5). The next day, it says the people offered burnt offerings and sacrifices to the calf they were now calling the LORD, thus misusing the name. After that, they threw a riotous, out-of-control party in which they openly indulged in “lewd behavior.” (Exodus32:6) to the extent that their open lewdness in their worship of the calf they called the LORD made them an object of ridicule among their enemies (Exodus 32:25; 1 Corinthians 10:7). When Moses pleaded with God to forgive the people of their idolatry, he relented of the harm he would have done them, but he also withdrew his visible presence from among them. Henceforward, he would send his angel “ahead of” the people, and meet with Moses–only–face-to face, but would not walk among the people. (Exodus 32:33-33:3, 33:7-11, 34:29-35; Numbers 12:6-8).
Not much later, God had led the people to Kadesh Barnea, on the edge of the promised land. When the time came for them to move on from Kadesh, God’s command to all of the people was “See, the Lord your God has given you the land. Go up and take possession of it as the Lord, the God of your ancestors, told you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged… Go up and take possession of the land I have given you.” (Deuteronomy 1:21, Deuteronomy 9:23), But first God–who really initiated this test–the people and Moses agreed that spies should be sent in to reconnoiter the land. (Compare, Numbers 13:1-3, 32:8 with Deuteronomy 1:22-23). So twelve spies were sent, one leader from each of the tribes of Israel. All of the spies came back with a good report about the land itself, saying it was a “good land”–it was very fruitful, just as God had said. (Numbers 13:26-27, Deuteronomy 1:25). But ten of the spies also came back with a bad report about their people’s ability to take the land–which had strong walled cities and giants in it–hence, a bad report about God’s intentions in bringing them there. (Numbers 13:28-29, 30-33). Of course, it was true that the people of Israel could not possibly take the land in their own strength. But God had promised to give it to them. Only two of the spies–Caleb and Joshua–reported that God was able to give this good land to his people as he had promised. (Numbers 13:30, 14:6-9). However, the people believed the report of the ten spies, grumbled against God for bringing them into the wilderness to kill them and leave their children as plunder for the Canaanites, and refused to go in. (Numbers 14:1-4, 10; Numbers 32:6-9; Deuteronomy 1:26-28).
At Moses’ request, God forgave his people, corporately, of their unbelief, but simultaneously swore to them that none of the adults who had seen his wonders in Egypt–except Caleb and Joshua, who had believed him fully–would enter the promised land. (Hebrews 3; Numbers 14:20-25; Deuteronomy 1:34-40). Instead, they would all die in the wilderness and their children would enter into the promise after they were gone. They then wandered in the wilderness another 38 years, until that generation had died, (Deuteronomy 2:13-18). As Hebrews makes clear, most of them died in the wilderness and were denied the promise not as a result of any particular sinful act, but because of their unbelief. When told to enter the promise, they refused. (Hebrews 3:16-4:5).
So at Mount Sinai, the people refused God’s presence, and at Kadesh they refused his promise–in both instances because of fear of what he would do to them. At Mount Sinai, Aaron played the part of the false prophet by making them a new “god” to worship to relieve their fear. And at Kadesh, the ten spies were false prophets, telling the people that God was not able to give them what he had promised. The indicative verb at the end of Jude 1:5, apōlesen — “he destroyed”–describes what God did to the people who refused to believe. Still, returning to the parallel deliverance theme of Jude, faithful Joshua did lead faithful Caleb and the children of the Israelites who had rejected the promise into the promised land thirty eight years later.
The second comparison Jude makes (Jude 6) notes the similarity of false believers and false teachers to those angels “who did not keep their own domain but abandoned their proper dwelling place,” and God’s judgment against them. As will be developed in the still far-from-complete series on “Angels and the Angels that Sinned,” these angels sinned by following Satan in abandoning their role as God’s messengers and instead attempting to become the message, gods in themselves. By and large, the human world has followed them, worshiping demons pictured as images of people or other material things (1 Corinthians 10:20; Romans 1:21-25), idols which would permit and encourage the evil things they collectively want to do (Romans 1:25-32), in essence using their idols to make gods of themselves. False teachers in the Church, likewise, have often encouraged their followers to essentially make gods of themselves or of their leaders (the false teachers themselves, or other religious or political leaders the false teachers have favored). The ultimate symbolic expression of this is the second “beast” of Revelation 13:11-17, whose apparent function is to perform signs make the people worship the first “beast” (who appears to be mostly a political leader) and the “image” of the first beast the second beast will set up. But we will not face the opposition of these angels–or of false prophets and teachers, forever–God has bound the rebellious angels in chains of darkness, and will also remove the false teachers, false prophets and false believers. They are only a temporary test.
It is only after speaking of the unbelief (and consequent sin) of the Israelites God led out of Egypt and the unbelief (and consequent sin) of the Satan and the angels that followed him in rebellion, that Jude deals with the unbelief (and consequent sin) of the people of Sodom (Jude 1:7-10). In the case of Sodom, though, Jude starts by specifying the outward way of life that showed their unbelief (specifically, their sensual focus): “in the same way as” those in the previous examples–the people Moses led out of Egypt and the angels that followed Satan–they “indulged in sexual perversion and went after strange flesh.” Jude 1:7 (NASB). “In the same way as” (ton homoion tropon toutois) in this setting does not imply that the underlying sin of the Israelites of the Exodus or the sinning angels was sexual immorality. This verse says all three situations arose from a similar (homoios) manner of life or character (tropos), not that they all evidenced the same sinful outward behavior. Instead, it asserts the sexual immorality of the people of Sodom flowed from the same underlying inner sin as the unbelief and rebellion in the first two examples–namely, a sensual focus, paying more attention to their own senses and the emotions aroused by them, to their own desires, than to God. This is clarified in verses 8 through 10.
With that said, what are the specific patterns of sinful behavior identified in verse 7? The words translated in English as “having indulged in sexual immorality” are contained in a single Greek form: ekporneusasai. The first thing to note is that ekporneusasai is an aorist participle being used as an adjective. It modifies, in the sense of attributing a property to, “Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them,” collectively, as is shown by its agreement in case, gender and number (nominative feminine plural) with the word translated “cities” (poleis). Jude 1:7 is the only place in the New Testament where either ekporneusasai or any form of the underlying verb ekporneuó is used. However, Thayer (quoted in Bible Hub) notes that ekporneuó is frequently used in the Septuagint to translate the Hebrew root verb zanah, which means literally “to prostitute oneself” sexually, but is also frequently used metaphorically with reference to people prostituting themselves–or the whole nation of Israel or Judah prostituting itself–to other nations or their gods. (See, e.g, multiple instances in Ezekiel 16:15 ff. (LXX), also speaking, in part, of Sodom). Given that the scholars who translated the Septuagint (on which the New Testament writers often relied) found ekporneuó to be a proper translation of zanah in places where the latter clearly refers to metaphorical, spiritual prostitution as well as the physical way of life, it is likely broad enough to cover the same range of meanings in Jude.
The apparent derivation of the verb also confirms this. It is compounded from the preposition/compound prefix “ek–” and the verb “porneúō.“ The verb porneúō literally means “I fornicate,” but it is also used metaphorically to refer to practicing idolatry (see, e.g, Jeremiah 3:6 (LXX), Ezekiel 23:19 (LXX)) or being drawn away into idolatry (e.g., Revelation 17:2), and usually describes its subject’s custom or way of life rather than any particular incident. The prefixed preposition “ek–” has been called (Helps Word-studies) “one of the most under-translated, and therefore mis-translated, Greek prepositions.” Its general range of meanings, as a preposition, is “out of” or “out from,” associated with a mental picture of something coming out of or being brought out of the inside of some other thing or spatial region. It has a broad range of other connotations, but all of them are in tied in some literal or metaphorical way to the picture of one thing coming out from within another. When used in compounding verbs, as in ekporneuó, its accepted range of meanings is to assert something’s 1) egress from something else, 2) emission, removal or separation from something else, 3) origin within something else, 4) publicity (in the sense of news “coming out”), 5) the unfolding or opening out of something, or 6) that something has happened entirely or utterly (“out and out”). Notice that these meanings all overlap, and are all tied to the mental picture of “ek-”
In the case of ekporneuo, the best reading of the combination of “ek-” with the verb appears to assert a flow of fornication, in both its literal and metaphorical senses, which originates within the subject of the verb and flows out of it. This picture agrees well with Jesus’ maxim ““What comes out of a person is what defiles them. For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come—sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and defile a person.” Mark 7:20-23. So the use of the adjectival participle ekporneusasai, which, as a participle, is an indefinite verb form, to describe Sodom and its neighboring cities asserts that they had fornication, likely both literally and figuratively, continually flowing out from within them. It was not a few isolated acts, it was the nature of their collective heart.
The second description of Sodom and the surrounding cites in this verse is also tied to an aorist participle, apelthousai, which matches “cities” in case, gender and number, and thus appears to modify it. This word is a participle of the verb aperchomai, “I go away, I go after.” When used transitively, linked to a noun with the adverb-turned-preposition opisō, it means to go after, follow or pursue. What the people of the cities around Sodom were continuously pursuing was sarkos heteras. This phrase has caused a good deal of unnecessary uncertainty to translators. The word sarkos means “flesh,” the substance of the physical bodies of humans and animals. And heteras simply means “other, other than, not the same as.” So together they mean “other flesh,” flesh not belonging to or the same as that of the person pursuing (aperchomai) it.
This “otherness” of the flesh the people of Sodom were pursuing has led to lots of speculation. Were they pursuing sex with angels? Or lower animals? Or, given the tradition that Sodom is a story about God’s hatred of homosexuality and nothing else, were men pursuing sex with other men–though, if this were the whole problem, one might have expected Jude to use the adjective homo, “the same,” rather than hetero, “different?” But I believe the solution to the translation riddle presented is much simpler than this. Jude meant exactly what he said–the people of Sodom were continually pursuing “other” flesh, that is, flesh “other” than their own flesh. Married people are one flesh with each other. (Genesis 2:24; Matthew 19:5-6; Ephesians 5:31). So anyone who sexually pursues someone to whom they are not married is pursuing “other” flesh. Continually pursuing “other” flesh is, thus, simply the outward behavior that most clearly shows the heart described by ekporneusasai.
Cultic prostitution was also, not coincidentally, a regular feature of Canaanite idolatry, one that figured in a rather obvious way in the destruction of Sodom. Temple or cult prostitution was also a major feature of many of the Greco-Roman and Middle Eastern idol cults of Jude’s day, and other New Testament writers confronted groups within the organized Church that turned Christian liberty into absolute sexual license (see 1 Corinthians 5) and even tried to incorporate pagan sexual practices into Christian worship (see Revelation 2:14-16, 20-25). Jude warned that sexual immorality flowing from the heart will characterize the cults of many false teachers and the lifestyles of many false believers in the Church. And it has done so, to this day!
Finally, the indicative verb in the last clause of verse 7 asserts that Sodom and the cities around them “are set forth,” obviously by God, though he is not named, as examples of those undergoing (the indicative verb in this verse) the penalty of eternal fire.
But, in the example of Sodom, as in the examples stated before it in Jude, the underlying issue remains unbelief, which leads to a sensual focus. This is shown by verse 7’s direct contextual connection with verse 4 (previously discussed) and with verses 8-10:
In the very same way, on the strength of their dreams these ungodly people pollute their own bodies, reject authority and heap abuse on celestial beings. But even the archangel Michael, when he was disputing with the devil about the body of Moses, did not himself dare to condemn him for slander but said, “The Lord rebuke you!” Yet these people slander whatever they do not understand, and the very things they do understand by instinct—as irrational animals do—will destroy them.
Jude 1:8-10 (NIV)
The three examples given in verses 5 through 7–the Exodus generation, the sinning angels, and Sodom–are given as examples of all of the ungodly as spoken of in verses 4 and 8 through 10. The things that characterize all of them are pollution of their own bodies, rejection of authority, and abusiveness toward the things and agents of God. These attributes, in turn, all arise from a sensual focus (v. 10)–the ability to understand only the things they do by instinct coupled with instinctually speaking evil of (blasfemousin) anything they do not understand. Ultimately, it is an attitude of insolent rejection of all boundaries and of anything we cannot at least potentially understand and control. This is also in line with both Ezekiel’s diagnosis of Jerusalem, and with the bulk of modern human thinking:
If it we cannot see, measure and potentially exploit it, it does not exist, and anyone who thinks it does exist is a fool and should be treated as such. We cannot see, measure or manipulate God, so no god exists. We cannot see or measure human souls or spirits, so they do not exist. We can see, measure and exploit human bodies, so we ought to do so to the best of our understanding in order to further our own instinctual desires, emotional whims, and (individual or collective) self interest. This is particularly true of the vulnerable and people of lower rank than we are–they are to be treated as human resources, as nothing better than horses or cows, and exploited as such.
Ian Johnson’s cynical proposed summary of modern Western underling assumptions
This thinking defines the modern world, and it is precisely what God condemned in Sodom.
REVELATION 11:8
The last reference to Sodom in the Bible is in Revelation 11:8. It provides a fitting postscript by comparing the earthly “great city” where God’s last two powerful prophets will die to Jerusalem “the city where also their Lord was crucified,” and “spiritually” to Sodom and Egypt:
Now when they have finished their testimony, the beast that comes up from the Abyss will attack them, and overpower and kill them. Their bodies will lie in the public square of the great city—which is figuratively called Sodom and Egypt—where also their Lord was crucified.
Revelation 11:7-8 (NIV)
The main point of comparison appears to be this: the “great city” where the two prophets will be killed, the city where Jesus was crucified, Sodom which tried to rape and kill two angels, and Egypt which killed the Hebrew babies, all delighted in killing the innocent to maintain their own illusions of control. But none of them will succeed in controlling God by mistreating his people. God destroyed Sodom, but delivered Lot from it. Moses’ mother was, with God’s direction, able to place her son, the baby that escaped the Pharaoh’s edict, in the Pharaoh’s own household–and he became the deliverer of his people from Egypt. Jesus was crucified, but arose in three days to become the deliverer of all who believe. And the two last prophets also will be raised after three days (Revelation 11: 11-12), after which God will proceed to deliver the creation itself from the bondage of sin.
Even though we may think that what we can see is all that exists and what we want is all that matters, God remains active outside our view. It is his will that will finally triumph.
NEXT (for now): Tradition May Support an Heresy
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