First ReadingGenesis 19:15-29*
From the Book of Genesis
15When the morning came,then the angels hurried Lot, saying, “Get up!Take your wife and your two daughters who are here,lest you be consumed in the iniquity of the city.”16But he lingered;and the men grabbed his hand,his wife’s hand, and his two daughters’ hands,the Lord being merciful to him;and they took him out, and set him outside of the city.17It came to pass, when they had taken them out,that he said, “Escape for your life!Don’t look behind you,and don’t stay anywhere in the plain.Escape to the mountains, lest you be consumed!”
18Lot said to them, “Oh, not so, my lord.19See now, your servant has found favor in your sight,and you have magnified your loving kindness,which you have shown to me in saving my life.I can’t escape to the mountain,lest evil overtake me, and I die.20See now, this city is near to flee to,and it is a little one.Oh let me escape there (isn’t it a little one?),and my soul will live.”
21He said to him, “Behold,I have granted your request concerning this thing also,that I will not overthrow the city ofwhich you have spoken.22Hurry, escape there,for I can’t do anything until you get there.”Therefore the name of the city was called Zoar.
23The sun had risen on the earth when Lot came to Zoar.24Then the Lord rained on Sodom and on Gomorrah sulfurand fire from the Lord out of the sky.25He overthrew those cities,all the plain, all the inhabitants of the cities,and that which grew on the ground.26But Lot’s wife looked back from behind him,and she became a pillar of salt.
27Abraham went up early in the morning to the place where he had stood before the Lord.28He looked toward Sodom and Gomorrah,and toward all the land of the plain,and saw that the smoke of the land went up as the smoke of a furnace.
29When God destroyed the cities of the plain,God remembered Abraham,and sent Lot out of the middle of the overthrow,when he overthrew the cities in which Lot lived.