On Sodom (poem)

Contents

1. 1After the flood and God's covenant of the rainbow, a new impiety arose, and Sodom, given over to unnatural lust, deserved destruction by fire.
2. 25God sends two angels to Sodom, where Lot alone fears God; he receives them hospitably, and when the townsmen besiege his door he pleads with them against their unnatural lust.
3. 49Lot offers his daughters to protect his guests; the mob turns on him, but the angels pull him inside and strike the crowd blind.
4. 74The angels reveal the coming destruction; Lot's sons-in-law mock, and at dawn the angels lead Lot's family out, letting him flee to the small city of Zoar.
5. 99Fire and sulphur rain on Sodom, a true event behind the myth of Phaethon; Lot's wife looks back and becomes a pillar of salt that still stands.
6. 123The salt pillar is said to renew itself; Sodom's region remains a burned waste whose fruits turn to ash and whose sea is dead, yielding only bitumen.
7. 147The Dead Sea yields bitumen gathered in strange ways and buoys up whatever is put in it; Sodom and Gomorrah's punishments remain a lasting warning to fear the one Lord.