Key passage

2 Peter 2:6

Sodom and Gomorrah turned to ashes and set out as an example of what is coming to the ungodly.

The text

and turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes, condemned them to destruction, having made them an example to those who would live ungodly;

2 Peter 2:6WEB

The immediate context

Peter is arguing that God knows how to rescue the godly and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment. He gives three examples in sequence: the angels who sinned, the flood, and the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Where it sits in the canon

Jude 7 calls the same event a punishment of eternal fire. Genesis 19:24-28 records that Abraham saw smoke going up from the plain the next morning, and Ezekiel 16:49-50 says that God did away with Sodom as Israel had seen.

Why it matters

Peter says outright that these cities are an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly, so the features he selects as the point of comparison carry real evidential weight.

How the passage is interpreted

The eternal conscious torment reading

Defenders of eternal conscious torment reply that Jude describes the same event as a punishment of eternal fire, which points beyond the historical burning to the final fire itself. On this reading the cities function as a visible sign of a judgment whose full form is spiritual and unending, and Peter is making the point that judgment is certain rather than describing how long it lasts.

The conditionalist reading

Conditionalists press what Peter actually names. He selects two features, being turned to ashes and being condemned to extinction, and mentions neither ongoing burning nor ongoing torment. The source document argues that the cities were destroyed in a day and never rebuilt, so they illustrate a completed destruction with a permanent result rather than a ruin that persists in a fixed state.

Where the readings agree

Peter presents these cities as a deliberate example of the judgment to come.
The historical destruction of the cities was complete and was never reversed.
The example is offered as a warning and not as a historical curiosity.
God preserves the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment.

Where the disagreement lies

Whether the point of comparison is the certainty of a judgment whose real form lies beyond the event, or the shape of the judgment as Peter actually describes it.

Editorial notes

The source document argues that eternal fire in Jude 7 describes a fire whose effect is permanent rather than a fire that is still burning.
The source document notes that no passage about these cities dwells on the suffering of their inhabitants, though it grants that suffering occurred.
The verified Scripture corpus stores Jude 7 under the reference Jude 1:7, following the versification used there.

Where this passage appears in the case

S03 Revelation 20: The Lake of Fire and the Second DeathWhere the clause about unending torment sits in the passage, what the lake of fire does to Death and Hades, and how much weight the placement can carry.
S14 Sodom and Gomorrah as the ExampleWhat Peter chose to highlight, what he could have highlighted instead, and what the cities were actually like the following morning.

2 Peter 3:7-13The present order kept for the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly.
Revelation 20:10-15The lake of fire, the great white throne, and the naming of the second death.
Matthew 25:31-46The sheep and the goats, closing with eternal punishment set against eternal life.

Sources consulted for this passage

Phil Welch. My case for Conditional Immortality/Annihilation (CI) instead of Eternal Conscious Torment (ECT). Working document, revised through 2026. 2023-03-01 Details
Joseph Dear. The Bible Teaches Annihilationism. 1st edition, PDF version. 2016. approximately 590 pages View original of The Bible Teaches Annihilationism (opens in a new tab) Details

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