Topic

Sodom and Gomorrah

The cities destroyed in Genesis 19, which Peter names as an example of what is coming for the ungodly and which Jude describes as undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.

Also called: sodom, gomorrah, the cities of the plain

Peter selects two features when he calls the cities an example: they were turned to ashes, and they were condemned to extinction. Both are observable facts about what happened, and neither belongs to a picture of unending conscious torment.

Abraham looked out the next morning and saw smoke rising from the plain. The fire had finished its work within a day, and the cities were never rebuilt. Jude’s phrase about eternal fire describes a fire whose effect is permanent, not one that is still burning.

Some interpreters answer that the example Peter has in view is not the physical destruction but what the inhabitants went on to experience. That reading sets aside the very features Peter names, and Jesus says it will be more bearable for Sodom on the day of judgment than for some other towns, which shows their judgment is still ahead of them.

What this is not

Terms in this dispute are routinely collapsed into one another. These distinctions are what keep the argument honest.

Eternal fire in Jude describes permanence of effect, not a fire that still burns.
The example concerns the destruction of the cities, not what their inhabitants experience now.
That the inhabitants suffered during the judgment is not in dispute; the texts simply do not dwell on it.

Principal passages

2 Peter 2:6
Jude 7Listed in the Scripture index
Genesis 19:24-28Listed in the Scripture index
Matthew 10:15Listed in the Scripture index
Ezekiel 16:49-50Listed in the Scripture index

Where this is argued in the case

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.
S13 What Fire Does in ScriptureThe ordinary function of fire in the biblical texts, the marked exceptions, and what fire paired with sulphur signifies.
S15 Patterns of Judgment in the Old TestamentThe recurring shape of divine judgment in the Old Testament, and what the Valley of Hinnom contributes to the word Gehenna.
S23 The Day of JudgmentThe language of a day, and what it means for when full justice is administered.

Sources for this topic

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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