17. After getting them out, the men said, "Save your lives! Don’t look back! And don’t stay in the valley. Escape to the mountains so that you are not swept away."
18. But Lot said to them, "No, my lords, please.
19. You’ve done me a favor and have been so kind to save my life. But I can’t escape to the mountains since the catastrophe might overtake me there and I’d die.
20. This city here is close enough to flee to, and it’s small. It’s small, right? Let me escape there, and my life will be saved."
21. He said to Lot, "I’ll do this for you as well; I won’t overthrow the city that you have described.
22. Hurry! Escape to it! I can’t do anything until you get there." That is why the name of the city is Zoar.
23. As the sun rose over the earth, Lot arrived in Zoar;
24. and the Lord rained down burning asphalt from the skies onto Sodom and Gomorrah.
25. The Lord destroyed these cities, the entire valley, everyone who lived in the cities, and all of the fertile land’s vegetation.
26. When Lot’s wife looked back, she turned into a pillar of salt.
27. Abraham set out early for the place where he had stood with the Lord,
28. and looked out over Sodom and Gomorrah and over all the land of the valley. He saw the smoke from the land rise like the smoke from a kiln.
29. When God destroyed the cities in the valley, God remembered Abraham and sent Lot away from the disaster that overtook the cities in which Lot had lived.
30. Since Lot had become fearful of living in Zoar, he and his two daughters headed up from Zoar and settled in the mountains where he and his two daughters lived in a cave.