20. See, there is a small village nearby. Please let me go there instead; don’t you see how small it is? Then my life will be saved.”
21. “All right,” the angel said, “I will grant your request. I will not destroy the little village.
22. But hurry! Escape to it, for I can do nothing until you arrive there.” (This explains why that village was known as Zoar, which means “little place.”)
23. Lot reached the village just as the sun was rising over the horizon.
24. Then the lord rained down fire and burning sulfur from the sky on Sodom and Gomorrah.
25. He utterly destroyed them, along with the other cities and villages of the plain, wiping out all the people and every bit of vegetation.
26. But Lot’s wife looked back as she was following behind him, and she turned into a pillar of salt.
27. Abraham got up early that morning and hurried out to the place where he had stood in the lord’s presence.
28. He looked out across the plain toward Sodom and Gomorrah and watched as columns of smoke rose from the cities like smoke from a furnace.
29. But God had listened to Abraham’s request and kept Lot safe, removing him from the disaster that engulfed the cities on the plain.
30. Afterward Lot left Zoar because he was afraid of the people there, and he went to live in a cave in the mountains with his two daughters.
31. One day the older daughter said to her sister, “There are no men left anywhere in this entire area, so we can’t get married like everyone else. And our father will soon be too old to have children.