Genesis 19 in plain modern English. New Ground English Translation.

The two messengers arrived at Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting in the gateway of the city. When Lot saw them, he got up to meet them and bowed facedown to the ground.

"Please, my lords," he said, "come to your servant's house. You can wash your feet and spend the night, then get up early and go on your way." But they said, "No, we'll spend the night in the town square."

But he pressed them so strongly that they went with him and entered his house. He made them a meal and baked unleavened bread, and they ate.

Before they had gone to bed, all the men of the city — the men of Sodom, both young and old, every last one of them — surrounded the house.

They called out to Lot, "Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so we can have sex with them."

Lot went outside to them and shut the door behind him.

"Please, my brothers," he said, "don't do this evil thing."

"Look, I have two daughters who have never slept with a man. Let me bring them out to you, and you can do whatever you want with them. But don't do anything to these men, because they've come under the protection of my roof."

"Get out of the way!" they said. Then they said, "This guy came here as an outsider, and now he's acting like a judge! We'll do worse to you than to them." They pressed hard against Lot and moved in to break down the door.

But the men inside reached out, pulled Lot back into the house, and shut the door.

Then they struck the men at the doorway with blindness, from the youngest to the oldest, so that they wore themselves out trying to find the door.

The men said to Lot, "Do you have anyone else here? Sons-in-law, sons, daughters, anyone you have in the city — get them out of here,"

"because we are about to destroy this place. The outcry against these people has become so great before Yahweh that Yahweh has sent us to destroy it."

So Lot went out and spoke to his sons-in-law, who were engaged to his daughters. "Get up! Get out of this place, because Yahweh is about to destroy the city!" But his sons-in-law thought he was joking.

As dawn broke, the messengers urged Lot, saying, "Get up! Take your wife and your two daughters who are here, or you'll be swept away in the punishment of the city."

When he hesitated, the men grabbed his hand, his wife's hand, and the hands of his two daughters — because Yahweh had compassion on him — and they brought him out and set him down outside the city.

Once they had brought them outside, one of them said, "Run for your life! Don't look back, and don't stop anywhere in the valley. Escape to the hills, or you'll be destroyed!"

But Lot said to them, "No, please, my lords!"

"Look, your servant has found favor in your eyes, and you've shown me great kindness by sparing my life. But I can't escape to the hills — the disaster will overtake me, and I'll die."

"Look, that town over there is close enough to run to, and it's small. Let me escape there — it's just a small place, isn't it? — and my life will be spared."

He said to him, "All right, I'll grant you this too — I won't overthrow the town you're talking about."

"Hurry! Escape there, because I can't do anything until you arrive there." That's why the town was called Zoar.

The sun had risen over the land by the time Lot reached Zoar.

Then Yahweh rained down sulfur and fire on Sodom and Gomorrah — from Yahweh, out of the sky.

He overthrew those cities, the entire valley, all the inhabitants of the cities, and everything growing from the ground.

But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.

Abraham got up early that morning and went to the place where he had stood before Yahweh.

He looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah and all the land of the valley, and he saw thick smoke rising from the land, like smoke from a furnace.

So when God destroyed the cities of the valley, God remembered Abraham and sent Lot out from the middle of the devastation — when he overthrew the cities where Lot had been living.

Lot left Zoar and settled in the hills with his two daughters, because he was afraid to stay in Zoar. He and his two daughters lived in a cave.

The older daughter said to the younger, "Our father is old, and there's no man anywhere around to sleep with us the way things normally work."

"Come on, let's get our father drunk with wine and sleep with him so we can preserve our family line through our father."

So they got their father drunk with wine that night, and the older daughter went in and slept with her father. He didn't know when she lay down or when she got up.

The next day, the older daughter said to the younger, "Last night I slept with my father. Let's get him drunk with wine again tonight, and you go in and sleep with him so we can preserve our family line through our father."

So they got their father drunk with wine again that night, and the younger daughter went and slept with him. Again, he didn't know when she lay down or when she got up.

So both of Lot's daughters became pregnant by their father.

The older daughter had a son and named him Moab. He's the ancestor of the Moabites to this day.

The younger daughter also had a son and named him Ben-Ammi. He's the ancestor of the Ammonites to this day.