Lot had asked to be able to go to Zoar, and the angels allowed it.
Is it not interesting how many times it is mentioned that this destruction is from the Lord? This is total destruction.
We see that the angel specifically instructs Lot and his family not to look back (verse 17). Looking back, he says, will destroy you. And then we saw that the destruction was greater than just the city. It was that city, the other cities of the plain, all the inhabitants of those cities, plus all that grew there in that area. So it was widespread destruction. It was more than just those cities specifically. It was the entire area of what we know as the southwest coast of the Dead Sea. So the whole place went up. Fire and brimstone everywhere.
And we also saw that it was repeated time and again, that God Himself was taking a personal hand in destroying the sinners, their lifestyles, and what they had built. Everything was to be razed to the ground.
So their destruction was divine judgment of sin, and He did not want Lot and his family pining for it, thinking about those good times that they might have had, or all the people that they had grown to know and even love that they had left behind. Because to God (when you think about it) those good old days that they were thinking about, and longing for were an offense to Him. These things were part of the reasons why He was judging those cities of the plain. Lot and his family may not have been involved in all those sins, but it was that general milieu that they had lived in that needed to be destroyed. And God did not want them looking back at it with any good feelings whatsoever.
What we see in the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, and all the cities of the plain is God taking an action in order to preserve the remainder of that civilization for a few more hundred years. If God had let Sodom and Gomorrah go, and all those cities of the plain, that land would have laid waste, or some other nation would have come and taken the land. So God was nipping this iniquity in the bud taking out the worst of the sinners in order to delay the judgment that would come later with the return of all Israel to the land. God was working to make sure that His plan would come to pass as He wanted it to. He was making sure that the promise to Abraham would be fulfilled exactly. And here, Lot and his family had been caught up in all this, and He had to remove them from it.
His judgment of Sodom, then, was a way to delay the effects of the sins of the Amorites until Israel was ready to take possession of the Promised Land. So, in judging the sins of Sodom, God was working out events to bring His promise to pass.
In verse 23, they had gone out, and sent Lot to Zoar:
God determined that because this sin was so pervasive in that area, He not only had to destroy the city, but He had to destroy the countryside, and everything that grew on the ground in it. He needed to wipe the slate clean.
You almost get the sense that the whole place was just stinking with this perversion, and He wanted to remove the scent—just totally remove it.
It is funny using those terms. He did it with fire, and brimstone, which has a sulfurous odor. God would rather smell that than what came up to His nostrils from their sin. God clearly links these particular sins—these perversions—with His wrathful and just punishment.
