Genesis 19:30 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

He feared to dwell in Zoar Probably he found it as wicked as Sodom; and therefore concluded it could not long survive it; or perhaps he observed the rise and increase of those waters, which, after the conflagration, began to overflow the plain, and which, mixing with the ruins, by degrees, made the Dead sea. In those waters he concluded Zoar must needs perish, (though it had escaped the fire,) because it stood upon the same flat. He was now glad to go to the mountain, the place which God had appointed for his shelter. See in Lot what those bring themselves to at last that forsake the communion of saints for secular advantages! He has lost all his substance, and the greater part of his family. His wife is made a monument of the divine wrath against those that prefer the world to God, and the principles of his remaining daughters are so corrupted, and their moral feelings so stupified, through their intercourse with the depraved inhabitants of Sodom, that they are prepared for the greatest crimes; they even lay snares to entangle their own father in the dreadful one of committing incest with themselves. He dwelt in a cave, he and his two daughters It seems strange when he was thus reduced, that he did not think of returning to Abraham, from whom he was at no great distance, and who, no doubt, would have kindly received him. But probably he was ashamed to return, being conscious that he had not treated that venerable servant of God with due respect; or, being now stripped of all, and a wretched outcast, he could not brook appearing so degraded among those that had known him in his more prosperous days.