“As I live,” says the Lord Yahweh, “Sodom your sister has not done, she nor her daughters, as you have done, you and your daughters. Behold, this was the iniquity of your sister Sodom; pride, fullness of bread and prosperous ease were in her and in her daughters. Nor did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy. And they were haughty and committed abomination before me. Therefore I took them away when I saw them (or ‘as I saw fit').”
The evil behaviour of Sodom and her sister towns was proverbial. But, says Yahweh, the behaviour of Jerusalem and Israel was worse. Isaiah 3:9 says of Judah and Jerusalem, ‘the show of their countenance witnesses against them, and they declare their sin as Sodom.' Lamentations 4:6 goes further and says, ‘for the iniquity of the daughter of my people is greater than the sin of Sodom.' Indeed the destruction of Sodom is regularly spoken of in the Old Testament (Deuteronomy 29:23; Isaiah 1:9; Jeremiah 49:18; Amos 4:11) as illustrating the awful judgment of God. And yet Sodom had not sinned as greatly as Israel.
The sins of Sodom are categorised. She was proud, complacent, basking in prosperity, lacking in concern for the poor and needy, arrogant and idolatrous (committed abomination), so much so that God took her people away when He saw them. We know something of her degradation and sexual perversion from Genesis 19, the natural result of following their religion and of the gods they worshipped. But she had not sinned like Jerusalem had done, multiplying their idolatry over so long a period. No wonder they were doomed.