And Lot lifted up, &c.— This verse has much perplexed the Commentators, especially as it stands in our version: where the words as thou comest unto Zoar are joined to the land AEgypt, when the first inspection of a map will shew, that they cannot refer to the land of AEgypt.
Houbigant therefore translates it thus: Then Lot lifted up his eyes, and beheld all the plain of Jordan: but before the Lord had destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, it was all, as thou goest to Zoar, well watered, even as the garden of the Lord, and as the land of AEgypt. Le Clerc gives a very similar translation; But Lot lifting up his eyes, beheld all the plain of Jordan, when the Lord had not yet destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, as thou goest to Zoar, and saw it all to be well watered like the paradise of Jehovah, or the land of AEgypt. The whole difficulty vanishes, if you only unite the last clause, as thou comest unto Zoar, with well watered, &c. and read, before the Lord, &c. in a parenthesis: he beheld the plain "that it was well watered every where from the entrance [or beginning of the plain] at Zoar, (before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah,) even as well watered as the garden of Eden, or the land of AEgypt, fertilized as it was by the Nile."