Genesis 19:4,5 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

The men of the city, both old and young, &c.— The men of this abandoned city, being informed of the arrival of these strangers (who probably were of a very beautiful appearance) flocked from all quarters of the town, numbers of every age, with the most infamous purpose, shocking to relate or think of. Their crime, though exquisitely horrid in itself, became, if it were possible, still more so, by being attempted upon the persons of strangers, to violate whom has been accounted a sacrilege in all nations. What an idea does this give us of the total depravation and corruption of this people! One end of Infinite Wisdom, says Dr. Delaney, in recording this history of the destruction of Sodom, was to give us a true idea of that guilt which drew down the Divine vengeance upon this devoted people, and to convey this knowledge to us in a way worthy of infinite wisdom and goodness. Here was a habit of guilt, the most monstrous and unnatural that can be imagined; a crime not to be named among men, and much less to be explained or described: and yet there was a necessity that it should be known, that it should be seen in all its aggravation, in all its horror, in order to vindicate the justice of God in so dreadful a chastisement of it; and that this chastisement should be a terror to all succeeding generations, to guard them against a sin so shameful and so detestable. Now all this is clearly and completely effected in the simplicity of a plain natural account of God's sending two angels to execute the purposes of his justice upon that abandoned people, and of the violence which that abandoned people unanimously agreed to offer to these blessed Beings in human form. The text says, The men of Sodom compassed the house round, both old and young, all the people from every quarter. Now this combination in so detestable a purpose shews them all depraved beyond imagination. When the youth of any place have lost all reverence of the aged, and fear not to expose their guilt to their eyes, from whom, of all others, they should hide it; it is a sure sign that corruption has made a great progress among them; and that those people are hastening to destruction. But when the aged have lost all reverence for themselves, when (as the prophet Isaiah expresses it) they declare their guilt like Sodom, they hide it not, when they fear not to publish their shame to their sons, then is guilt in its last gradation! That people is utterly abandoned! is ripe for perdition! And that this was the condition of that devoted city, when God destroyed it, is sufficiently clear from Moses's account of that destruction; in which every common eye sees the heinousness of the guilt, and the justice of the punishment, without the least offensive mention of the crime which deserved it. The guilt is exposed in all its horror, and the reader is eager for Divine vengeance upon it; and yet the purest ear is not offended with any word in the whole relation.