I. The vale of Sodom was a region blooming and smiling in all the riches of nature; on every hand there was something to raise the thoughts to the Creator. But amidst all this, what was man? His wickedness was so aggravated and extreme, that the region itself was doomed to perish with its inhabitants. Sin still infects the fair field of nature, and it is this which spoils the beauty of the scene. If all the sin in the world could become a visible thing, it would blast and overpower in our view all the beauty of nature. The sin of Sodom was so aggravated that its cry went up to heaven, and the righteous Governor was obliged to manifest Himself.
II. It is impossible not to be struck with the calmness and quietness with which the work of vengeance proceeded. Three persons came on a friendly visit to Abraham. They accepted his hospitality; spoke with him on a matter of complacent interest the renewed assurance of his posterity. Then "the men rose up from thence and looked toward Sodom." We are left in the dark as to one circumstance here. Only twoof the persons went on to Sodom, leaving Abraham to converse with the Almighty. The third disappears from our view unless he was a manifestation of the Divine Being himself, and the same that Abraham conversed with in that solemn character.
III. Notice what value the Lord must set on the righteous, when for the sake often such men he would have spared Sodom. Only onerighteous man dwelt in Sodom, and he was saved.
IV. The precise manner of the fearful catastrophe is beyond our conjecture. It would seem that an earthquake either accompanied or followed it, but the "fire from heaven" is intimated as the grand chief agent of the destruction. The people of Sodom had no time for speculations; there was just time for terror and conscience and despair. Yet our Lord says there is a still greater guilt, a more awful destruction even than theirs. The man that lives and dies rejecting Him had better have been exposed to the rain of fire and brimstone and gone down in the gulf of the vale of Siddim.
J. Foster, Lectures,vol. i., p. 103. Reference: Genesis 18:19. R. M. McCheyne, Additional Remains,p. 125.