But the men of Sodom [were] wicked and sinners before the LORD exceedingly.
Ver. 13. But the men of Sodom were wicked, &c.] See their chief sins set down, Ezekiel 16:49,50. The Chaldee Paraphrast here translateth, they were first unrighteous with their mammon: and secondly, sinners with their bodies, before the Lord. That unnameable sin had its name from them, who against nature were scalded εξεκαυθησαν in their lust, one toward another. Rom 1:27 The apostle there gives it in of the heathen philosophers, many of whom were patrons of this abhorred filth; as Cicero complains of Plato; and Socrates was shrewdly suspected, to be no more honest than he should be with Alcibiades; nor Seneca with Nero. a "The wisdom from above is pure," saith St James; Jam 1:17 and in this wisdom is "truth" and purity, saith Solomon, Pro 8:7 whereas all worldly wisdom is stained with error or lewdness. God punisheth the pride of all flesh with some foul sin, and so sets a Noverint universi, as it were, upon the world's wizards, that all men may know them to be but arrant fools.
And sinners before the Lord exceedingly.] They were grown so debauched and impudent in evil, that neither fear of God nor shame of men could restrain them. Though God looked on, they were no whit abashed or abased before him. God "found not" out their sins "by secret search," Jer 2:34 he needed not to search them with lights. Zep 1:12 For "the show of their countenance did witness against them"; they could blush no more than a sackbut: shamelessness sat in their foreheads; "they declared their sins," even to a proverb. Isa 3:9 They "set them" in open view "upon the cliff of the rock". Eze 24:7 They faced the heavens, and held their heads aloft, as if they deserved commendation, rather than else. This is a high degree of sin, and an immediate forerunner of destruction.
a Seneca delectabatur exoletis ,& c. - Dio in Nerone.