17. When they were outside, one of the angels said, “Run for your lives! Don't even look back. And don't stop in the valley. Run to the hills, where you will be safe.”
18-19. Lot answered, “You have done us a great favour, sir. You have saved our lives, but please don't make us go to the hills. That's too far away. The city will be destroyed before we can get there, and we will be killed when it happens.
20. There's a town near here. It's only a small place, but my family and I will be safe, if you let us go there.”
21. “All right, go there,” he answered. “I won't destroy that town.
22. Hurry! Run! I can't do anything until you are safely there.”The town was later called Zoar because Lot had said it was small.
23. The sun was coming up as Lot reached the town of Zoar,
24. and the Lord sent burning sulphur down like rain on Sodom and Gomorrah.
25. He destroyed those cities and everyone who lived in them, as well as their land and the trees and grass that grew there.
26. On the way, Lot's wife looked back and was turned into a block of salt.
27. That same morning Abraham got up and went to the place where he had stood and spoken with the Lord.
28. He looked down towards Sodom and Gomorrah and saw smoke rising from all over the land—it was like a flaming furnace.
29. When God destroyed the cities of the valley where Lot lived, he remembered his promise to Abraham and saved Lot from the terrible destruction.
30. Lot was afraid to stay on in Zoar. So he took his two daughters and moved to a cave in the hill country.
31. One day his elder daughter said to her sister, “Our father is old, and there are no men anywhere for us to marry.