17. As soon as they had brought them outside, they said: “Flee for your life! Do not look back or stop anywhere on the Plain. Flee to the hills at once, or you will be swept away.”
18. “Oh, no, my lords!” Lot replied to them.
19. “You have already shown favor to your servant, doing me the great kindness of saving my life. But I cannot flee to the hills, or the disaster will overtake and kill me.
20. Look, this town ahead is near enough to escape to. It is only a small place. Let me flee there—is it not a small place?—to save my life.”
21. “Well, then,” he replied, “I grant you this favor too. I will not overthrow the town you have mentioned.
22. Hurry, escape there! I cannot do anything until you arrive there.” That is why the town is called Zoar.
23. The sun had risen over the earth when Lot arrived in Zoar,
24. and the Lord rained down sulfur upon Sodom and Gomorrah, fire from the Lord out of heaven.
25. He overthrew those cities and the whole Plain, together with the inhabitants of the cities and the produce of the soil.
26. But Lot’s wife looked back, and she was turned into a pillar of salt.
27. The next morning Abraham hurried to the place where he had stood before the Lord.
28. As he looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah and the whole region of the Plain, he saw smoke over the land rising like the smoke from a kiln.
29. When God destroyed the cities of the Plain, he remembered Abraham and sent Lot away from the upheaval that occurred when God overthrew the cities where Lot had been living.
30. Since Lot was afraid to stay in Zoar, he and his two daughters went up from Zoar and settled in the hill country, where he lived with his two daughters in a cave.