Lot and His Daughters: Part 7 In the Cave

After his wife is turned to a pillar of salt, Lot and his two daughters run to Zoar. They don’t look back at Sodom, or watch its destruction.

I believe they ran to the area around modern day Neve Zohar. This is a small settlement on the banks of the Dead Sea and is next to the Zohar Wadi, a valley which forms a stream in high rainfall. Maybe Zoar gave its name to the wadi.

This may seem quite a desolate area, but at the time of Abraham, it would have been lush in the Spring and arid in the Summer.

The next day, Abraham is standing over the valley, high up in the hills and sees the whole area is covered by dense smoke

Genesis 18 v 28

He looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah, toward all the land of the plain, and he saw dense smoke rising from the land, like smoke from a furnace.

Leaving Zoar and Carmel

After the disaster, where four of the Cities of the Plain were destroyed, Lot was fearful to stay in Zoar. So he left with his daughters and found a cave to stay in.

Elijah also had an experience where fire fell from Heaven. This time, it was when he was confronting the Prophets of Baal. And when he asked God to burn up the sacrifice, God did so and a great victory was won.

Though after hearing that Queen Jezebel wanted to kill him, he ran to a cave.

By symbolically linking the stories of Sodom and Mount Carmel, it gives us a deeper understanding of what was happening. By looking at Elijah’s story through the lens of Sodom. We can see how depraved Israel had become under the leadership of King Ahab. And similarly, what was happening in the spiritual realm when Sodom was destroyed. Did the Sodomites cry to their pagan gods like the prophets cried to Baal? It didn’t help. God won, as always.