¹ Now the Lord came to him by the holy tree of Mamre, when he was seated in the doorway of his tent in the middle of the day;

² And lifting up his eyes, he saw three men before him; and seeing them, he went quickly to them from the door of the tent, and went down on his face to the earth;

³ And said, My Lord, if now I have grace in your eyes, do not go away from your servant:

⁴ Let me get water for washing your feet, and take your rest under the tree:

⁵ And let me get a bit of bread to keep up your strength, and after that you may go on your way: for this is why you have come to your servant. And they said, Let it be so.

⁶ Then Abraham went quickly into the tent, and said to Sarah, Get three measures of meal straight away and make cakes.

⁷ And running to the herd, he took a young ox, soft and fat, and gave it to the servant and he quickly made it ready;

⁸ And he took butter and milk and the young ox which he had made ready and put it before them, waiting by them under the tree while they took food.

⁹ And they said to him, Where is Sarah your wife? And he said, She is in the tent.

¹⁰ And he said, I will certainly come back to you in the spring, and Sarah your wife will have a son. And his words came to the ears of Sarah who was at the back of the tent-door.

¹¹ Now Abraham and Sarah were very old, and Sarah was past the time for giving birth.

¹² And Sarah, laughing to herself, said, Now that I am used up am I still to have pleasure, my husband himself being old?

¹³ And the Lord said, Why was Sarah laughing and saying, Is it possible for me, being old, to give birth to a child?

¹⁴ Is there any wonder which the Lord is not able to do? At the time I said, in the spring, I will come back to you, and Sarah will have a child.

¹⁵ Then Sarah said, I was not laughing; for she was full of fear. And he said, No, but you were laughing.

¹⁶ And the men went on from there in the direction of Sodom; and Abraham went with them on their way.

¹⁷ And the Lord said, Am I to keep back from Abraham the knowledge of what I do;

¹⁸ Seeing that Abraham will certainly become a great and strong nation, and his name will be used by all the nations of the earth as a blessing?

¹⁹ For I have made him mine so that he may give orders to his children and those of his line after him, to keep the ways of the Lord, to do what is good and right: so that the Lord may do to Abraham as he has said.

²⁰ And the Lord said, Because the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is very great, and their sin is very evil,

²¹ I will go down now, and see if their acts are as bad as they seem from the outcry which has come to me; and if they are not, I will see.

²² And the men, turning from that place, went on to Sodom: but Abraham was still waiting before the Lord.

²³ And Abraham came near, and said, Will you let destruction come on the upright with the sinners?

²⁴ If by chance there are fifty upright men in the town, will you give the place to destruction and not have mercy on it because of the fifty upright men?

²⁵ Let such a thing be far from you, to put the upright to death with the sinner: will not the judge of all the earth do right?

²⁶ And the Lord said, If there are fifty upright men in the town, I will have mercy on it because of them.

²⁷ And Abraham answering said, Truly, I who am only dust, have undertaken to put my thoughts before the Lord:

²⁸ If by chance there are five less than fifty upright men, will you give up all the town to destruction because of these five? And he said, I will not give it to destruction if there are forty-five.

²⁹ And again he said to him, By chance there may be forty there. And he said, I will not do it if there are forty.

³⁰ And he said, Let not the Lord be angry with me if I say, What if there are thirty there? And he said, I will not do it if there are thirty.

³¹ And he said, See now, I have undertaken to put my thoughts before the Lord: what if there are twenty there? And he said, I will have mercy because of the twenty.

³² And he said, O let not the Lord be angry and I will say only one word more: by chance there may be ten there. And he said, I will have mercy because of the ten.

³³ And the Lord went on his way when his talk with Abraham was ended, and Abraham went back to his place.

¹ The two angels came to Sodom at evening. Lot sat in the gate of Sodom. Lot saw them, and rose up to meet them. He bowed himself with his face to the earth,

² and he said, "See now, my lords, please turn aside into your servant's house, stay all night, wash your feet, and you can rise up early, and go on your way." They said, "No, but we will stay in the street all night."

³ He urged them greatly, and they came in with him, and entered into his house. He made them a feast, and baked unleavened bread, and they ate.

⁴ But before they lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, surrounded the house, both young and old, all the people from every quarter.

⁵ They called to Lot, and said to him, "Where are the men who came in to you this night? Bring them out to us, that we may have sex with them."

⁶ Lot went out to them to the door, and shut the door after him.

⁷ He said, "Please, my brothers, don't act so wickedly.

⁸ See now, I have two virgin daughters. Please let me bring them out to you, and you may do to them what seems good to you. Only don't do anything to these men, because they have come under the shadow of my roof."

⁹ They said, "Stand back!" Then they said, "This one fellow came in to live as a foreigner, and he appoints himself a judge. Now will we deal worse with you, than with them!" They pressed hard on the man Lot, and drew near to break the door.

¹⁰ But the men put forth their hand, and brought Lot into the house to them, and shut the door.

¹¹ They struck the men who were at the door of the house with blindness, both small and great, so that they wearied themselves to find the door.

¹² The men said to Lot, "Do you have anybody else here? Sons-in-law, your sons, your daughters, and whoever you have in the city, bring them out of the place:

¹³ for we will destroy this place, because the outcry against them has grown great before Yahweh that Yahweh has sent us to destroy it."

¹⁴ Lot went out, and spoke to his sons-in-law, who were pledged to marry his daughters, and said, "Get up! Get out of this place, for Yahweh will destroy the city." But he seemed to his sons-in-law to be joking.

¹⁵ When the morning came, then the angels hurried Lot, saying, "Get up! Take your wife, and your two daughters who are here, lest you be consumed in the iniquity of the city."

¹⁶ But he lingered; and the men grabbed his hand, his wife's hand, and his two daughters' hands, Yahweh being merciful to him; and they took him out, and set him outside of the city.

¹⁷ It came to pass, when they had taken them out, that he said, "Escape for your life! Don't look behind you, and don't stay anywhere in the plain. Escape to the mountains, lest you be consumed!"

¹⁸ Lot said to them, "Oh, not so, my lord.

¹⁹ See now, your servant has found favor in your sight, and you have magnified your loving kindness, which you have shown to me in saving my life. I can't escape to the mountain, lest evil overtake me, and I die.

²⁰ See now, this city is near to flee to, and it is a little one. Oh let me escape there (isn't it a little one?), and my soul will live."

²¹ He said to him, "Behold, I have granted your request concerning this thing also, that I will not overthrow the city of which you have spoken.

²² Hurry, escape there, for I can't do anything until you get there." Therefore the name of the city was called Zoar.

²³ The sun had risen on the earth when Lot came to Zoar.

²⁴ Then Yahweh rained on Sodom and on Gomorrah sulfur and fire from Yahweh out of the sky.

²⁵ He overthrew those cities, all the plain, all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew on the ground.

²⁶ But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.

²⁷ Abraham got up early in the morning to the place where he had stood before Yahweh.

²⁸ He looked toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and toward all the land of the plain, and looked, and saw that the smoke of the land went up as the smoke of a furnace.

²⁹ It happened, when God destroyed the cities of the plain, that God remembered Abraham, and sent Lot out of the middle of the overthrow, when he overthrew the cities in which Lot lived.

³⁰ Lot went up out of Zoar, and lived in the mountain, and his two daughters with him; for he was afraid to live in Zoar. He lived in a cave with his two daughters.

³¹ The firstborn said to the younger, "Our father is old, and there is not a man in the earth to come in to us in the way of all the earth.

³² Come, let's make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, that we may preserve our father's seed."

³³ They made their father drink wine that night: and the firstborn went in, and lay with her father. He didn't know when she lay down, nor when she arose.

³⁴ It came to pass on the next day, that the firstborn said to the younger, "Behold, I lay last night with my father. Let us make him drink wine again, tonight. You go in, and lie with him, that we may preserve our father's seed."

³⁵ They made their father drink wine that night also. The younger went and lay with him. He didn't know when she lay down, nor when she got up.

³⁶ Thus both of Lot's daughters were with child by their father.

³⁷ The firstborn bore a son, and named him Moab. He is the father of the Moabites to this day.

³⁸ The younger also bore a son, and called his name Ben Ammi. He is the father of the children of Ammon to this day.