Discovery BoxGenesis 19:28-29 
Context19:28 He looked out toward 1 Sodom and Gomorrah and all the land of that region. 2 As he did so, he saw the smoke rising up from the land like smoke from a furnace. 3
19:29 So when God destroyed 4 the cities of the region, 5 God honored 6 Abraham’s request. He removed Lot 7 from the midst of the destruction when he destroyed 8 the cities Lot had lived in.
1 tn Heb “upon the face of.”
2 tn Or “all the land of the plain”; Heb “and all the face of the land of the circle,” referring to the “circle” or oval area of the Jordan Valley.
3 tn Heb “And he saw, and look, the smoke of the land went up like the smoke of a furnace.”
sn It is hard to imagine what was going on in Abraham’s mind, but this brief section in the narrative enables the reader to think about the human response to the judgment. Abraham had family in that area. He had rescued those people from the invasion. That was why he interceded. Yet he surely knew how wicked they were. That was why he got the number down to ten when he negotiated with God to save the city. But now he must have wondered, “What was the point?”
4 tn The construction is a temporal clause comprised of the temporal indicator, an infinitive construct with a preposition, and the subjective genitive.
5 tn Or “of the plain”; Heb “of the circle,” referring to the “circle” or oval area of the Jordan Valley.
6 tn Heb “remembered,” but this means more than mental recollection here. Abraham’s request (Gen 18:23-32) was that the
sn God showed Abraham special consideration because of the covenantal relationship he had established with the patriarch. Yet the reader knows that God delivered the “righteous” (Lot’s designation in 2 Pet 2:7) before destroying their world – which is what he will do again at the end of the age.
7 sn God’s removal of Lot before the judgment is paradigmatic. He typically delivers the godly before destroying their world.
8 tn Heb “the overthrow when [he] overthrew.”
