Sodom סדום
A wealthy city by the Dead Sea, destroyed for cruelty made into law.
Sodom in the Torah is not merely wicked but prosperous: the valley is "like the garden of the Lord", which is exactly why Lot chooses it. The sages explain its destruction with unexpected precision—not vice in general but a system. In Sodom charity was outlawed; travellers were stretched or cut to fit a bed; a girl who fed a beggar was executed. The Talmud sums up the Sodomite principle as "what's mine is mine and what's yours is yours" and calls it middat Sdom: refusing a kindness that costs nothing.
Avraham argues with God over the city—"shall the Judge of all the earth not do justice?"—bargaining from fifty righteous men down to ten. Ten are not found. Lot is dragged out; his wife looks back and becomes a pillar of salt.
Tradition places the site at the southern end of the Dead Sea, where Mount Sdom, a ridge of salt, still stands.
On the timeline
Related
Sources
Tanakh
- Bereishit 13:10–13 — Lot’s choice: “like the garden of the Lord”
- Bereishit 18:16–19:29 — Avraham’s plea and the destruction of the cities
- Yechezkel 16:49 — the guilt of Sodom: “she did not strengthen the hand of the poor”
Chazal: Mishnah, Talmud, midrash, Zohar
- Sanhedrin 109a–b — the courts of Sodom and “the bed of Sodom”
- Pirkei Avot 5:10 — “mine is mine and yours is yours: this is the character of Sodom”
Basis: tradition.