Genesis Vol 3.pdf - College Press

19~1-3 8 GENES1
which, in the vicinir
across theT Jordan plain
mountainous region, beyond (Imr q
ites). What was his. puxpose?
self as to whether ten righteous
Sodom and the city spared; in ge
had happened.. And what was t
It was total destruction: only.th
plain where once these thrivin
as the smokedof a furnace.? W
the appalling catastrophe proclaimed .,its reality to Abrad
ham; to subsequent ages it scamped a witness of its severity
(I) upo@ the region itself, in the black and desolate aspect
it has eversince possessed,; (2) apon the Page of inspiratiow,
being, by subsequent Scripture writers constantly referred
to as a standing warning against incurring the Almighty’s
wrath . , . and (3) upon the course of ancient tradition,
which it powerfully affected.” (See esp. Tacitus, Histories,
V. 7;. for..traditional refehences to the event, see Diodorus
Siculus, Strabo, Pliny, Ovid, etc.) . Jamieson (CECG,
164) : “From the height which overlooks Hebron, where
the patriarch stood, the observer at the present da
extensive view ,spread out before him towards’ the Dead
Sea. A cloud of smoke rising from the plain wmld be
visible to a person at Hebron,now, and could have) been;
therefore, to Abraham as he looked towar
morning of its destruction.” What an awesome spectacle
this was that was spread” out before the eyes+of Abraham
on that fateful morning!
Skinner (ICCG, 3 TO) : “Abraham‘s morning;visit to
the spot *where he, had< parted from his .heavenly). guests
forms an impressive close to.the narrative., . . an*e€fective
contrast to 18: 16.” Speiser (ABG, 143’): “As &Abraham
peered anxiously at the scene. of, the disaster
distant heights of Hebron, he ,had his answer to the question
he had posed the night1 before. A pall of denset vapors
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