Fire was the agent employed in the destruction of Sodom. The city was burned, and left de solate. The word overthrew ' cinh); Kari o-rpol,c ; subvertit)—‘ He overthrew these cities, and the whole district '—may perhaps imply some thing more than, or additional to, the action of the fire. Taken in connection with another statement, this appears still more probable. In Gen. xiv. 3 it is said : All these joined in the vale of Siddim, that is the Salt Sea.' We cannot doubt that the vale of Siddim was submerg,ed ; but it is not said that Sodom was in it. The probability is that it was in it ; and this was the common belief in ancient times, and is so still. Some even went so far as to affirm that the ruins of the cities could he seen beneath the waves (D'Herbelot, Bibliotheque Orientale, s. v. Daoura ; Reland, p. 257). Jose phus, however, says : Adjacent to it (the Dead Sea) is the land of Sodom, in ancient times a favoured district, renowned for its productions and the wealth of its cities ; but now totally burnt up. It is said that it was consumed by lightning, and accordingly vestiges of the divine fire, and some faint remains of the five cities, are still dis cernible ' ylld. iv. 8. 4). Tacitus gives a similar account : At a small distance from the lake lie those wide extended plains which tradition says were formerly a rich and fertile country, abounding with populous cities, but long since destroyed by fire from heaven, and now a barren desert' (Hist. v. 7). Strabo is less definite ; but he states that some of the cities were swal lowed up ' (Geog. xvi. p. 764). Reland held that though the vale of Siddim was subinerged, Sodom was not in it (pp. 254, seq.) De Saulcy is the most ardent champion of this view in modern times. He even believes that he has discovered the ruins of Sodom in the remains of an old tower at the northern end of the salt hills, to which Ile has given the name Kharbet Esdouni ("ourney round the Deaa' Sea,i. 453). It is unfortunate for the alleged
discovery that no other traveller has been able to find on the spot a trace of this name, or any re mains that would indicate the s,ite of a city (Tris. tram, p. 329 ; Van de Velde, Travels, ii. r 15, seq.) Mr. Grove (Smith, Dict. of Bible, s. v. Sodom' and Siddim') goes much farther than either Reland or De Saulcy. He maintains that neither Sodom nor the vale of Siddim was submerged ; and that the explanatory clause in Gen. xiv. 3, that is the Salt Sea,' is an interpolation of a late writer. Such a statement from so high an authority upon sacred geography the present writer cannot pass without a solemn protest. The Bible does not shrink from the most searching criticism ; but to pronounce a clause spurious without adducing, or being able to adduce, a particle of evidence from MS., version, or ancient quotation, is not criticism (see more fully on this point in the article Sim:int).
The most careful survey of the shores of the Dead Sea has failed to bring to light a single vestige of Sodom. It is in the highest degree probable that the city stood somewhere near the range of Khashm Usclom, aalci gave to it the name which it has handed down to our own clay. But whether the site was on the shore, and has been completely oblitera.ted by the action of the fiery shower, and the lapse of well nigh four thousand years ; or whether the waters of the Dead Sea, as they covered the vale of Siddim, covered also the scathed ruins of Sodom, it is now, and probably ever will be, impossible satisfactorily to determine. The recent discoveries of Mr. Tristram are most interesting and important, and it is to be hoped they will be followed up by properly qualified men, The probable mode of the destruction of Sodom, and the supposed traces of it recently discovered by Tristram, have already been described in the articles SALT SEA and SIDDIM, tO which the pre sent article is to some extent supplementary.— J. L. P.