"Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven."
Genesis 19:24 · King James Bible
Where they were
Sodom and Gomorrah were two of five "cities of the plain" (Genesis 19:29) that stood in the low, hot Jordan Rift Valley at the southern end of what is now the Dead Sea. Their exact sites are debated. Some archaeologists identify them with the ruined mounds at Bab edh-Dhra and Numeira on the south-eastern shore; others favour the northern basin. Either way, they lay in the "vale of Siddim" (Genesis 14:3, 10), a plain marked with slime-pits — natural bitumen wells — which figures grimly in their fate.
Why they matter in the Bible
Sodom is first mentioned when Lot, Abraham's nephew, chooses the well-watered plain and pitches his tent toward the city (Genesis 13:12–13). "But the men of Sodom were wicked and sinners before the Lord exceedingly."
In Genesis 18 the Lord tells Abraham he is going down to see whether the cry of Sodom is as great as it seems. Abraham then bargains with God in one of the most extraordinary conversations in Scripture — from fifty righteous, down to forty-five, forty, thirty, twenty, ten. "Wilt thou also destroy the righteous with the wicked?… Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?" (Genesis 18:23–25). The Lord agrees: for ten righteous he will spare the whole city. There are not ten.
The two angels come to Sodom that evening. Lot presses them to stay in his house. The men of the city surround it, seeking to abuse the strangers. The angels strike the mob blind and warn Lot to flee. At dawn they take him, his wife, and his two daughters by the hand and lead them out. Lot's wife looks back at the burning city and becomes a pillar of salt (Genesis 19:26). Jesus recalls her: "Remember Lot's wife" (Luke 17:32) — three of the shortest, sharpest words in the Gospel.
Sodom and Gomorrah are invoked all through the rest of Scripture — by Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel (who names their sin as "pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness" — Ezekiel 16:49), Amos, Peter, Jude, and Christ himself — as the standing image of the fate of impenitent cities and the mercy of God on any Lot who will leave.
For the household
The story is a warning against a city that has stopped listening — and a promise that God will not sweep away the righteous with the wicked. Abraham's intercession still stands: whenever a household prays for its city, it prays in the pattern of Abraham praying for Sodom.