Genesis 13:13

13:13 (Now ¹  the people ²  of Sodom were extremely wicked rebels against the Lord.) ³ 

Deuteronomy 32:32

32:32 For their vine is from the stock ⁴  of Sodom,

and from the fields of Gomorrah. ⁵ 

Their grapes contain venom,

their clusters of grapes are bitter.

Jeremiah 9:26

9:26 That is, I will punish the Egyptians, the Judeans, the Edomites, the Ammonites, the Moabites, and all the desert people who cut their hair short at the temples. ⁶  I will do so because none of the people of those nations are really circumcised in the Lord’s sight. ⁷  Moreover, none of the people of Israel ⁸  are circumcised when it comes to their hearts.” ⁹ 

Jeremiah 23:14

23:14 But I see the prophets of Jerusalem ¹⁰ 

doing something just as shocking.

They are unfaithful to me

and continually prophesy lies. ¹¹ 

So they give encouragement to people who are doing evil,

with the result that they do not stop their evildoing. ¹² 

I consider all of them as bad as the people of Sodom,

and the citizens of Jerusalem as bad as the people of Gomorrah. ¹³ 

Ezekiel 16:46

16:46 Your older sister was Samaria, who lived north ¹⁴  of you with her daughters, and your younger sister, who lived south ¹⁵  of you, was Sodom ¹⁶  with her daughters.

Amos 9:7

9:7 “You Israelites are just like the Ethiopians in my sight,” ¹⁷  says the Lord.

“Certainly I brought Israel up from the land of Egypt,

but I also brought the Philistines from Caphtor ¹⁸  and the Arameans from Kir. ¹⁹ 

Revelation 11:8

11:8 Their ²⁰  corpses will lie in the street ²¹  of the great city that is symbolically ²²  called Sodom and Egypt, where their Lord was also crucified.

¹ tn Here is another significant parenthetical clause in the story, signaled by the vav (וו) disjunctive (translated “now”) on the noun at the beginning of the clause.

² tn Heb “men.” However, this is generic in sense; it is unlikely that only the male residents of Sodom were sinners.

³ tn Heb “wicked and sinners against the Lord exceedingly.” The description of the sinfulness of the Sodomites is very emphatic. First, two nouns are used to form a hendiadys: “wicked and sinners” means “wicked sinners,” the first word becoming adjectival. The text is saying these were no ordinary sinners; they were wicked sinners, the type that cause pain for others. Then to this phrase is added “against the Lord,” stressing their violation of the laws of heaven and their culpability. Finally, to this is added מְאֹד (mÿ’od, “exceedingly,” translated here as “extremely”).

⁴ tn Heb “vine.”

⁵ sn Sodom…Gomorrah. The term “vine” is a reference to the pagan deities which, the passage says, find their ultimate source in Sodom and Gomorrah, that is, in the soil of perversion exemplified by these places (cf. Gen 18:20; 19:4-28; Isa 1:10; 3:9; Jer 23:14; Lam 4:6; Ezek 16:44-52; Matt 10:15; 11:23-24).

⁶ tn Heb “all those who are cut off on the side of the head who live in the desert.” KJV and some other English versions (e.g., NIV “who live in the desert in distant places”; NLT “who live in distant places”) have followed the interpretation that this is a biform of an expression meaning “end or remote parts of the [far] corners [of the earth].” This interpretation is generally abandoned by the more recent commentaries and lexicons (see, e.g. BDB 802 s.v. פֵּאָה 1 and HALOT 858 s.v. פֵּאָה 1.β). It occurs also in 25:33; 49:32.

⁷ tn Heb “For all of these nations are uncircumcised.” The words “I will do so” are supplied in the translation to indicate the connection with the preceding statement.

⁸ tn Heb “house of Israel.”

⁹ tn Heb “And all the house of Israel is uncircumcised of heart.”

¹⁰ map For location see Map5-B1; Map6-F3; Map7-E2; Map8-F2; Map10-B3; JP1-F4; JP2-F4; JP3-F4; JP4-F4.

¹¹ tn Or “they commit adultery and deal falsely.” The word “shocking” only occurs here and in 5:30 where it is found in the context of prophesying lies. This almost assures that the reference to “walking in lies” (Heb “in the lie”) is referring to false prophesy. Moreover the references to the prophets in 5:13 and in 14:13-15 are all in the context of false prophesy as are the following references in this chapter in 23:24, 26, 32 and in 28:15. This appears to be the theme of this section. This also makes it likely that the reference to adultery is not literal adultery, though two of the false prophets in Babylon were guilty of this (29:23). The reference to “encouraging those who do evil” that follows also makes more sense if they were preaching messages of comfort rather than messages of doom. The verbs here are infinitive absolutes in place of the finite verb, probably used to place greater emphasis on the action (cf. Hos 4:2 in a comparable judgment speech.)

¹² tn Heb “So they strengthen the hands of those doing evil so that they do not turn back from their evil.” For the use of the figure “strengthen the hands” meaning “encourage” see Judg 9:24; Ezek 13:22 (and cf. BDB 304 s.v. חָזַק Piel.2). The vav consecutive on the front of the form gives the logical consequence equivalent to “so” in the translation.

¹³ tn Heb “All of them are to me like Sodom and its [Jerusalem’s] inhabitants like Gomorrah.”

¹⁴ tn Heb “left.”

¹⁵ tn Heb “right.”

¹⁶ sn Sodom was the epitome of evil (Deut 29:23; 32:32; Isa 1:9-10; 3:9; Jer 23:14; Lam 4:6; Matt 10:15; 11:23-24; Jude 7).

¹⁷ tn The Hebrew text has a rhetorical question, “Are you children of Israel not like the Cushites to me?” The rhetorical question has been converted to an affirmative statement in the translation for clarity. See the comment at 8:8.

¹⁸ sn Caphtor may refer to the island of Crete.

¹⁹ tn The second half of v. 7 is also phrased as a rhetorical question in the Hebrew text, “Did I not bring Israel up from the land of Egypt, and the Philistines from Caphtor, and Aram from Kir?” The translation converts the rhetorical question into an affirmation for clarity.

²⁰ tn Here καί (kai) has not been translated because of differences between Greek and English style.

²¹ tn The Greek word πλατεῖα (plateia) refers to a major (broad) street (L&N 1.103).

²² tn Grk “spiritually.”