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Sodom Burned at the Hour When Both Sun and Moon Were Watching

A girl in Admah gave a stranger bread and water at his request. The town smeared her with honey and left her out where the bees would find her.

Curated by Arthur · Told by Maggid ·
Table of Contents
  1. The Girl Who Gave a Stranger Bread
  2. The Angels Took All Afternoon
  3. Lot Brought Them Home the Long Way
  4. The One Hour Nobody Could Argue With
  5. Dawn Over the Plain
Sodom Burned at the Hour When Both Sun and Moon Were Watching Click for full size

The Girl Who Gave a Stranger Bread

A traveler came into Admah meaning to sleep one night and move on in the morning.

He asked for something to eat and drink. The daughter of one of the rich men of the town brought him water and brought him bread and handed both to him, and that was the whole of what she did.

The town found out. They took hold of her and marched her in front of the judge, and the judge heard the charge and sentenced her to death for it.

They did not use a rope or a stone. They took honey and smeared her with it from the crown of her head to the soles of her feet, and then they carried her out and laid her down in the open where the bees would come to the smell. The bees came. She screamed for a long time, and the people of Admah stood there and listened to her scream and went on with their day.

That is when God settled on destroying them.

The Angels Took All Afternoon

Two angels left Abraham's tent at noon with the sentence to carry out, and the road to Sodom is not a day's walk.

They arrived at the approach of evening.

Angels ordinarily cross the distance like lightning going down. These were angels of mercy, and they had been handed a demolition order, and they dragged every step of it out as long as they could, still expecting word that the thing had been called off. No word came.

With nightfall the case closed and the sentence became final, and only then did they walk in through the gate.

Lot Brought Them Home the Long Way

Lot had grown up in Abraham's house and had learned there what to do when a stranger turns up at dusk with nowhere to sleep. He saw two travelers standing in the square and told them to come home with him and stay the night.

Feeding a stranger in Sodom carried the death penalty. Lot knew the law he was breaking, and he knew what the town had already done to a girl in Admah over a cup of water.

So he waited for full dark before he made the offer, and when they accepted he did not walk them down the main road. He took them through side lanes and back turnings, doubling around, keeping them off the streets where anyone was still awake, and got the two of them through his own door without one neighbor seeing.

The One Hour Nobody Could Argue With

There were sun worshippers in those cities and there were moon worshippers, and God had thought about both of them.

"If I destroy them by day, the moon worshippers will say, if the moon had been here she would have proved herself our savior. And if I destroy them by night, the sun worshippers will say, if the sun had been here he would have proved himself our savior."

So the hour was chosen and set. The sixteenth of Nisan, at dawn, when the moon has not yet gone down and the sun is already up, and the two of them are up there watching at the same time with nothing to do.

No survivor would be able to say his god had stepped out.

Dawn Over the Plain

They spent the night getting Lot's household out, and it took work. He argued. He lingered. Hands closed around his wrist and pulled.

The sun came up over the land as he reached Zoar, and the moon was still there in the west, pale and finished. Both of them watched.

The fire came down between them and Sodom burned. It came down on Sodom and on Gomorrah and on Admah, on the square where the traveler had asked for bread, on the bench where the judge had passed his sentence, and on the house of the rich man whose daughter had gone out with a cup of water in her hand.

SodomDivine JusticeAngelsDawnCreation
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From the tradition

Sources

3 sources

The texts behind this telling. Some cards carry a translation of the source; others are our own retelling of it, and each card says which. Every card links out to the original.

Legends of the Jews 5:176Legends of the Jews

Retold in our words. Read the original at the link below.The Legends of the Jews by Louis Ginzberg (1909) · Public Domain

Sodom did not burn at a random hour. In Legends of the Jews, the timing of dawn becomes part of the judgment.

The Ginzberg's says retelling in Legends of the Jews, the destruction didn't just happen randomly. It was timed, precisely, for a very specific reason.

The story goes that the cities of the plain were destroyed at dawn on the sixteenth day of Nisan, a Hebrew month, usually falling in March-April. Now, why that particular moment? Well, it all boils down to the inhabitants and their, shall we say, alternative religious practices.

these folks were moon and sun worshippers. And God, as the story goes, wanted to make a point. A pretty big one. "If I destroy them by day," God said, "the moon worshippers will say, 'Were the moon here, she would prove herself our savior.'" And, of course, if the destruction happened at night, the sun worshippers would say the same about their deity.

So, what's a Divine Being to do? The solution, according to this legend, was to wait for a time when both the sun and the moon were visible in the sky. Thus, the sixteenth day of Nisan at dawn. A time when neither celestial body could claim to be absent, a time when neither could be invoked as a potential savior.

As we find in Legends of the Jews, it was a deliberate act, carefully orchestrated. It wasn't just about punishing wickedness; it was about challenging the very foundations of their misguided beliefs.

Pretty powerful stuff. It makes you think. How often do we attribute events to chance or circumstance, when perhaps there's a deeper, more intentional timing at play? Maybe the universe, or God, or whatever you want to call it, has a way of making things happen at precisely the moment they need to, to drive home a particular lesson. Just something to consider.

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Legends of the Jews 5:168Legends of the Jews

Retold in our words. Read the original at the link below.The Legends of the Jews by Louis Ginzberg (1909) · Public Domain

Our tale begins with angels leaving Abraham at midday, their wings carrying them towards Sodom as evening approached. Now, usually, angels are all about speed. They deliver their messages with the swiftness of lightning. But these weren't ordinary messengers. These were angels of mercy, burdened with a task of destruction. They hesitated. They hoped, against all odds, that the wickedness of Sodom might somehow, even at this late hour, be averted.

Them, hovering on the edge of twilight, their divine duty clashing with a profound sense of compassion. What would you do?

As night descended, the fate of Sodom became irrevocably sealed. According to tradition, the darkness was a turning point. It was then the angels finally arrived.

Enter Lot. Bred in the very house of Abraham, he had absorbed the beautiful custom of hakhnasat orchim, hospitality to strangers, a value deeply ingrained in Abraham’s teachings. When he saw the angels – disguised, of course, in human form – standing before him, he naturally assumed they were weary travelers. He extended an invitation, urging them to turn aside and spend the night under his roof.

Now, here’s where things get tricky, and the tension really ramps up. in Sodom, offering hospitality to strangers was strictly forbidden, punishable by death! This wasn’t just an unfriendly city; it was a place where compassion itself was outlawed.

So, Lot had to tread carefully. He could only extend his invitation under the cloak of darkness. Even then, he had to be incredibly cautious. He instructed the angels to follow him by circuitous, winding routes, trying to avoid drawing attention. Picture that scene: a desperate man, trying to uphold a moral code in a place where morality itself was a crime, ushering divine messengers through the shadows.

What would possess a person to risk their lives to do good? Was it simply ingrained habit or something deeper? Perhaps the most profound acts of kindness are born not from ease, but from the very teeth of adversity. And sometimes, those acts – even the smallest ones – are the only things standing between a city and its destruction.

Full source
Legends of the Jews 5:156Legends of the Jews

Retold in our words. Read the original at the link below.The Legends of the Jews by Louis Ginzberg (1909) · Public Domain

Legends of the Jews turns to Destruction of Sodom of Admah.

It wasn't just Sodom and Gomorrah. There were other cities in that region, equally deserving of divine wrath. Take Admah, for example. According to Legends of the Jews, the people of Admah were, well, no better.

A weary traveler arrives in Admah, seeking only a night's rest before continuing his journey. He's a stranger, an outsider. A young woman, the daughter of a wealthy man, sees him and, moved by compassion, offers him water and bread. A simple act of kindness. Wrong.

In Admah, such kindness was a crime. When the townspeople learned of the girl's generosity, they were outraged. They seized her, dragged her before a judge, and condemned her to death!

Now, get ready for the truly gruesome part. This wasn't a quick, relatively painless execution. Oh no. The people of Admah devised a punishment that was as cruel as it was unusual. They smeared her body, from head to toe, with honey. for a second. Covered in sticky, sweet honey, she was then exposed to swarms of bees.

Her cries, heartrending and desperate, were ignored by the callous onlookers. They watched, unmoved, as she suffered a horrific death.

It was this act, this specific, brutal act of inhumanity, that pushed God over the edge. According to Ginzberg, in Legends of the Jews, it was then that God resolved upon the destruction of these sinners. Not because of some vague notion of wickedness, but because of this concrete example of unimaginable cruelty.

What does this story tell us? It's a stark reminder that evil often manifests not in grand schemes, but in small acts of cruelty and indifference. It’s a challenge to look at our own communities and ask ourselves if we are creating systems of cruelty that victimize the vulnerable among us. And maybe, just maybe, it's a call to cultivate compassion, even when it goes against the grain.

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