If Sodom and Gemorrah are ever to yield their secrets to the spade of
the excavator they have to be pinpointed on the map. But, despite the
unenviable notoriety achieved by the "cities of the Plain,"
their exact location has never been discovered. They seem to have vanished
irretrievably without leaving behind so much as rubbish heap to tease
the eager archaeologist. The most that we can hope for is to put together
the scattered bits of data available so that we may be able to declare,
with some degree of assurance, that Sodom and Gemorrah lay in this or
that general direction
Lot's wife is said
to have turned into a "pillar of salt" (19:26), suggesting some
grotesque salt-rock formation in the region. Salt is also mentioned in
connection with Sodom and Gemorrah in another context. In Moses' farewell
speech he warns that a breach of the Covenant with God would bring ruin
to the land, and he describes the state of affairs that would arise as
follows:
All its soil devastated
by sulfur and salt, beyond sowing and producing, no grass growing in
it, just like the upheaval of Sodom and Gemorrah
(Deut. 29:22)
The prophet Zephaniah
who prophesied concerning the lands of Moab and Ammon, says they will
be like Sodom and Gemorrah, "a land possessed by nettles and salt
pits and a waste forever" (Zeph. 2:9). In the entire Jordan-Dead
Sea valley area there is only one region to which the mention of salt
would be appropriate, and that is a salt mountain known to this day as
"Mount Sodom," nearly six miles long and about six hundred and
fifty feet in height, lying on the southwest shore of the Dead Sea. Here,
again, the data confirms a location for the lost cities in the area of
the southern embankment of the Dead Sea. [More
on
Salt
Production at the Dead Sea.]
Sodom
and Gemorrah are usually assumed to be beneath the southern part
of the Dead Sea, south of the lisan, the peninsula jutting into
the sea, which is shallow and more recent than the rest of the depression.
Local tradition, as represented in the Arabic name of the salt mountain,
Jebel al-Sadum or Mountain of Sodom, favors the southern site. Some
scholars, however, have looked for the two cities at the northern
end of the Dead Sea or near Bab al-Shra, east of the lisan
.
In
the 20th century, the name Sodom was given to the site at the northwestern
corner of the Dead Sea and at the foot of the huge salt plug of
Mount Sodom, where the Palestine Potash Company's Sodom branch was
set up in 1934[*].
Poems
about Lot's Wife in Sodom
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*
Encyclopedia Judaica, Vol. 15, Sodom and Gemorrah [back] |
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From:
Nahum M. Sarna. Understanding Genesis copyright. © 1966 by
Melton Research Center of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America;
paperback edition (New York: Schocken), pp. 138-141
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The
Salt of My Bones. Poem: Asher Reich / Commentary: David C. Jacobson
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