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Sodom (סדום, Standard Hebrew Sədom, Tiberian Hebrew Səḏôm) was the chief town of a group of five towns on the plain of the Jordan River in an area that constituted the southern limit of the lands of the Canaanites ( Genesis 10:19). Lot, a nephew of Abram ( Abraham) chose to live in the city. According to the Bible, both Sodom and Gomorrah (עמורה, Standard Hebrew ʿAmora, Tiberian Hebrew Gəmôrāh, ʿAmôrāh) — called as a group The Cities on the Plain — were destroyed by God for their sins. Opinions differ as to what the sin actually was.
In Genesis 19, the final episode in the story of Sodom is described as the angels visit Lot to warn him to flee:
Lot refused to give the angels staying in his house to the men of Sodom and instead offered them his two daughters. The men refused to accept this compromise, and Lot was only saved from assault by the angels. Lot and his family were then instructed to leave the city, and Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed with fire and brimstone by God.
Based on this incident it is often postulated that the sin was homosexuality and rape.
Classical Jewish texts hold that God did not destroy Sodom and Gemorrah because their inhabitants were homosexual. Rather, they were destroyed because the inhabitants were generally depraved and uncompromisingly greedy. Rabbinic writings affirm that the primary crimes of the Sodomites were terrible and repeated economic crimes, both against each other and to outsiders.
A Jewish tradition, described in the MishnahThe Mishnah ( Hebrew "Repetition") is a major source of rabbinic Judaism's religious texts. It is the first recording of the oral law of the Jewish people, as championed by the Pharisees. It was redacted by Judah haNasi around the year 200 CE. It is consi, postulates that the sin of Sodom was related to property: they believed that "what is mine is mine, and what is yours is yours" (Abot), which is interpreted as a lack of compassion. It should be noted that the statements in the Mishnah and in the midrashMidrash (pl. Midrashim) is a Hebrew word referring to a method of reading details into, or out of, a Biblical text. The term "midrash" also can refer to a compilation of Midrashic teachings, in the form of legal, exegetical or homiletical commentaries on literature are not always based on the literal meaning of the text, and often are considered to have little historical basis. However, they do provide us with information on what Jews of that era believed.
One tradition is that these five wealthy cities violated the Law of Hospitality : there is a series of legends regarding Sodom's hospitality, but these are apparently borrowed from Greek mythologyGreek mythology comprises the collected legends of Greek gods and goddesses and ancient heroes and heroines, originally created and spread within an oral-poetic tradition. Our surviving sources of mythology are either transcriptions of this spoken word, o. One example is the story of the "bed" that guests to Sodom were forced to sleep in: if they were too short they were stretched to fit it, and if they were too tall, they were cut up. This is an adaptation of the Greek myth of ProcrustesIn Greek mythology, Procrustes ( the stretcher ) was a bandit from Attica killed by Theseus. In Eleusis, he had a bed which he invited passersby to lie down in. When they did so, he either stretched them or cut off body parts to make them fit into the bed.