Genesis 13:13

But the men of Sodom [were] wicked,.... Which either he knew not, and so ignorantly made this bad choice, to take up his abode among such very wicked men, which occasioned a great deal of grief,

But the men of Sodom were wicked and sinners before the LORD exceedingly. No JFB commentary on this verse.

Eminent, noted, and impudent sinners; see ; which is here added as a secret reproof to Lot, who was either careless in his inquiry into the dispositions and manners of those among whom he intended to fix his abode, which for many reasons he should have searched out; or he was willing to expose himself to all the hazards which he might incur by their neighbourhood and familiarity, for the sweetness and fertility of the soil; an error which is frequently committed by men in the choice of their habitations, and which oft costs them dear, as it did Lot in the following story.

Genesis 13:13 But the men of Sodom [were] wicked and sinners before the LORD exceedingly.Ver. 13. But the men of Sodom were wicked, &c.] See their chief sins set down, Ezekiel 16:49-50. The Chaldee Paraphrast here translateth, they were first unrighteous with their mammon: and secondly, sinners with their bodies, before the Lord. That unnameable sin had its name from them, who against nature were scalded εξεκαυθησαν in their lust, one toward another. The apostle there gives it in of the heathen philosophers, many of whom were patrons of this abhorred filth; as Cicero complains of Plato; and Socrates was shrewdly suspected, to be no more honest than he should be with Alcibiades; nor Seneca with Nero. "The wisdom from above is pure," saith St James; and in this wisdom is "truth" and purity, saith Solomon, whereas all worldly wisdom is stained with error or lewdness. God punisheth the pride of all flesh with some foul sin, and so sets a Noverint universi , as it were, upon the world’ s wizards, that all men may know them to be but arrant fools. And sinners before the Lord exceedingly.] They were grown so debauched and impudent in evil, that neither fear of God nor shame of men could restrain them. Though God looked on, they were no whit abashed or abased before him. God "found not" out their sins "by secret search," he needed not to search them with lights. For "the show of their countenance did witness against them"; they could blush no more than a sackbut: shamelessness sat in their foreheads; "they declared their sins," even to a proverb. They "set them" in open view "upon the cliff of the rock". They faced the heavens, and held their heads aloft, as if they deserved commendation, rather than else. This is a high degree of sin, and an immediate forerunner of destruction. Seneca delectabatur exoletis ,& c. - Dio in Nerone.

(12, 13) Lot dwelled in the cities of the plain.—Heb., of the Ciccar. Not as yet within their walls, but in their neighbourhood, and evidently with a longing “toward Sodom,” where, in Genesis 19, we find him sitting in the gate as a citizen, and with his tent changed to a house. While, then, Abram continued to lead a hardy life as a stranger upon the bracing hills, Lot sighed for the less self-denying habits of the city; and probably, when he had descended into the Ghor, the enervating climate, which so developed the sensual vices of the people as to make them “sinners before Jehovah” (see on Genesis 10:9), disposed Lot also to quit his tent, and yield himself to a luxurious and easy manner of living.

Verse 13. The men of Sodom were wicked] רעים raim, from רע, ra, to break in pieces, destroy, and afflict; meaning persons who broke the established order of things, destroyed and confounded the distinctions between right and wrong, and who afflicted and tormented both themselves and others. And sinners, חטאים chattaim, from חטא chata, to miss the mark, to step wrong, to miscarry; the same as αμαρτανω in Greek, from a, negative, and μαρπτω to hit a mark; so a sinner is one who is ever aiming at happiness and constantly missing his mark; because, being wicked-radically evil within, every affection and passion depraved and out of order, he seeks for happiness where it never can be found, in worldly honours and possessions, and in sensual gratifications, the end of which is disappointment, affliction, vexation, and ruin. Such were the companions Lot must have in the fruitful land he had chosen. This, however, amounts to no more than the common character of sinful man; but the people of Sodom were exceedingly sinful and wicked before, or against, the Lord-they were sinners of no common character; they excelled in unrighteousness, and soon filled up the measure of their iniquities. See chap. xix.

13. Wicked and sinners — As more fully exhibited in chap. 19.