The Cities of the Plain

Location

Disputed. The text ties the cities to the Jordan “plain” and to the Vale of Siddim, “the same is the Salt Sea” (14:3). Proposals divide between the north-east and the south-east of the Dead Sea.

• Sodom & Gomorrahסְדֹם וַעֲמֹרָה — Dead Sea basin — exact sites unknownDisputedThe cities of the Jordan plain, overthrown.

Proposed locations

• Tall el-HammamScholarly proposal · S. CollinsLarge Middle Bronze Age city north-east of the Dead Sea. The “airburst” paper about it was retracted in 2025.
• Bab edh-DhraScholarly proposal · Proposed by several writers since the 1970sEarly Bronze Age walled town with an immense cemetery.
• NumeiraScholarly proposalEarly Bronze Age town destroyed by fire; paired by some with Gomorrah.
• Jebel Usdum (Mount Sodom)TraditionA ridge of rock salt; the name preserves the tradition.
• Zoar (Ghor es-Safi)TraditionByzantine Zoara, shown on the Madaba Map; nearby Deir ‘Ain ‘Abata commemorated Lot.

Biblical Narrative

Three visitors leave Mamre toward Sodom; Abraham pleads: “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do justly?” (18:25). In Sodom, Lot shelters two angels from a violent crowd (19:1–11). At dawn they hurry his family out; fleeing to Zoar, Lot’s wife looks back and becomes a pillar of salt (19:15–26). Abraham rises early and sees the smoke (19:27–28).

Geography

The Dead Sea lies in the deepest part of the Great Rift, its surface today about 430 m below sea level — the lowest land on earth. The basin is framed by salt formations (Mount Sodom is largely rock salt), bitumen seeps (the “slime pits” of 14:10) and sulphur deposits. From the ridge east of Hebron, the view drops some 1,300 m to the sea.

Historical Context

The Early Bronze Age towns of Bab edh-Dhra and Numeira, on the south-eastern plain of the Dead Sea, were destroyed or abandoned in the late 3rd millennium BCE. The Middle Bronze Age city at Tall el-Hammam, north-east of the Dead Sea, was also destroyed and abandoned. Each has been proposed as Sodom.

Archaeology

A 2021 paper claiming that a cosmic airburst destroyed Tall el-Hammam — widely publicised as “evidence for Sodom” — was retracted by the journal Scientific Reports in April 2025 after criticism of its data and methods. No inscription names any of the cities of the plain.

Identification

What the text says

The cities lie in the “plain (kikkar) of the Jordan” (13:10–12), and the battle is in the Vale of Siddim, “the same is the Salt Sea” (14:3). Zoar is near enough for Lot to reach it by sunrise (19:22–23).

Traditional identification

Southern Dead Sea (Byzantine and later tradition): Zoar at Ghor es-Safi; Sodom near Jebel Usdum.

Scholarly proposals

Southern proposal: Bab edh-Dhra and Numeira (Early Bronze Age). Northern proposal: Tall el-Hammam (argued by Steven Collins), on the view that the kikkar is the plain north of the Dead Sea.

What remains uncertain

No site has been identified with confidence. Many scholars regard the story as an explanatory tradition about the Dead Sea’s desolate landscape.