“And he looked toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and toward all the land of the plain, and beheld, and, lo, the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace.”
Abraham looks down toward Sodom and Gomorrah and sees dense smoke rising from the land, like smoke from a furnace. The view from the hilltop confirms what the angels told him would happen. The smoke rising like from a furnace is the image used for Sinai's fire in Exodus 19:18 — but where Sinai's smoke is the presence of God making covenant, this smoke is the judgment of God upon a city that rejected him. Abraham sees the smoke and knows: the cities are gone, the plain is destroyed, and the intercession of Genesis 18 did not change the outcome because the basis for sparing was not there. The application: Abraham's prayer in Genesis 18 was not unanswered — Lot was rescued. The prayer did not spare the city; it spared the righteous within it.
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