Sodom

סְדֹם

Where was biblical Sodom? No one knows for sure. The map marks the best proposal: Mount Sodom, southwest shore of the Dead Sea, about 60 km east of Beersheba.

Mount Sodom
Mount Sodom · Photo: Wilson44691, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Abraham bargained with G-d over Sodom, from fifty righteous people down to ten. Ten could not be found. Fire fell on the plain, and Lot's wife looked back and became a pillar of salt.

By Aaron Shaffier, licensed Israel tour guide and mapmaker · About the mapmaker

Site today
Mount Sodom, southwest shore of the Dead Sea
How sure
Unknown No one has found it. The map marks the best proposal.
Other names
Sedom, Sodoma, Har Sedom, Mount Sodom, Jabal Usdum
Location
31.0818° N, 35.3956° E (Google Maps)
Sodom on the hand-drawn Map of Biblical Israel
Sodom on our hand-drawn Map of Biblical Israel. Get the full map as a print →

How we know where it was

What was Sodom's sin? Beyond the mob at Lot's door, the Bible doesn't spell it out. The Talmudic rabbis fill it in. Sodom was rich and well watered, "like the garden of G-d," and it refused all hospitality to strangers. I picture a closed, gated community where outsiders conformed completely or were persecuted. That is why Lot taking in guests was such an unusual act. Ezekiel says it too: pride, plenty, and no help for the poor.

Where was it? No inscription and no surviving town name mark the city, so every answer is circumstantial. The case for the south end of the Dead Sea is the strongest. Genesis says the kings of the plain gathered in the Valley of Siddim, "which is the Salt Sea," and that the valley was full of bitumen pits. Josephus ties Sodom to the Dead Sea. The Madaba Map puts Zoar, Lot's refuge, at the sea's southern end. And the salt mountain on the southwest shore still carries the name. In Arabic it is Jabal Usdum.

That is why Sodom is labeled at the mountain. But nobody knows where the city itself stood.

Archaeologists have proposed Bab edh-Dhra on the Lisan peninsula, a fortified Early Bronze Age town with a huge cemetery. It fell centuries before the usual date for Abraham. So either that dating is off, or this was not Sodom. Others look north, to the plain of the Jordan that Lot saw from near Beit El, and point to Tell el-Hammam, the mound this map calls Abel Shittim. Archaeologists and scientists strongly dispute its claimed destruction by an airburst.

Watch: Abraham's Footprints Discovered

Walking Tanach. Why Abraham bargained for Sodom, and what its sin really was.

Visiting today

Mount Sodom has marked hiking trails and salt caves, and a salt pillar called Lot's Wife can be seen from Route 90.

Read it in the Bible

Verse numbers follow the Hebrew Bible. In a handful of chapters English Bibles count one verse off.

See Sodom on the interactive map →

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Nearby places

Sources and further reading