Loud Outcry, Quiet Intercession
Why did the Lord say “The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great…”? (Gen 18:20) Whose outcry?
Were there men and women of the area who knew of the moral atrocities in Sodom and Gomorrah and cried out to the Lord to judge them? Unlikely. People not living in the cities would not have the vital interest to sustain an outcry against their evils.
Was the outcry that of angels? Let us consider this possibility. There are two types of angels: elect and evil. The evil ones are Satan’s princes who would be involved in bringing about the downfall of the cities. The role of the elect would be to fight against the evil angels and carry out God’ commands, whether that would be to help the people or to destroy the cities. But there is no evidence in Scripture that elect angels are permitted to cry out for the judgment of men. As it is written in Hebrews, “Are not all angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation?” (Hebrews 1:14) They do carry out God’s judgment, but they do not urge it.
So whose outcry was it? Were there poor and oppressed people in the cities crying out for help and justice? This seems plausible. The word, “outcry,” is the same one used when Esther’s uncle Mordecai heard of King Xerxe’s edict that all Jews were to be destroyed. “He cried with a loud and bitter cry.” (Esther 4:1)
The nature of the Sodomite’s sinfulness was described by the prophet Ezekiel some 1,500 years after Lot lived there:
“You not only walked in their ways and copied their detestable practices, but in all your ways you soon became more depraved that they. As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, your sister Sodom and her daughters never did what you and your daughters have done. Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore, I did away with them as you have seen.” (Ezekiel 16;47-50)
Through Ezekiel, God castigated Jerusalem for becoming worse than their Gentile neighbors, and even worse than the Sodomites. When Judah became like Sodom, she was driven out of her promised land. Throughout the Bible, God deals with sinful nations, even his own Israel, by bringing enemy peoples against them.