²⁴Then the LORD rained down sulfur and fire on Sodom and Gomorrah — from the LORD out of the heavens. ²⁵Thus He destroyed these cities and the entire plain, including all the inhabitants of the cities and everything that grew on the ground. ²⁶But Lot’s wife looked back, and she became a pillar of salt. ²⁷Early the next morning, Abraham got up and returned to the place where he had stood before the LORD. ²⁸He looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah and all the land of the plain, and he saw the smoke rising from the land like smoke from a furnace. ²⁹So when God destroyed the cities of the plain, He remembered Abraham, and He brought Lot out of the catastrophe that destroyed the cities where he had lived.