Gallery

For lack of even ten virtuous people, the town of Sodom is destroyed by two angels of God, depicted in this 1872 painting by the French artist Gustave Moreau.

In Genesis 18, news of the wickedness of Sodom and Gomorrah prompts God to send his angels to destroy the cities. In response to Abraham’s plea for compassion, God agrees to spare the towns if his angels find 50 righteous people there. Abraham bargains God down even further—to 40, 30, 20 and finally just ten. But the angels, unable to find even that many, carry out God’s plan: “And the Lord rained down fire and brimstone from the skies on Sodom and Gomorrah. He overthrew those cities and destroyed all the plain, with everyone living there and everything growing in the ground” (Genesis 19:24–25).

In Moreau’s painting, a stream of lava (“fire and brimstone”) descends from the mountain toward the domes and houses of the town, dimly visible in the gloom. A thick column of black smoke rises in front of the steep cliffs sheltering the valley, and embers smolder in the foreground. Above it all, swords held aloft, the calm agents of divine vengeance face the viewer like unearthly sentinels.