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The City of God

Chapter 30.--Of Lot's Deliverance from Sodom, and Its Consumption by Fire from Heaven; And of Abimelech, Whose Lust Could Not Harm Sarah's Chastity.

After this promise Lot was delivered out of Sodom, and a fiery rain from heaven turned into ashes that whole region of the impious city, where custom had made sodomy as prevalent as laws have elsewhere made other kinds of wickedness. But this punishment of theirs was a specimen of the divine judgment to come. For what is meant by the angels forbidding those who were delivered to look back, but that we are not to look back in heart to the old life which, being regenerated through grace, we have put off, if we think to escape the last judgment? Lot's wife, indeed, when she looked back, remained, and, being turned into salt, furnished to believing men a condiment by which to savor somewhat the warning to be drawn from that example. Then Abraham did again at Gerar, with Abimelech the king of that city, what he had done in Egypt about his wife, and received her back untouched in the same way. On this occasion, when the king rebuked Abraham for not saying she was his wife, and calling her his sister, he explained what he had been afraid of, and added this further, "And yet indeed she is my sister by the father's side, but not by the mother's; ¹ for she was Abraham's sister by his own father, and so near of kin. But her beauty was so great, that even at that advanced age she could be fallen in love with.

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De civitate Dei (CCSL)

Caput XXX: De Loth a Sodomis liberato atque eisdem caelesti igne consumptis et de Abimelech, cuius concupiscentia castitati Sarrae nocere non potuit.

Post hanc promissionem liberato de Sodomis Loth et ueniente igneo imbre de caelo tota illa regio inpiae ciuitatis in cinerem uersa est, ubi stupra in masculos in tantam consuetudinem conualuerant, quantam leges solent aliorum factorum praebere licentiam. uerum et hoc eorum supplicium specimen futuri iudicii diuini fuit. nam quo pertinet quod prohibiti sunt qui liberabantur ab angelis retro respicere, nisi quia non est animo redeundum ad ueterem uitam, qua per gratiam regeneratus exuitur, si ultimum euadere iudicium cogitamus? denique uxor Loth, ubi respexit, remansit et in salem conuersa hominibus fidelibus quoddam praestitit condimentum, quo sapiant aliquid, unde illud caueatur exemplum. inde rursus Abraham fecit in Geraris apud regem ciuitatis illius Abimelech, quod in Aegypto de coniuge fecerat, eique intacta similiter reddita est. ubi sane Abraham obiurganti regi, cur tacuisset uxorem sororemque dixisset, aperiens quid timuerit etiam hoc addidit: etenim uere soror mea est de patre, sed non de matre, quia de patre suo soror erat Abrahae, de quo propinqua eius erat. tantae autem pulchritudinis fuit, ut etiam in illa aetate posset adamari.