Was Sodom destroyed by the angels or by the LORD himself?

The angels answer the question themselves, in the same breath: “the Lord hath sent us to destroy it” (19:13). They speak as officers sent to carry out a sentence, and the one who sends them is the judge. One of them tells Lot, “I cannot do any thing till thou be come thither” (19:22): the judgement waited on God’s promise to spare Lot, and the messengers could not act until he was safe. When the fire fell, the writer names its source: it came “from the Lord out of heaven” (19:24), and he sums up, “God destroyed the cities of the plain” (19:29).

Scripture often credits one act both to God and to the agent he uses. In 2 Samuel 24 the LORD sent the plague on Israel, and the angel stretched out his hand on Jerusalem to destroy it (24:15–16); 1 Chronicles 21:15 says, “God sent an angel unto Jerusalem to destroy it”. At the Passover “the Lord will pass through to smite the Egyptians”, and will not let “the destroyer” enter Israel’s houses (Exodus 12:23). So it is true that the angels destroyed Sodom, and true that the LORD did. They were his messengers, and the judgement was his.

The Lord and the Lord

From early Christian writers on, many have read the words “the Lord rained” and “from the Lord” in this one verse as speaking of two divine persons, the Son acting on earth and the Father in heaven. Adam Clarke thought this possible but not plainly taught here. Keil, following Calvin, took the repeated name as emphasis: the fire came straight from God, not by any ordinary cause.

Natural means

Jamieson, Fausset and Brown thought God may have used natural means, such as a volcanic eruption over a land full of bitumen, while Keil took the burning brimstone as falling from the sky. Either way the destruction was God’s judgement, announced beforehand, and on neither view did the angels make the fire themselves.