Two Cities That Burned (Arch Books)

Two Cities That Burned
Arch Books
Written by Lucille B. Golphenee
Illustrated by Gordon Willman
Copyright: 1983
Format: paperback
Status: Some preowned versions available on ebay
Conclusion: Keep

If there was ever a difficult Bible story to turn into a children's story, it is the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. Arch has certainly attempted it, though, and it is as child appropriate as a story involving so much sin can be.  For some strange reason it's one of my son's favorite Bible storybooks so I hope it makes the cut today. After reading the first couple of pages though, I'm not sure.

The Good Points:

  • The book is written in rhyme, so it is fun and easy to remember.
  • The illustrations are used to tell more of the story than is written in the book.  My son loves to look at the initial picture showing the people of Sodom and Gomorrah and try to identify all the different sins he sees.
  • The book makes the less savory parts of the story more child friendly.

The Discrepancies:

  • The Arch book says that God's angels told Abraham about God's plan to destroy the Sodom and Gomorrah.  In the Bible, the angels come to speak with Abraham, but the Bible says that the Lord is the one who spoke to Abraham about the cities.
  • In this storybook, when God tells Abraham about Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham pleads with God to save his nephew, Lot, and his family.  In the Bible, Abraham pleads with God to save the cities if he finds a certain number of righteous people there. That number gets lower and lower as the conversation goes on and finally ends with ten.  Abraham never mentions Lot or his family by name (though we can guess that he may have had them in mind when he made his requests).
  • The Arch book says that God specifically sent his angles to protect Lot and lead him to a safe place.  In the Bible, the angels were there to examine the city. They did not coming looking for Lot specifically and were originally planning to spend the night in the streets. Lot is the one who initiated the meeting and convinced them to come home with him.  However, in Genesis 19:29, it states that God remembered Abraham and sent Lot out of the town.
  • In order to make the book child appropriate, this story doesn't mention what the men plan to do with the Angels, nor does it mention Lot offering his virgin daughters to the men instead.  But it does mention that men wanted the angels to come out, that Lot is afraid the men with hurt them, and that Lot tries to reason with them.
  • The story ends after Lot and his daughter leave Zoar to live in a cave. It says they were happy to be safe and living in the cave.  It does not include the daughters getting pregnant.  (I also suspect that if the daughters went to such lengths to get pregnant, they were not actually happy to be living isolated in the cave as the book claims.
Arch books are still being printed by Concordia Publishing and they come out with new Arch books every year.  However, it does not look like they have any updated version of Sodom and Gomorrah. As near as I can tell, this is their only attempt to write that story in an acceptable form for kids.  I certainly commend them for that effort because this was not an easy task.  With that in mind, there are a number of parts that don't match the Bible.  Are they important to the overall story?  My husband and I decided to keep it in our collection, even with the inconsistencies. We decided they didn't detract from the overall story and it's hard enough to find any kids stories about Sodom and Gomorrah and we should keep what we have.


This is my son's favorite page. How many sins can you identify?


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