Category:Vale of Siddim

---excerpt from the Illustrated Bible Dictionary

Vale of Siddim - Valley of the broad plains, "which is the salt sea" (Genesis 14:3, Genesis 14:8, Genesis 14:10), between Engedi and the cities of the plain, at the south end of the Dead Sea. It was "full of slime-pits" (R.V., "bitumen pits"). Here Chedorlaomer and the confederate kings overthrew the kings of Sodom and the cities of the plain. God afterwards, on account of their wickedness, "overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities;" and the smoke of their destruction "went up as the smoke of a furnace" (Genesis 19:24), and was visible from Mamre, where Abraham dwelt. Some, however, contend that the "cities of the plain" were somewhere at the north of the Dead Sea. (See SODOM.)