"wicked or corrupt place," 1640s, from the sinful city in ancient Palestine, said to have been destroyed, with neighboring Gomorrah, by fire from heaven (Gen. xviii-xix). From Hebrew s'dom, of unknown origin.
burning; the walled, a city in the vale of Siddim (Gen. 13:10; 14:1-16). The wickedness of its inhabitants brought down upon it fire from heaven, by which it was destroyed (18:16-33; 19:1-29; Deut. 23:17). This city and its awful destruction are frequently alluded to in Scripture (Deut. 29:23; 32:32; Isa. 1:9, 10; 3:9; 13:19; Jer. 23:14; Ezek. 16:46-56; Zeph. 2:9; Matt. 10:15; Rom. 9:29; 2 Pet. 2:6, etc.). No trace of it or of the other cities of the plain has been discovered, so complete was their destruction. Just opposite the site of Zoar, on the south-west coast of the Dead Sea, is a range of low hills, forming a mass of mineral salt called Jebel Usdum, "the hill of Sodom." It has been concluded, from this and from other considerations, that the cities of the plain stood at the southern end of the Dead Sea. Others, however, with much greater probability, contend that they stood at the northern end of the sea. [in 1897].
industrial site in southeastern Israel, near the southern end of the Dead Sea. It is the site of the Dead Sea Works Ltd., an Israeli national company chartered by the Knesset (parliament) in 1961. The biblical cities of Sodom and Gomorrah (q.v.) are believed to have been located in the vicinity; modern Sedom takes its name from the Hebrew form of the first of these.