Komentarz do Powtórzonego Prawa 29:22

'גפרית ומלח....במהפכת סדום אשר הפך ה, the people seeing this know full well that this was not something accidental but that it is a finger of G’d. The comparison is based on Sodom seeing that its destruction had both been predicted to Avraham and confirmed by Lot and his daughters who were survivors of that event.

גפרית ומלח שרפה כל ארצה, “all of its land having become salt and brimstone;” what is the connection between salt and brimstone? Nothing can withstand fire better than salt, and nothing can be destroyed more totally that when it is treated with brimstone. The Torah means to tell you that if the Israelites had remained loyal to their covenant, they could have withstood any attempt at destruction as salt can withstand it; seeing that they had not, they were destroyed utterly as if they had been rubbed out with brimstone. Brimstone destroys even what the fire had not been able to destroy.

ומלח, “and salt;” the Torah had reported that the wife of Lot who had failed to obey the instruction of the angel not to look back, was turned in a pillar of salt. (Genesis 19,26(

שרפה כל ארצה, “its whole land is as if burned.” Is it conceivable that G-d would become so angry on account of a sin committed by a single individual? The fact is that the destruction of the area occupied by the Ten tribes and the population being sent into exile, had nothing to do with an individual’s sins, but with erection of public idols, two golden calves built to block the route to Jerusalem during the lifetime of Solomon’s son Rechavam, hundreds of years before theKingdom of the Ten Tribes went into exile and the idol erected by Michah, and the appointment as Levites by people not born to members of that tribe. (Judges chapter 8,33) The latter phenomena happened already prior to the time of the prophet Samuel and the dynasty of David/Solomon, long before the Kingdom of Solomon was divided.