This past Sunday I covered the end of Genesis 19 for my Sunday School class. Describing the aftermath of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, this passage relates how Abraham gazed out from the vicinity of Hebron to see smoke rising from the Dead Sea plain. He does not know that Lot has escaped to the small town of Zoar with his daughters. The passage then describes how Lot and his daughters leave Zoar to live in a nearby cave. There each of Lot’s daughters conceives a son through incest with their father. These sons go on to father the nations of Moab and Ammon.
Because this passage contains a lot of geographical information, I wanted to create a map that would show the location of Hebron, Sodom and Gomorrah, Zoar, and the territory settled by the nations of Moab and Ammon. In creating that map, I used a number of little tricks and powerful features you may not have seen before. The following video tutorial will show you how I created this map. Watch it, and you’ll learn my favorite trick for zooming in, how to highlight a site without searching for it, how to create a custom region layer, how to display two region layers on the map at the same time, and how to create a 3D map. I hope you find it helpful.