Templat:POV-sectionTeks-teks klasik Yahudi tidak menekankan pada aspek homoseksual pada sifat penduduk Sodom sebanyak mana kekejaman dan kekurangan peramahan mereka terhadap "orang yang tidak dikenali." (Lihat Jewish Encyclopedia pada kepentingan peramahan.) Kaum Sodom dilihat sebagai bersalah pada banyak dosa-dosa besar yang lain. Tulisan Rabai mengeraskan bahawa kaum Sodom juga melakukan jenayah ekonomi, blasphemy dan tumpah darah[1]. Salah satu yang terdahsyat adalah memberi wang atau ingot emas ke para pengemis, tetapi dengan membubuh nama mereka padanya, dan kemudian berikutnya menolak untuk menjual mereka makanan. Orang yang tidak kenal yang tidak berdaya akan akhirnya berada dalam kelaparan dan selepas kematiannya, kaum itu yang memberinya wang akan mendakwanya kembali.

Menurut suatu adat rabai, dijelaskan dalam Mishnah, postulates bahawa dosa Sodom berkait dengan harta: kaum Sodom mempercayai bahawa "apa yang aku milik adalah hak aku, dan apa yang kau milik adalah hak kau" (Abot), yang diterjemahkan sebagai kekurangan compassion. Suatu lagi adat rabai adalah bahawa kedua-dua bandar kaya ini melayan para pelawat mereka dengan cara yang sadis. Satu jenayah utama pada para pelawat adalah hampir sama dengan Procrustes dalam mitologi Greek. Ini adalah cerita "katil" bahawa para pelawat dipaksa untuk tidur: jika mereka terlalu kecil mereka akan ditarik untuk memuatnya, dan jika mereka terlalu tinggi, mereka dipotong.

Suatu lagi peristiwa, Eliezer, pembantu Nabi Ibrahim, pergi melawat Nabi Luth di Sodom dan berada dalam satu pertengkaran dengan seorang Sodom ke atas seorang pengemis, dan dipukul pada dahi dengan batu, membuatnya cedera parah. Orang Sodom itu memahukan Eliezer untuk membayarnya pada perkhidmatan bloodletting, dan seorang hakim Sodom menyebelah dengan orang Sodom itu. Eliezer kemudian melontar batu ke kepala hakim dan meminta hakim itu untuk membayar orang Sodom.

The Talmud and the book of Jasher also recount two incidents of a young girl (one involved Lot's daughter Paltith) who gave some bread to a poor man who had entered the city. When the townspeople discovered their acts of kindness, they burned Paltith and smeared the other girl's body with honey and hung her from the city wall until she was eaten by bees. (Sanhedrin 109a) It is this gruesome event, and her scream in particular, the Talmud concludes, that are alluded to in the verse that heralds the city’s destruction: "So Hashem said, 'Because the outcry of Sodom and Gomorrah has become great, and because their sin has been very grave, I will descend and see...'" (Templat:Bibleverse-lb).

Pandangan Josephus

Flavius Josephus, seorang sejarawan Rom-Yahudi, menulis sesuatu di sepanjang barisan:

Now, about this time the Sodomites, overwhelmingly proud of their numbers and the extent of their wealth, showed themselves insolent to men and impious to the divinity, insomuch that they no more remembered the benefits that they had received from him, hated foreigners and avoided any contact with others. Indignant at this conduct, God accordingly resolved to chastise them for their arrogance, and not only to uproot their city, but to blast their land so completely that it should yield neither plant nor fruit whatsoever from that time forward.

—Jewish Antiquities 1:194-195

and Josephus recounts that when angels came to Sodom to find good men they were instead greeted by rapists:

And the angels came to the city of the Sodomites...when the Sodomites beheld the young men, who were outstanding in beauty of appearance and who had been received into Lots’s house, they set about to do violence and outrage to their youthful beauty....Therefore, God, indignant at their bold acts, struck them with blindness, so that they were unable to find the entrance into the house, and condemned the Sodomites to destruction of the whole population.

—Jewish Antiquities 1:199-202

He says how beautiful it was before everything was burned up, and how rich the towns were in the area. Josephus described what had happened:

Now this country is then so sadly burnt up, that nobody cares to come to it... It was of old a most happy land, both for the fruits it bore and the riches of its cities, although it be now all burnt up. It is related how for the impiety of its inhabitants, it was burnt by lightning; in consequence of which there are still the remainders of that divine fire; and the shadows of the five cities are still to be seen, as well as the ashes growing in their fruits, which fruits have a colour as if they were fit to be eaten: but if you pluck them with your hands, they will dissolve into smoke and ashes

—The Wars of the Jews, book 4, chapter 8.