גפרית, Gen. xix, 24; Deut. xxix, 23; Job xviii, 15; Psalm xi, 6; Isaiah xxx, 33; xxxiv, 9; Ezek. xxxviii, 22. It is rendered θεῖον by the Septuagint, and is so called in Luke xvii, 29. Fire and brimstone are represented in many passages of Scripture as the elements by which God punishes the wicked; both in this life, and another. There is in this a manifest allusion to the overthrow of the cities of the plain of the Jordan, by showers of ignited sulphur, to which the physical appearances of the country bear witness to this day. The soil is bituminous, and might be raised by eruptions into the air, and then inflamed and return in horrid showers of overwhelming fire. This awful catastrophe, therefore, stands as a type of the final and eternal punishment of the wicked in another world. In Job. xviii, 15, Bildad, describing the calamities which overtake the wicked person, says, “Brimstone shall be scattered upon his habitation.” This may be a general expression, to designate any great destruction: as that in Psalm xi, 6, “Upon the wicked he shall rain fire and brimstone.” Moses, among other calamities which he sets forth in case of the people’s disobedience, threatens them with the fall of brimstone, salt, and burning like the overthrow of Sodom, &c, Deut. xxix, 23. The Prophet Isaiah, xxxiv, 9, writes that the anger of the Lord shall be shown by the streams of the land being turned into pitch, and the dust thereof into brimstone. See DEAD SEA.
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