Genesis 14:3

The vale of Siddim. According to this text the valley of Siddim is to be identified with all or part of what is known in later times as the Salt Sea or Dead Sea. The northern two thirds of the present-day Dead Sea is very deep (500-1,128 ft.), and must have existed already in Abram’s time. The southern part is shallow, its depth nowhere exceeding 15 ft. Submerged trees show that this part of the Dead Sea was dry land in comparatively recent times. It is therefore reasonable to locate the “vale of Siddim” in the southern part of the Dead Sea, which became submerged in the course of time as the waters of the sea rose. It was rising gradually in modern times until irrigation shrank the Jordan inflow and lowered the amount reaching the Dead Sea. Since a number of streams flow into the southern portion of the sea in a region that is still very fertile, it is reasonable to assume that the whole valley now forming the southernmost part of the Dead Sea was once that exceptionally fertile plain that the Bible compares with Paradise and the Nile valley (ch. 13:10). In this region, then, the cities of Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboiim, and Zoar were presumably situated.