Charles Ellicott Commentary 1 Kings 14:24

"and there were also sodomites in the land: they did according to all the abominations of the nations which Jehovah drove out before the children of Israel." — 1 Kings 14:24 (ASV)

Sodomites. —See 1 Kings 15:12; 2 Kings 23:7. There is a horrible significance in the derivation of this word, which is properly “consecrated,” or “devoted,” for it indicates the license, and even the sanction, of unnatural lusts in those consecrated to the abominations of Nature-worship.

The appearance of such in the land, whether Canaanites or apostate Israelites, is evidently noted as the climax of the infinite corruption that had set in, rivaling—and, if rivaling, exceeding in depth of wickedness—the abominations of the old inhabitants of the land.

History tells us all too plainly that such horrors are not incompatible with advances in knowledge and material civilization. To find them sanctioned under the cover of religious ritual marks, however, an even lower depth.