Chapter 14 opens with a lesson in geography and politics. It seems that four kings were making war around the area of the dead sea. I'll describe what's going on shortly but you might want to check out some of the pictures here: http://www.jesuswalk.com/abraham/3_rescue.htm.
These four kings were from cities in the fertile plains watered by the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Their combined kingdoms likely spanned the length of what is modern-day Iraq. In 14:2 we find out that 5 kings in the area of the dead sea were under their rule for 12 years (probably a result of earlier conquests). In verses 14:3-4 we find out that these 5 kings join forces to break free of the rule of the 4 kings.
This rebellion is successful for about a year while the 4 allied kings join forces and begin attacking cities as they sweep down East of the Sea of Galilee to the The area that has become the southern most tip of modern-day Israel. Then they zig-zagged their way North until they met the 5 kings in the Valley of Siddim (near the Dead Sea).
The battle was clearly very one-sided since we are only told about the retreat of the 5 kings (verse 10). The four victorious kings pillage the region and then return to their land (probably along the west of the Dead Sea and Jordan river).
There are two details we should probably be interested in at this point. First, an ancient reader would have picked up on the wickedness of the 5 defeated kings since the names of two of them (the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah) appear to be a play on the hebrew words for evil and wicked (Thanks to Derek Kidner's commentary "Genesis"). Second, verse 12 tells us that Abram's nephew Lot is carried off as part of the plunder. This sets the stage for Abram to take action.
No comments:
Post a Comment