King James Version · The patriarchs
Genesis 14
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And it came to pass in the days of king of , king of Ellasar, king of , and king of nations; That these made war with king of , and with king of , Shinab king of Admah, and Shemeber king of Zeboiim, and the king of , which is . All these were joined together in the vale of Siddim, which is the salt sea. Twelve years they , and in the thirteenth year they rebelled. And in the fourteenth year came , and the kings that were with him, and smote the Rephaims in Ashteroth Karnaim, and the Zuzims in , and the Emims in Shaveh , And the Horites in their mount , unto El–paran, which is by . And they returned, and came to En–mishpat, which is , and smote all the country of , and also the , that dwelt in Hazezon–tamar. And there went out the king of , and the king of , and the king of Admah, and the king of Zeboiim, and the king of (the same is ;) and they joined battle with them in the vale of Siddim; 9With the king of , and with king of nations, and king of , and king of Ellasar; four kings with five. And the vale of Siddim was full of slimepits; and the kings of and fled, and fell there; and they that remained fled to the mountain. And they took all the goods of and , and all their victuals, and went their way. And they took , ’s brother’s son, who dwelt in , and his goods, and departed. And there came one that had escaped, and told the ; for he dwelt in the plain of the , brother of , and brother of : and these were confederate with . And when heard that his brother was taken , he armed his trained servants, born in his own house, three hundred and eighteen, and pursued them unto Dan. And he divided himself against them, he and his servants, by night, and smote them, and pursued them unto Hobah, which is on the left hand of . And he brought back all the goods, and also brought again his brother , and his goods, and the women also, and the people. And the king of went out to meet him after his return from the slaughter of , and of the kings that were with him, at the valley of Shaveh, which is the king’s dale. And king of brought forth bread and : and he was the priest of . And he him, and said, be of , possessor of and earth: And be , which hath thine into thy hand. And he gave him of all. 21And the king of said unto , Give me the persons, and take the goods to thyself. And said to the king of , I have lift up mine hand unto , , the possessor of and earth, That I will not take from a thread even to a shoelatchet, and that I will not take any thing that is thine, lest thou shouldest say, I have made rich: only that which the young men have eaten, and the of the men which went with me, , , and ; let them take their .
The 1611 translation, public domain. Its original printing included the Apocrypha, which is why the deuterocanonical books can be read here. Notes and cards are EKLI’s own.
The world at this moment · The patriarchs, 2000 BC to 1600 BC ›
Abraham's family as herdsmen among settled Canaanite city-states, in a world where Egypt and Mesopotamia are the great powers and Canaan is the corridor between them.
- Mesopotamia
- Abraham's own century is Hammurabi's. The great empire of Ur has already fallen, and Babylon rises under a king who published a law code on a stone pillar for everyone to see. Reading Genesis alongside Hammurabi's laws is illuminating in both directions: some provisions are strikingly similar, and the places where Israel's later law diverges are the places worth stopping at.
- Egypt
- The Middle Kingdom, wealthy, bureaucratic, and organised around the Nile flood. Egyptian tomb paintings from this period show Semitic traders arriving with donkeys and striped cloaks, which is more or less the picture Genesis gives of a family going down to Egypt in a famine. Toward the end of the era the Hyksos, rulers of Semitic origin, take the delta.
- Anatolia and the Aegean
- Assyrian merchants run a long-distance trading colony at Kanesh in Anatolia, leaving thousands of clay letters about copper, tin, and debt. On Crete the Minoan palaces are at their height, with plumbing, frescoes, and a script nobody has yet read.
- Further afield
- The Indus Valley cities are in decline after centuries of grid-planned streets and drains. In China the Erlitou culture is building the first palace complexes. Stonehenge is standing and already old.
All of Genesis