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#15.
The Kings of
Gen. 14:
pp. 192 - 194
Although Sodom is the next geographical item that meets us in our reading of Genesis
(13: 10), we will defer our examination of the geography of these cities of the plain until
we reach the record of their destruction given in the nineteenth chapter. After the
separation of Lot and Abraham, Lot pitched his tent towards Sodom, and Abraham
removed his tent, and dwelt in "the plain" or among the "oaks" of Mamre, which in the
days of Moses was known as Hebron. Fuller particulars are given of Hebron later on in
the narrative, and so we pass of for our present study to the intensely interesting story of
Gen. 14: 1-4.
"And it came to pass in the days of Amraphel King of Shinar, Arioch king of Ellasar,
Chedorlaomer king of Elam, and Tidal king of nations; that these made war with Bera
king of Sodom, and with Birsha king of Gomorrah, Shinab king of Admah, and
Shemeber king of Zeboiim, and the king of Bela, which is Zoar.
All these were joined together in the vale of Siddim, which is the salt sea.
Twelve years they served Chedorlaomer, and in the thirteenth year they rebelled."
Here is a most explicit account, committing the Scriptures to a series of historical
assertions, introducing names of kings and geographical terms, and, above all, taking for
granted that Elam at the time of Abraham exercised dominion as far as Palestine.
Let us remember that Moses wrote the account of this battle some four hundred years
after the event, yet the language is precise and the description that follows (verses 5-24)
reads almost like the language of an eye-witness.
The Rationalistic critics made merry over this chapter of Genesis. It was rejected as
being utterly unhistorical, because forsooth, there was no record outside of the Bible that
Elam ever ruled as far as the land of Palestine. Grotefend, to whom Assyriology owes a
debt because of his pioneer work in the decipherment of the cuneiform inscriptions, went
to the extreme of explaining the four kings from the east as being the four seasons, and
the five kings of the plain as the extra days which the Babylonians added to their twelve
months to complete the year!
We turn from these sad "oppositions of science falsely so-called" to the simple
evidence of the excavator and the archaeologist. The cuneiform inscriptions have
brought to light facts that have completely stopped the mouth of adverse critics, and fully
vindicated the integrity of the fourteenth chapter of Genesis.
Theophilus Pinches, in his article entitled "Babylonia and Elam Four Thousand Years
Ago" says:
"One of the important facts of the early history of Babylonia and Elam is that related
by king Assur-bani-apli of Assyria, who tells us that 1532 or 1632 years before his time,
Kudurnan Khundi, king of Elam, invaded Akkad or Babylonia, and carried off from
Erech the image of the goddess Nana."