Genesis 13:11: He took the whole valley, and they separated from each other

"So Lot chose for himself all the Jordan Valley, and Lot journeyed east. Thus they separated from each other." This is the fork in Abraham's family, and it is settled in one sentence with three clauses. Lot chooses; Lot goes east; they part. The map draws the middle clause, because it is the only one with a direction in it, and because east from the ridge between Bethel and Ai is not a gentle word. The ground drops about 3,800 feet in fifteen miles — off the limestone spine, down through the Judean wilderness, to a valley floor that is already below sea level before it reaches the river. What makes the choice worth mapping is that it should not have been Lot's to make. Abram is the elder and the one the promise was given to, and he offers the land away: "Is not the whole land before you? Separate yourself from me. If you take the left hand, then I will go to the right." Lot takes what looks like the better half. He takes it on a view, which the previous verse has already told the reader is about to be destroyed, and the narrator has already told the reader that the men of Sodom were wicked, great sinners against the LORD. East is also the Bible's own bearing for going the wrong way, and Genesis has used it three times before this — out of the garden, out of Eden to Nod, and from the east to the plain of Shinar. Lot is the fourth. Abram stays on the ridge with a country he has been promised and does not own, and in seven verses he moves his tent south to Hebron and builds an altar. The next time these two meet, Lot is a prisoner of war and Abram is coming down out of the north to get him back.