Genesis 14:14: Three hundred and eighteen men, and a hundred and thirty miles

"When Abram heard that his kinsman had been taken captive, he led forth his trained men, born in his house, 318 of them, and went in pursuit as far as Dan." This is the one verse in Abraham's life where he behaves like a chieftain rather than a herdsman, and the map is the reason it is impressive. Dan is at the far northern end of the country, at the foot of Mount Hermon where the Jordan comes out of the ground; Hebron, where he has been living since Genesis 13:18, is at the southern end. Between them is the whole length of Canaan — about a hundred and thirty miles by the ridge road and the rift, through country that is not his, after an army that has just beaten five kings and everybody else it met. The number is oddly precise and the description is precise too: trained men, born in his house. Not hired, not allies — a household militia raised from people born into it, which tells you how large the household is. Genesis 13 said his livestock could not share a hill country with Lot's, and this is what that wealth looks like counted in men. Dan is an anachronism and a useful one. The town is called Laish through Genesis, Joshua and the first half of Judges 18, and takes the name Dan only when the tribe of Dan captures it and renames it after their ancestor — who has not been born yet. Naming it Dan here is the narrator speaking to a reader who knows the country as it is now, and it is the same habit that gave the Amalekites a country seven verses ago. "From Dan to Beersheba" becomes the Bible's stock phrase for the whole land, top to bottom. This verse is the first time anyone crosses it.