Genesis 14:7: Then they turned back, and came at the rebels from the south-west
Read it →Commentary on Genesis 14:7
Four kings are sweeping back on a long raiding march, striking the Amalekites and the Amorites before they turn on Sodom and carry Lot away. The verse reads like a list of names, yet it holds the Bible's first mention of Amalek, its first mention of Kadesh, and a war that Abram watches from outside.
A sweep through six nations
Verses 5 to 7 are not a detour. They show a power crushing everything in its path before it ever reaches the cities of the plain.
Chedorlaomer and his allies began by defeating six nations (vv. 5-7) before approaching Sodom and Gomorrah. Then the king of Sodom and Gomorrah, with three other kings, went out to engage the four kings in battle (vv. 8-9).
The places named run from mountain country to open desert.
So the whole world becomes a scene of warring interests and selfish conflicts — high places and lower ones alike, the mountain or the wilderness (v. 6).
En-mishpat, that is, Kadesh
The verse gives this place two names. Kadesh, the second one, enters the Bible right here, and it returns again and again in Israel's later history.
This place is first mentioned in connection with the battle of the kings, when Lot was taken captive (Gen. 14:7). It was one of the stopping places of the Israelites, and they stayed there a long time. From there they sent the twelve spies into the land. At the end of the thirty-eight years' wandering they came back to Kadesh, and Miriam died and was buried there. It was here also that Moses struck the rock when the people complained about water.
The older name has a meaning of its own. A list of Genesis names gives it plainly:
En-mishpat — Fountain of judgment.
The Amorites at Hazazon-tamar
The last place struck goes by another name in Scripture.
Same as En-gedi. Gen. 14:7. It is Hazazontamar in 2 Chr. 20:2.
These Amorites were not strangers to Abram.
He was at the time living by the oaks of Mamre the Amorite, who with his two brothers were allies of Abram. In later years a link of this kind would have been wrong, but at this time "the iniquity of the Amorites was not yet complete" (Gen. 15:16), and the Lord makes no issue of it.
The first appearance of Amalek
Amalek appears here for the first time. The timing raises a question commentators cannot settle.
This early mention seems to show that the Amalekites were not the descendants of Amalek, the son of Eliphaz, the son of Esau (Gen. 36:12). Unless, that is, Scripture is naming the land that the descendants of Eliphaz would later occupy.
This first mention matters because of what Amalek becomes later:
From Numbers 24:20 we learn that "Amalek was the first of the nations." He had won that place of supremacy by natural power and skill, long before Israel had become a nation. Here was Amalek, the man after the flesh, who had made himself great, resenting the intrusion of a people that God had chosen for Himself (Ex. 17).
Watching from outside the battle
Abram is nowhere in this verse, and that absence is the point.
His tent marked him as a stranger to all these things. It marked him as a man to whom the battle of "four kings with five" hardly mattered. And then his altar marked him as one whose pursuits were quite of another character, even a heavenly one. His tent showed him to be a stranger on earth; his altar showed him to be at home in Heaven.
Staying outside the fight did not mean staying still. When the raid carried off Lot, Abram acted.
He was not taking sides with the four kings of the Babylonian empire, or with the five kings of the cities of the plain. He had no need to enter the conflict to defend himself. It was for the express purpose of delivering a brother who had come under the power of the world.
Summary
- Sweep. Six nations fall before Sodom is even touched. Mountain and desert alike become one scene of warring interests.
- Judgment. The stop named here is En-mishpat, "fountain of judgment." Its other name is Kadesh — later the place of Israel's long wandering, the spies, Miriam's grave, and the struck rock.
- Reach. Hazazon-tamar is another name for En-gedi. The Amorites struck there share a name with Mamre, Abram's ally, whose guilt was not yet full.
- Enemy. Amalek first appears in this verse, long before Esau's grandson of that name. Commentators cannot settle the puzzle, but Amalek comes to stand for the power that resents God's chosen people.
- Outside. Abram's tent and altar kept him clear of the whole conflict. He entered it only to rescue a brother who had fallen under the world's power.
