[Lot the nephew of Abram belongs to that category of biblical characters who have no virtue of their own but who are well-connected or related to some Divinely-chosen figure and as such, benefit from Divine grace. Others are the three sons of Noah and their wives who are saved in the ark. It is presumed that by proximity, they share the faith of the patriarch or even if they don’t, they will serve as an example by contrast as in the case of Lot, and Ham. By reading about these peripheral characters, we are given the hope that our loved ones, members of our family who are exposed to our personal faith in God are influenced enough by us to merit Divine grace, mercy, protection, patience . . . though for sure, in due time and according to their individual choice, they will be subjected to judgment as well.
In the case of Lot, since he was only a nephew and not a son, it says something about Abram to treat him so well, in fact like his own son if he had one. This is not surprising, we forget Abram was childless so it’s natural that Lot fills in the vacuum. What Abram does for Lot is quite admirable but for all the virtues of this patriarch that Lot is exposed to, he doesn’t seem to learn much. Sometimes these narratives sound like they are contrived rather than historical, for the very lessons we learn from such characters as Lot.
Main commentary is from Pentateuch and Haftorahs, ed. Dr. J.H.Hertz; additional commentary by “EF” Everett Fox which is now our official translation from The Five Books of Moses; commentary indicated by “RA” is by Robert Alter, The Five Books of Moses..–Admin1.]
Genesis/Bereshith 13
1 Avram traveled up from Egypt, he and his wife and all that was his, and lot with him to the Negev.
Lot with him. Lot is here explicitly named because of the incident which follows.
2 And Avram was exceedingly heavily laden with livestock, with silver and with gold.
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rich. Lit. ‘heavy,’ i.e laden with possessions.
3 He went on his journeyings from the Negev as far as Bet-El, as far as the place where his tent had been at the first, between Bet-El and Ai,
and he went on his journeys. The Heb. implies that he travelled by stages, covering much the same ground as on the outward journey.
4 to the place of the slaughter-site that he had made there at the beginning. There Avram called out the name of YHWH.at the first. Rashi renders: ‘Unto the place of the altar which he had made there at the first, and where Abram had called on the name of the Lord.’ See XII,8.
5 Now also Lot, who had gone with Avram, had sheep and oxen and tents.
6 And the land could not support them, to settle together, for their property was so great that they were not able to settle together.not able to bear them. i.e. there was insufficient pasturage and water for their numerous herds.
7 So there was a quarrel between the herdsmen of Avram’s livestock and the herdsmen of Lot’s livestock. Now the Canaanite and the Perizzite were then settled in the land.the Canaanite and the Perizzite dwelt then in the land. This seemingly superfluous clause explains how so large a tract of country could not supply sufficient pasturage for the flocks of Abram and Lot. The older inhabitants would naturally have taken possession of the fertile districts.
[RA] The Canaanite and the Perizzite. This second notation of the indigenous population of Canaan, at the moment of friction between two immigrants from Mesopotamia, suggests that they can scarcely afford such divisiveness when they are surrounded by potential enemies. (In the next episode, Abram will be compelled to bring military aid to his nephew.) There may also be a hint of irony in their dividing up a land here that already has inhabitants.
8 Avram said to Lot: Pray let there be no quarreling between me and you between my herdsmen and your herdsmen, for we are brother men!no strife. Abram’s conduct is both self-denying and peace-loving.
for we are brethren. i.e. kinsmen. Strife would be especially unseemly among relations.
[EF] brother men: Relatives.
9 Is not all the land before you? Pray part from me! If to the left, then I go to the right, if to the right, then I go to the left.the whole land before thee. Although the Canaanites and the Perizzites inhabit the country, there are several unoccupied sites available. In the interests of peace, Abram waives his right, as the elder, to make the selection, and allows Lot to choose in which direction he will go.
[EF] before you: Possibly, a legal term concerning boundaries. left . . .right: North and south.
[RA] 8-9. This is only the second of direct speech of Abram. The first, his address to Sarai as they are about to enter Egypt, reveals a man fearful about his own survival. Here we get a very different image of Abram as the reasonable peacemaker and as a man conscious of family bonds in alien surroundings. The language in which he addresses Lot is clear, firm, and polite.
9. Pray, let us part company. The Hebrew is cast in the form of a polite imperative, literally: “Kindly part from me.”
10 Lot lifted up his eyes and saw all the plain of the Jordan— how well-watered was it all, before YHWH brought ruin upon Sedom and Amora, like YHWH’s garden, like the land of Egypt, as you come toward Tzo’ar.the plain of the Jordan. Lit. ‘the circle of the Jordan,’ is the specific name for the land on both sides of the lower Jordan valley. ‘A large part of this valley is of exuberant fertility . . . Wherever water comes, the flowers rise to the knee, and the herbage to the shoulder’ (G.A. Smith).
well watered. By the Jordan and its tributaries.
like the garden of the LORD. i.e. Eden and its river (II,10).
like the land of Egypt. Watered by the Nile.
as thou goest unto Zoar. Better, as thou camest unto Zoar. This is one of the MOsaic ‘touches’ in Genesis (Naville). Zoar is not the town near Sodom. It is the name of an ancient Egyptian frontier fortress. Speaking to men who had come out of Egypt, Scripture compares the fertility of the Plain of Jordan to the verdure and richness of Egypt ‘as thou camest unto Zoar’, on the edge of the barren desert and sands.
[EF] YHWH brought ruin: See Chap. 19. Sedom and Amora: Trad. English “Sodom and Gomorrah.”
[RA] saw that all of it was well-watered. There is no repetition of “saw” in the Hebrew; Hebrew grammar allows the single verb to govern simultaneously the direct object (“the whole plain of the Jordan”) and the relative clause that modifies the direct object. What is significant thematically is that the point of view of the entire clause is Lot’s. The writer may well have drawn on a tradition that the whole plain of Jordan down to the Dead Sea, before some remembered cataclysm, was abundantly fertile, but it is Lot who sees the plain in hyperbolic terms, likening it to “the garden of the LORD”—presumably, Eden, far to the east—and to the fabulously irrigated Egypt to the south. (Archeologists have in fact discovered traces of an ancient irrigation system in the plain of Jordan.)
11 So Lot chose for himself all the plain of the Jordan. Lot journeyed eastward, and they parted, each man from the other.
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Lot chose him all the plain of the Jordan. ‘He chose the rich soil, and with it the corrupt civilization which had grown up in the rank climate of that deep descent; . . . and left to Abraham the hardship, the glopry, and the virtues of the rugged hills, the sea-breezes, and the inexhaustible future of Western Palestine’ (Stanley).
12 Avram settled in the land of Canaan, while Lot settled in the cities of the plain, pitching-his-tent near Sedom.
in the land of Canaan. i.e. the remainder of the land.
[RA] dwelled in the cities . . . set up his tent. At least in this first phase of his habitation of the plain, Lot is represented ambiguously either living in a town or camping near one. From the writer’s perspective, abandoning the seminomadic life for urban existence can only spell trouble. The verb ‘ahal derived from the noun “tent” is relatively rare, and seems to mean both to set up a tent (verse 18) to fold up a tent in preparation for moving on.
13 Now the men of Sedom were exceedingly wicked and sinful before YHWH.
men of Sodom. The fertility of the soil, with the luxurious and enervating character of the climate, rapidly developed the sensual vices of this early civilized but depraved race; Ezek. XVI,49. For all that, Lot was willing to dwell amongst them. The material attractions of the locality overbore his fear of moral contamination. This statement also prepares us for their destruction narrated in Chap. XIX.
wicked and sinners. Wicked—heartless and inhuman in their dealings with their fellowmen; and sinners—abandoning themselves to nameless abominations and depravities.
against the LORD. Their immoral conduct was an offence to God.
[RA] Now the people of Sodom. This brief observation, as many commentators have noted, suggests that Lot has made a very bad choice. The consequences will become manifest in chapter 19.
14 YHWH said to Avram, after Lot had parted from him: Pray lift up your eyes and see from the place where you are, to the north, to the Negev, to the east, to the Sea:Lot was separated from him. God chose that moment to renew His assurance to Abram, because he may then have been depressed by the departure of his nephew, whom, in default of a son, he had regarded as his probably heir, through whom the Divine promise was to be fulfilled.
from the place where thou art. The spot near Bethel where he was standing commands a wonderful view of the whole country. Travellers speak in glowing terms of the panorama which this holy place affords.
[RA] And the LORD had said to Abram. Although all previous translations treat this as a simple past, the word order—subject before verb—and the use of the suffix conjugation instead of the prefix conjugation that is ordinarily employed for past actions indicate a pluperfect. The definition of a temporal frame is pointed and precise: once Lot actually parts from Abram, heading down to his fatal involvement in the cities of the plain, God proceeds to address His promise of the land to Abram. The utterance of the promise is already an accomplished fact as Lot takes up settlement in the plain to the east.
Raise your eyes and look. The location between Bethel and Ai is in fact a spectacular lookout point, and the already implicit contrast between Abram and Lot is extended—Abram on the heights, Lot down in the sunken plain.
15 indeed, all the land that you see, I give it to you and to your seed, for the ages.for ever. ‘It will be theirs for ever, even though they may not always be in possession of it; even as it was given to Abraham, without his being in actual possession of it’ (S.R. Hirsch).
16 I will make your seed like the dust of the ground, so that if a man were able to measure the dust of the ground, so too could your seed be measured.as the dust. ‘As the dust of the earth extends from one end of the world to the other, so will thy seed be dispersed throughout all lands. And as the dust causes even metals to decay but itself endures, sop will all worshippers of idolatry perish, but Israel will continue forever’ (Midrash).
[RA] could a man count the dust of the earth. Unusually for the use of simile in the Bible, the meaning of the simile is spelled out after the image is introduced. Perhaps this reflects the high didactic solemnity of the moment of promise, though the comparison with dust might also raise negative associations that would have to be excluded. (The great Yiddish poet Yakov Glatstein wrote a bitter poem after the Nazi genocide which proposes that indeed the seed of Abraham has become like the dust of the earth.)
17. Up, walk about through the land in its length and in its breadth, for I give it to you.arise, walk through the land. The act of walking through the land was a legal formality denoting acquisition.
[RA] walk about the land through its length and its breadth. Walking around the perimeter of a piece of property was a common legal ritual in the ancient Near East for taking final possession, and the formula “I have given it to So-and-so and to his sons forever” is a well-attested legal formula in the region for conveyance of property going back as far as the Ugaritic texts, composed in the 14th and 13th centuries B.C.E.
18 Avram moved-his-tent and came and settled by the oaks of Mamre, which are by Hevron. There he built a slaughter-site to YHWH.Hebron. Josephus speaks of it as a ‘more ancient city than Memphis in Egypt’. Of the oak-tree he says, ‘Report goes, that this tree has continued since the creation of the world.’