And in the fourteenth ° year came Chedorlaomer, and the kings that were with him, and smote the Rephaims in Ashteroth Karnaim, and the Zuzims in Ham, and the Emims in Shaveh Kiriathaim,

With Chedorlaomer the king of Elam, and with Tidal king of nations, and Amraphel king of Shinar, and Arioch king of Ellasar; four kings with five.

And the vale of Siddim was full of slimepits; and the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah fled, and fell there; and they that remained fled to the mountain.

And the king of Sodom went out to meet him after his return from the slaughter of Chedorlaomer, and of the kings that were with him, at the valley of Shaveh, which is the king's dale.

And I will make thee exceeding ° fruitful, and I will make nations of thee, and kings shall come out of thee.

And I will bless her, and give thee a son also of her: yea, I will bless her, and she shall be a mother of nations; kings of people shall be of her.

And God said unto him, I am God Almighty: be fruitful and multiply; a nation and a company of nations shall be of thee, and kings shall come out of thy loins;

And these are the kings that reigned in the land of Edom, before there reigned any king over the children of Israel.

And they slew the kings of Midian, beside the rest of them that were slain; namely, Evi, and Rekem, and Zur, and Hur, and Reba, five kings of Midian: Balaam also the son of Beor they slew with the sword.

And we took at that time out of the hand of the two kings of the Amorites the land that was on this side Jordan, from the river of Arnon unto mount Hermon;

5:8 nine hundred and twelve years. These great ages have been questioned. However, a “king list” was excavated near Babel, which tells of ten kings who had lived to great ages before the Flood. Although these ages were first deciphered as thousands of years, improved translations have brought them more in line with those in the Bible record. The Egyptians, Chinese, Greeks, and Romans also recorded a tradition that the ancient men lived to great ages.

5:24 was not. It is not said of Enoch that he “died,” like the other antediluvian patriarchs, but only that suddenly he was no longer present on earth. The New Testament makes it plain that he “was translated that he should not see death” (Hebrews 11:5). Elijah had a similar experience twenty-five centuries later (II Kings 2:11). Both Enoch and Elijah were prophets of judgment to come, ministering in times of deep apostasy. Enoch, as the “seventh from Adam” (Jude 14), a contemporary of ungodly Lamech (Genesis 4:18-24), prophesied midway between Adam and Abraham, when God was dealing directly with mankind in general. Elijah prophesied midway between Abraham and Christ, when God was dealing with Israel in particular. Both were translated in the physical flesh directly to heaven (not yet glorified, as at the coming rapture of the church, described in I Thessalonians 4:13-17, since Christ had not yet been glorified).

14:9 and Arioch. Several of the names of kings in this chapter, once charged by higher critics as being nothing but late fiction, have actually been found in excavations dating from the patriarchal period. These include Chedorlaomer and Arioch, found on the Mari Tablets.

15:18 covenant with Abram. Although this is the first time God’s promises to Abram are actually called a covenant, its terms merely confirm and clarify the initial promise in Genesis 12:7. Its ultimate fulfillment is yet future, although it received a precursive and token fulfillment under Solomon (I Kings 8:65) and possibly Jeroboam II (II Kings 14:25).

19:24 brimstone and fire. The precise nature of the physical agents used by God in the destruction of the five cities of the plain is uncertain. “Brimstone” is usually associated with sulfur, but the word may be used for any inflammable substance. The word “fire” is also used here for the first time in the Bible and could be understood either as a divine fire (as in Judges 6:21; I Kings 18:38; etc.) or as gases and other combustibles ignited in a volcanic explosion falling to earth after their eruption. The entire region gives abundant evidence of tremendous volcanic activity in the past, although most of this probably antedated Abraham, occurring in the later stages of the Flood and in the early decades following the Flood. The area is still very active tectonically, lying astride the “Great Rift Valley,” extending all the way from the Jordan River Valley into southern Africa. Unless the judgment was entirely miraculous, in its physical nature as well as its timing, the most likely explanation seems to be the sudden release, by an earthquake and volcanic explosion of great quantities of gas, sulfur and bituminous materials that had accumulated from materials entrapped beneath the valley floor during the Flood. These were ignited by a simultaneous electrical storm, so that it appeared to Abraham, watching from afar, that “the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace” (Genesis 19:28).

20:1 Gerar. Gerar was capital of the Philistine colony on the seacoast. The Philistines were descendants of Ham through Mizraim, and apparently were originally from Crete. Some centuries later, they all migrated to Canaan and became a strong coastal nation, inveterate enemies of Israel. The name Palestine came from them. The title of their kings at this time was Abimelech, similar to Pharaoh in Egypt.

25:3 Sheba, and Dedan. These two grandsons of Abraham by Keturah, seem to have been named after two grandsons of Cush (Genesis 10:7), although Shem also had a great grandson named Sheba (Genesis 10:22,24,25,28). One of these, probably the Cushite, evidently became the ancestor of the Sabaeans, and the Queen of Sheba (Job 1:15; I Kings 10:1). The Sabaeans have been well identified on the monuments as a kingdom in southwest Arabia, near modern Yemen.

17:14 remembrance of Amalek. The Amalekites, whoever they were, continued in existence until well into the period of Israel’s kings, possibly even to the time of Hezekiah (I Chronicles 4:43). Eventually they vanished, so completely that none today can even be certain who they were.

24:18 forty days and forty nights. It is noteworthy how often this particular time is mentioned in Scripture. It was also the period of maximum rainfall during the great Flood (Genesis 7:4) the period of Elijah’s travel to Mt. Sinai (I Kings 19:8), and the period of Satan’s tempting Christ in the wilderness (Matthew 4:2). Forty days was the period God gave Nineveh to repent under the preaching of Jonah (Jonah 3:4).

13:44 he is unclean. Leprosy was not only a type of sin; it was occasionally a divine judgment because of some specific sin, as in the case of Miriam (Numbers 12:10), King Uzziah (II Chronicles 26:19-21), and Elisha’s servant (II Kings 5:27), among others.