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The Battle of the Vale of Siddim is an event in Genesis, Chapter 14, in which an alliance of four kings from Mesopotamia made war with the five kings of the Cities of the Plain. Abraham's nephew Lot is captured by the Four Kings, but is rescued by Abraham, who is then blessed by the mysterious figure of Melchizedek.

Narrative

According to Genesis 14, four kings of the North - Chedorlaomer, Amraphel king of Shinar, Arioch king of Ellasar, and Tidal, 'king of nations (Goyim)' - made war against the five cities in the Vale of Siddim, (the Salt Sea). The Cities of the Plain were made to pay tribute for twelve years, but rebelled in the thirteenth.

The following year Chedorlaomer led his coalition back into the region, defeating and subduing many of the surrounding kingdoms. An allied force from the Cities of the Plain, listed as Shinab, king of Admah; an unnamed king of Bala (Zoar); Birsha, king of Gomorrah; Bera, king of Sodom; and Shemeber, king of Zeboyim, went out to meet Chedorlaomer's force and a battle ensued in the plain of the Salt Sea. Chedorlaomer was victorious and took away "all the goods of Sodom and Gomorrah, and all their victuals". Among those taken captive was Abraham's nephew, Lot.

Upon hearing this, Abraham assembled a force of 318 people and pursued Chedorlaomer's forces, finally engaging them in battle near Damascus, where Abraham was victorious. Melchizedek, king of Salem, then blessed Abraham, and the king of Sodom offered the recovered goods in return for his people, but Abraham refused to take any reward.

Identifying the kings

Genesis 14:1 gives a list of four names: "It was in the time of Amraphel king of Shinar, Arioch king of Ellasar, Chedor-laomer king of Elam, and Tidal king of the Goiim..." Traditionally these have been taken as four separate kings:

Amraphel has been thought by some scholars such as the writers of the catholic Encyclopedia and the Jewish Encyclopedia to be a an alternate version of the name of the famed Hammurabi. The name is also associated with Ibal Pi-El II of Esnunna.

Arioch has been thought to have been a king of Larsa (Ellasar being an alternate version of this). It has also been suggested that it is URU KI, meaning "this place here".

Following the discovery of documents written in the Elamite language and Babylonian language, it was thought that Chedorlaomer is a transliteration of the Elamite compound Kudur-Lagamar, meaning servant of Lagamaru - a reference to Lagamaru, an Elamite deity whose existence was mentioned by Assurbanipal. However, no mention of an individual named Kudur Lagamar has yet been found; inscriptions that were thought to contain this name are now known to have different names (the confusion arose due to similar lettering). David Rohl identifies Chedorlaomer with an Elamite king named Kutir-Lagamar.

Tidal has been considered to be a corruption or transliteration of Tudhaliya - either referring to the first king of the Hittite New Kingdom (Tudhaliya I) or the proto-Hittite king named Tudhaliya. With the former, the title king of Nations would refer to the allies of the Hittite kingdom such as the Ammurru and Mittani; with the latter the term "goyiim" has the sense of "them, those people". al ("their power") gives the sense of a people or tribe rather than a kingdom. Hence td goyim ("those people have created a state and stretched their power").

Geopolitical context

It was common practise for vassals/allies to accompany a powerful king during their conquests. For example, in a letter from about 1770 BC reporting a speech aimed at persuading the nomadic tribes to acknowledge the authority of Zimri-Lim of Mari:

There is no king who can be mighty alone. Ten or fifteen kings follow Hammurabi the man of Babylon; as many follow Rim-Sin the man of Larsa, Ibal-pi-El the man of Eshnunna, and Amut-pi-El the man of Quatna and twenty kings follow Yarim-Lim the man of Yamhad.

The alliance of four states would have ruled over cities/countries that were spread over a wide area: from Elam at the extreme eastern end of the Fertile Crescent to Anatolia at the western edge of this region. Because of this, there is a limited range of time periods that match the Geopolitical context of Genesis 14. In this account, Chedorlaomer is described as the king to whom the cities of the plain pay tribute. Thus, Elam must be a dominant force in the region and the other three kings would therefore be vassals of Elam and/or trading partners.

There were periods when Elam was allied with Mari through trade. Mari also had connections to Syria and Anatolia, who, in turn, had political, cultural, linguistic and military connections to Canaan. The earliest recorded empire was that of Sargon, which lasted until his grandson, Naram Sin.

According to Kenneth Kitchen, a better agreement with the conditions in the time of Chedorlaomer is provided by Ur Nammu. Mari had had links to the rest of Mesopotamia by Gulf trade as early as the Jemdet Nasr but an expansion of political connections to Assyria did not occur until the time of Isbi-Erra. The Amorites or MARTU were also linked to the Hittites of Anatolia by trade.

Trade between the Harappan culture of India and the Jemdet Nasr flourished between c 2000-1700BC. As Isin declined, the fortunes of Larsa - located between Eshnunna and Elam - rose until Larsa was defeated by Hammurabi. Between 1880 and 1820 BC there was Assyrian trade with Anatolia, in particular in annakum or tin. The main trade route between Ashur and Kanesh running between the Tigris and Euphrates passed through Haran. The empire of Shamshi-Adad I and Rim-Sin I included most of northern Mesopotamia. Thus, Kitchen concludes that this is the period in which the narrative of Genesis 14 falls into a close match with the events of the time of Shamsi Adad and Chedorlaomer The relevant rulers in the region at this time were:

• The last king of Isin, Damiq-ilishu, ruled 1816-1794 BC.
• Rim Sin I of Larsa ruled 1822-1763
• The last king of Uruk, Nabiilishu, ruled 1802
• In Babylon, Hammurabi ruled 1792-1750
• In Eshnunna Ibal Pi-El II ruled c 1762
• In Elam there was a king Kuduzulush
• In Ashur, Shamsi Adad I ruled c 1813-1781
• In Mari, Yasmah-Adad ruled 1796-1780 followed by Zimri-Lin 1779-1757.

Linguistic origins

There are a number of languages which have been proposed as the origin of the name Chedorlaomer. The Persian, Assyrian and Akkadian provide the simplest linguistic agreement, but there are other possibilities.

• Persian: Kĕdorla`omer Pronunciation ked·or·lä·o'·mer
• Assyrian: Kudurlagamar. Kudur-Mabuk was a ruler in Larsa from 1770 BC to 1754 BC. His sons Warad-Sin and Rim-Sin I were also kings of Larsa

Dating of the events

When cuneiform was first deciphered in the 19th century Theophilus Pinches translated some Babylonian tablets which were part of the Spartoli collection in the British Museum and believed he had found in the Chedorlaomer Text the names of three of the "Kings of the East" named in Genesis 14. As this is the only part of Genesis which seems to set Abraham in wider political history, it seemed to many 19th and early 20th century exegetes and Assyriologists to offer an opening to date Abraham, if the kings in question could only be identified.

In 1887, Schrader was the first to propose that Amraphel could be an alternate spelling for Hammurabi. The terminal -bi on the end of Hammurabi's name was seen to parallel Amraphel since the cuneiform symbol for -bi can also be pronounced -pi. Tablets were known in which the initial symbol for Hammurabi, pronounced as kh to yield Khammurabi, had been dropped, so that Ammurapi was a viable pronunciation. If Hammurabi were deified in his lifetime or soon after (adding -il to his name to signify his divinity), this would produce something close to the Bible's Amraphel. A little later Jean-Vincent Scheil found a tablet in the Imperial Ottoman Museum in Istanbul from Hammurabi to a king named Kuder-Lagomer of Elam, which he identified with the same name in Pinches' tablet. Thus by the early 1900s many scholars had become convinced that the kings of Gen. 14:1 had been identified, resulting in the following correspondences:

Today these dating attempts are today little more than a historical curiosity. On the one hand, as the scholarly consensus on Near Eastern ancient history moved towards placing Hammurabi in the late 18th century (or even later), and not the 19th, confessional and evangelical theologians found they had to choose between accepting these identifications or accepting the biblical chronology; most were disinclined to state that the Bible might be in error and so began synchronizing Abram with the empire of Sargon I, and the work of Schrader, Pinches and Scheil fell out of favour. Meanwhile, further research into Mesopotamia and Syria in the second millennium BCE undercut attempts to tie Abraham in with a definite century and to treat him as a strictly historical figure, and while linguistically not implausible, the identification of Hammurabi with Amraphel is now regarded as untenable.

There is rarely ever consensus on any matters involving Bible interpretation; one modern interpretation of Genesis 14 is summed up by Michael Astour in The Anchor Bible Dictionary (s.v. "Amraphel", "Arioch" and "Chedorlaomer"), who explains the story as a product of anti-Babylonian propaganda during the 6th century Babylonian captivity of the Jews:

"After Böhl's widely accepted, but wrong, identification of Tu-ud-hul-a with one of the Hittite kings named Tudhaliyas, Tadmor found the correct solution by equating him with the Assyrian king Sennacherib (see Tidal). Astour (1966) identified the remaining two kings of the Chedorlaomer texts with Tukulti-Ninurta I of Assyria (see Arioch) and with the Chaldean Merodach-baladan (see Amraphel). The common denominator between these four rulers is that each of them, independently, occupied Babylon, oppressed it to a greater or lesser degree, and took away its sacred divine images, including the statue of its chief god Marduk; furthermore, all of them came to a tragic end ... All attempts to reconstruct the link between the Chedorlaomer texts and Genesis 14 remain speculative. However, the available evidence seems consistent with the following hypothesis: A Jew in Babylon, versed in Akkadian language and cuneiform script, found in an early version of the Chedorlaomer texts certain things consistent with his anti-Babylonian feelings." (The Anchor Bible Dictionary, s.v. "Chedorlaomer")

The Chedorlaomer tablets are now thought to be from the 6th or 7th century BCE, a millennium after the time of Hammurabi, but at roughly the time when the main elements of Genesis are thought to have been set down. Another prominent scholar considers a relationship between the tablet and Genesis speculative, but identifies Tudhula as a veiled reference to Sennacherib of Assyria, and Chedorlaomer, i.e. Kudur-Nahhunte, as "a recollection of a 12th century BCE king of Elam who briefly ruled Babylon."

The last serious attempt to place a historical Abraham in the second millennium resulted from discovery of the name Abi-ramu on Babylonian contracts of about 2000 BCE, but this line of argument lost its force when it was shown that the name was also common in the first millennium., leaving the patriarchal narratives in a relative biblical chronology but without an anchor in the known history of the Near East.

A few evangelical scholars continue to argue against the consensus: Kenneth Kitchen ("The Patriarchal Age"), asserts that the only known historical period in which a king of Elam, whilst allied with Larsa, was able to enlist a Hittite king and a King of Eshunna as partners and allies in a war against Canaanite cities is in the time of Old Babylon c 1822-1764 BC. This is when Babylon is under Hammurabi and Rim Sin I controls Mari, which is linked through trade to the Hittites and other allies along the length of the Euphrates. This trade is mentioned in the Mari letters, a source which documents a geo-political relationship back to when the ships of Dilmun, Makkan and Meluhha docked at the quays of Agade in the time of Sargon. In the period of Old Babylon, c 1822-1764 BC, Rim Sin I brought together kings of Syro-Anatolia whose kingdoms were located on the Euphrates in a coalition focused on Mari whose king was Shamsi Adad. Kitchen uses the geo-political context, the price of slaves and the nature of the covenants entered into by Abraham to date the events he encounters. He sees the covenants, between Abraham and the other characters encountered at various points in Abraham's journeys, as datable textual artifacts having the form of legal documents which can be compared to the form of legal documents from different periods. Of particular interest is the relationship between Abraham and his wife, Sarah. When Sarah proves to be barren, she offers her handmaiden, Hagar, to Abraham to provide an heir. This arrangement, along with other aspects of the covenants of Abraham, lead Kitchen to a relatively narrow date range which he believes aligns with the time of Hammurabi.

References

1. Calculated by James Ussher
2. Genesis 14:14
3. Genesis 14 at BibleGateway
4. The possibility also exists that its a single title for one king who has unified several states. Amraphel king of Shinar (ruler of Eshnunna),Chedor-laomer (king of Elam), Ellasar (the Power of Larsa) Arioch (URU KI: in charge of this place here)Tidal goiim (those people have created a state and stretched the extent of their power)
5. Amraphael
6. ^ Micael Roaf "Cambridge Atlas of Archaeology - king lists p 111 and pp 108-123
7. 'Chedorlaomer' at JewishEncyclopedia.com
8. Kudur-Lagamar from History of Egypt by G. Maspero
9. Akkadian tD ("have stretched themselves")
10. (Akkadian verbal stem intensive, reflexive expressing the bringing about of a state)
11. tD
12. ^ Khalifa, Shaika Haya Ali Al; Rice, Michael (1986). Bahrain through the Ages. KPI. ISBN 071030112-x. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: invalid character (help)
13. The Mari letters
14. ^ Kenneth Kitchen "The Patriarchal Age"
15. Nayeem, Dr. Muhammed Abdul (1990). Prehistory and Protohistory of the Arabian Peninsula. Hyderabad.
16. Roaf, Michael (1990). Cultural Atlas of Mesopotamia and the Ancient Near East. Equinox. ISBN 0-8160-2218-6.
17. Orr, James, general editor (1915). "Hammurabi". International Standard Bible Encyclopedia. {{cite book}}: |author= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
18. "Amraphel". The Catholic Encyclopedia. 1917.
19. Pinches, Theophilus (1908). The Old Testament In the Light of The Historical Records and Legends of Assyria and Babylonia (third ed.). London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.
20. MacKenzie, Donald (1915). "The Golden Age of Babylonia". Myths of Babylonia and Assyria. p. 247. The identification of Hammurabi with Amraphel is now generally accepted
21. Browning, W.R.F. (2010). "Amraphel". A Dictionary of the Bible (second ed.). Oxford University Press, USA. ISBN 0-19-954399-2. The identification, once popular, that this Amraphel was the famous Hammurabi of Babylon (1728–1686 BCE) is not tenable ... Most scholars doubt whether Gen. 14 describes historical events.
22. Hindel, Ronald (1994). "Finding Historical Memories in the Patriarchal Narratives". Biblical Archaeology Review. 21 (4): 52–59, 70–72.
23. Thompson, Thomas (2002). The Historicity of the Patriarchal Narratives: The Quest for the Historical Abraham. Valley Forge, Pa: Trinity Press International. ISBN 1-56338-389-6.

• Old Testament
• Battles of the Ancient era
• Torah events
• Abraham
• Book of Genesis