But Abraham spake to Lot and said, “Thy ways and my ways do not agree: we must part; do thou go to the left, and I will go to the right.” So they separated; and Lot departed from Abraham, and from the way of righteousness, and from the living God; but Abraham camped in Mamre.
After the failure of the Tower of Babel, and the people had been scattered over the whole earth, Chedorlaomer, one of Nimrod’s chief captains, had left his service, and had established a kingdom of his own in Elam. He speedily brought into subjection all the Canaanitish peoples that dwelt in the fertile valley of Jordan,--Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zebojim, and Zoar, and made them tributary to himself. These cities bore his yoke for twelve years, and then they rebelled. Five years after did Nimrod, who is also called Amraphel in the sacred text,[306] march against Chedorlaomer, but Nimrod was defeated, along with his allies, Arioch, king of Ellasar, and Tidal, king of many confederate nations; and obliged to enter into alliance with his former general, Chedorlaomer, and agree to assist him in bringing back the revolted cities--Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zebojim, and Zoar--to their allegiance.
Consequently a huge army of confederates, under Chedorlaomer, Nimrod or Amraphel, Arioch, and Tidal, overran the plain and valley of Jordan, and slew all the giants that were there. The country before them was a garden, and behind them it was a desert.
They resolved also to defeat, and utterly to destroy Abraham, the servant of the Most High; for Nimrod (Amraphel) remembered the perils to which his soothsayers had assured him he was exposed so long as Abraham lived.
The rulers of the five cities--Bera (Ruffian), king of Sodom; Birsha (Evil-doer), king of Gomorrah; Shirrab (Covetous one), king of Admah; Shemeber (the Strong one), king of Zebojim; and the king (a nameless one) of Bela (the engulfing city)--went forth in battle array, and met the host of Chedorlaomer in the great plain of Siddim, from whose canals and fountains the Salt Sea, or Dead Sea, was afterwards formed; and there they were utterly routed, and fled in precipitate haste to the mountains and to the desert.
The king of Sodom alone escaped unharmed of all the five kings, by a miracle which God wrought, to exhibit His power to the dwellers in the plain, who had begun to doubt the truth of Abraham’s deliverance out of the burning, fiery furnace.