10 And Lot, lifting up his eyes and looking an the valley of Jordan, saw that it was well watered everywhere, before the Lord had sent destruction on Sodom and Gomorrah; it was like the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt, on the way to Zoar.
And the Lord God made a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had made. And out of the earth the Lord made every tree to come, delighting the eye and good for food; and in the middle of the garden, the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And a river went out of Eden giving water to the garden; and from there it was parted and became four streams.
Now the children of Reuben and the children of Gad had a great number of cattle: and when they saw that the land of Jazer and the land of Gilead was a good place for cattle; The children of Gad and the children of Reuben came and said to Moses and to Eleazar the priest and to the chiefs of the meeting, Ataroth, and Dibon, and Jazer, and Nimrah, and Heshbon, and Elealeh, and Sebam, and Nebo, and Beon, The land which the Lord gave into the hands of the children of Israel, is a land for cattle, and your servants have cattle. And they said, With your approval, let this land be given to your servants as their heritage: do not take us over Jordan. And Moses said to the children of Gad and the children of Reuben, Are your brothers to go to the war, while you take your rest here? Why would you take from the children of Israel the desire to go over into the land which the Lord has given them? So did your fathers, when I sent them from Kadesh-barnea to see the land. For when they went up to the valley of Eshcol, and saw the land, they took from the children of Israel the desire to go into the land which the Lord had given them. And at that time the Lord was moved to wrath, and made an oath, saying, Truly, not one of the men of twenty years old and over who came out of Egypt will see the land which I gave by oath to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; because they have not been true to me with all their heart; But only Caleb, the son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite, and Joshua, the son of Nun: because they have been true to the Lord. Then the Lord was angry with Israel, and he made them wanderers in the waste land for forty years? till all that generation who had done evil in the eyes of the Lord was dead. And now you have come to take the place of your fathers, another generation of sinners, increasing the wrath of the Lord against Israel. For if you are turned away from him, he will send them wandering again in the waste land; and you will be the cause of the destruction of all this people. Then they came to him, and said, We will make safe places for our cattle here, and towns for our little ones; But we ourselves will be ready armed to go before the children of Israel till we have taken them to their place: but our little ones will be safe in the walled towns against the people of the land. We will not come back to our houses till every one of the children of Israel has come into his heritage. For we will not have our heritage with them on the other side of Jordan and forward; because our heritage has come to us on this side of Jordan to the east. Then Moses said to them, If you will do this, arming yourselves to go before the Lord to the war, Every armed man of you going across Jordan before the Lord till he has overcome and sent in flight all who are against him, And the land is under the rule of the Lord: then after that you may come back, having done no wrong to the Lord and to Israel; and this land will be yours for your heritage before the Lord. But if you do not do this, then you are sinners against the Lord; and you may be certain that your sin will have its reward. So get to work building your towns for your little ones, and safe places for your sheep; and do as you have said. And the children of Gad and the children of Reuben said to Moses, Your servants will do as my lord says. Our little ones, our wives, and our flocks, and all our cattle, will be there in the towns of Gilead; But your servants will go over, every man armed for war, before the Lord to the fight, as my lord says. So Moses gave orders about them to Eleazar the priest and to Joshua, the son of Nun, and to the heads of families of the tribes of the children of Israel. And Moses said to them, If the children of Gad and the children of Reuben go with you over Jordan, every man armed for the fight before the Lord, and all the land is given into your hands, then let them have the land of Gilead for a heritage: But if they do not go over with you armed, they will have to take their heritage with you in the land of Canaan. Then the children of Gad and the children of Reuben said, As the Lord has said to your servants, so will we do. We will go over armed before the Lord into the land of Canaan, and you will give us our heritage on this side of Jordan. So Moses gave to them, even to the children of Gad and the children of Reuben and to the half-tribe of Manasseh, the son of Joseph, the kingdom of Sihon, king of the Amorites and Og, king of Bashan, all the land with its towns and the country round them. And the children of Gad were the builders of Dibon and Ataroth and Aroer; And Atroth-shophan and Jazer and Jogbehah; And Beth-nimrah and Beth-haran: walled towns and shut-in places for sheep. And the children of Reuben were the builders of Heshbon and Elealeh and Kiriathaim; And Nebo and Baal-meon, (their names being changed,) and Sibmah: and they gave other names to the towns they made. And the children of Machir, the son of Manasseh, went to Gilead and took it, driving out the Amorites who were living there. And Moses gave Gilead to Machir, the son of Manasseh; and he made it his living-place. And Jair, the son of Manasseh, went and took the towns of Gilead, naming them Havvoth-Jair. And Nobah went and took Kenath and its small towns, naming it Nobah, after himself.
Have no love for the world or for the things which are in the world. If any man has love for the world, the love of the Father is not in him. Because everything in the world, the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father but of the world.
And when they had put them out, he said, Go for your life, without looking back or waiting in the lowland; go quickly to the mountain or you will come to destruction. And Lot said to them, Not so, O my Lord; See now, your servant has had grace in your eyes and great is your mercy in keeping my life from destruction, but I am not able to get as far as the mountain before evil overtakes me and death; This town, now, is near, and it is a little one: O, let me go there (is it not a little one?) so that my life may be safe. And he said, See, I have given you your request in this one thing more: I will not send destruction on this town. Go there quickly, for I am not able to do anything till you have come there. For this reason, the town was named Zoar. The sun was up when Lot came to Zoar. Then the Lord sent fire and flaming smoke raining down from heaven on Sodom and Gomorrah. And he sent destruction on those towns, with all the lowland and all the people of those towns and every green thing in the land. But Lot's wife, looking back, became a pillar of salt. And Abraham got up early in the morning and went to the place where he had been talking with the Lord: And looking in the direction of Sodom and Gomorrah and the lowland, he saw the smoke of the land going up like the smoke of an oven. So it came about that when God sent destruction on the towns of the lowland, he kept his word to Abraham, and sent Lot safely away when he put an end to the towns where he was living. Then Lot went up out of Zoar to the mountain, and was living there with his two daughters, for fear kept him from living in Zoar: and he and his daughters made their living-place in a hole in the rock.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Keil & Delitzsch Commentary » Commentary on Genesis 13
Commentary on Genesis 13 Keil & Delitzsch Commentary
Abram, having returned from Egypt to the south of Canaan with his wife and property uninjured, through the gracious protection of God, proceeded with Lot למסּעיו “ according to his journeys ” (lit., with the repeated breaking up of his camp, required by a nomad life; on נסע to break up a tent, to remove, see Exodus 12:37) into the neighbourhood of Bethel and Ai, where he had previously encamped and built an altar (Genesis 12:8), that he might there call upon the name of the Lord again. That ויּקרא (Genesis 13:4) is not a continuation of the relative clause, but a resumption of the main sentence, and therefore corresponds with ויּלך (Genesis 13:3), “ he went...and called upon the name of the Lord there, ” has been correctly concluded by Delitzsch from the repetition of the subject Abram.
But as Abram was very rich ( כּבד , lit., weighty ) in possessions ( מקנה , cattle and slaves ), and Lot also had flocks, and herds, and tents אהלים for אהלים , Ges. §93, 6, 3) for his men, of whom there must have been many therefore, the land did not bear them when dwelling together ( נשׁא , masculine at the commencement of the sentence, as is often the case when the verb precedes the subject, vid., Ges. §147), i.e., the land did not furnish space enough for the numerous herd to graze. Consequently disputes arose between the two parties of herdsmen. The difficulty was increased by the fact that the Canaanites and Perizzites were then dwelling in the land, so that the space was very contracted. The Perizzites , who are mentioned here and in Genesis 34:30; Judges 1:4, along with the Canaanites, and who are placed in the other lists of the inhabitants of Canaan among the different Canaanitish tribes (Genesis 15:20; Exodus 3:8, Exodus 3:17, etc.), are not mentioned among the descendants of Canaan (Genesis 10:15-17), and may therefore, like the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, and Rephaim (Genesis 15:19-21), not have been descendants of Ham at all. The common explanation of the name Perizzite as equivalent to פּרזות ארץ ישׁב “inhabitant of the level ground” (Ezekiel 38:11), is at variance not only with the form of the word, the inhabitant of the level ground being called הפּרזי (Deuteronomy 3:5), but with the fact of their combination sometimes with the Canaanites, sometimes with the other tribes of Canaan, whose names were derived from their founders. Moreover, to explain the term “Canaanite,” as denoting “the civilised inhabitants of towns,” or “the trading Phoenicians,” is just as arbitrary as if we were to regard the Kenites, Kenizzites, and the other tribes mentioned Genesis 15:19. along with the Canaanites, as all alike traders or inhabitants of towns. The origin of the name Perizzite is involved in obscurity, like that of the Kenites and other tribes settled in Canaan that were not descended from Ham. But we may infer from the frequency with which they are mentioned in connection with the Hamitic inhabitants of Canaan, that they were widely dispersed among the latter. Vid., Genesis 15:19-21.
To put an end to the strife between their herdsmen, Abram proposed to Lot that they should separate, as strife was unseemly between אחים אנשׁים , men who stood in the relation of brethren, and left him to choose his ground. “ If thou to the left, I will turn to the right; and if thou to the right, I will turn to the left .” Although Abram was the older, and the leader of the company, he was magnanimous enough to leave the choice to his nephew, who was the younger, in the confident assurance that the Lord would so direct the decision, that His promise would be fulfilled.
Lot chose what was apparently the best portion of the land, the whole district of the Jordan, or the valley on both sides of the Jordan from the Lake of Gennesareth to what was then the vale of Siddim. For previous to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, this whole country was well watered, “ as the garden of Jehovah, ” the garden planted by Jehovah in paradise, and “ as Egypt, ” the land rendered so fertile by the overflowing of the Nile, “ in the direction of Zoar .” Abram therefore remained in the land of Canaan, whilst Lot settled in the cities of the plain of the Jordan, and tented (pitched his tents) as far as Sodom. In anticipation of the succeeding history (Gen 19), it is mentioned here (Genesis 13:13), that the inhabitants of Sodom were very wicked, and sinful before Jehovah .
After Lot's departure, Jehovah repeated to Abram (by a mental, inward assurance, as we may infer from the fact that אמר “said” is not accompanied by ויּרא “he appeared”) His promise that He would give the land to him and to his seed in its whole extent, northward, and southward, and eastward, and westward, and would make his seed innumerable like the dust of the earth. From this we may see that the separation of Lot was in accordance with the will of God, as Lot had no share in the promise of God; though God afterwards saved him from destruction for Abram's sake. The possession of the land is promised עולם עד “ for ever .” The promise of God is unchangeable. As the seed of Abraham was to exist before God for ever, so Canaan was to be its everlasting possession. But this applied not to the lineal posterity of Abram, to his seed according to the flesh, but to the true spiritual seed, which embraced the promise in faith, and held it in a pure believing heart. The promise, therefore, neither precluded the expulsion of the unbelieving seed from the land of Canaan, nor guarantees to existing Jews a return to the earthly Palestine after their conversion to Christ. For as Calvin justly says, “ quam terra in saeculum promittitur, non simpliciter notatur perpetuitas; sed quae finem accepit in Christo .” Through Christ the promise has been exalted from its temporal form to its true essence; through Him the whole earth becomes Canaan (vid., Genesis 17:8). That Abram might appropriate this renewed and now more fully expanded promise, Jehovah directed him to walk through the land in the length of it and the breadth of it. In doing this he came in his “ tenting ,” i.e., his wandering through the land, to Hebron, where he settled by the terebinth of the Amorite Mamre (Genesis 14:13), and built an altar to Jehovah . The term ישׁב (set himself, settled down, sat, dwelt) denotes that Abram made this place the central point of his subsequent stay in Canaan (cf. Genesis 14:13; Genesis 18:1, and Gen 23). On Hebron, see Genesis 23:2.