Abraham Went to War the Night He Rescued Lot

The Fugitive Who Brought the News

The fugitive ran until he found Abraham. The plain text of Genesis 14 calls him a fugitive, one who escaped, but the midrashic tradition asks who he was and why he came specifically to Abraham. Legends of the Jews identifies the messenger: it was Og, the giant, who had survived from the antediluvian world and who would one day become the king of Bashan whom Moses killed. He came to Abraham, according to the tradition, not out of loyalty but hoping that Abraham would die in battle trying to rescue Lot, leaving Sarai free. The messenger's motive was bad. The information was true. Abraham moved anyway.

Four kings had beaten five. Sodom and Gomorrah and three allied cities had been defeated, their goods plundered, their people taken. Among the prisoners was Lot, Abraham's nephew, who had chosen the Jordan plain for its richness and had eventually moved his tent as far as Sodom. The choice that had seemed advantageous was now captivity.

The 318 Who Were Actually One

Abraham armed 318 trained men born in his house and pursued the four-king coalition to Dan. Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer records a tradition about the 318 that changes the arithmetic of the battle. The 318 men were actually Eliezer alone, the trusted servant of Abraham's household. The gematria of Eliezer's name in Hebrew totals 318. The tradition reads the army as a single man, the faithful servant whose personal loyalty and strength were counted as equivalent to an army.

Whether this is the literal reading or a homiletical one, the battle was a night campaign. Abraham divided his force in the dark and struck from multiple directions and broke the coalition in panic. He pursued them past Damascus. He brought back Lot, the women, the goods, everything the four kings had taken from the five.

What Abraham Did With the Victory

The king of Sodom came to meet Abraham at the valley of the king after the battle and made an offer that was reasonable by any standard: keep the goods, give me back my people. Abraham had recovered everything. He deserved the spoils. The king of Sodom was offering him a legitimate division.

Abraham refused. He had raised his hand to God Most High, maker of heaven and earth, and sworn that he would not take a thread or a sandal strap or anything that was the king of Sodom's. Legends of the Jews gives the reason Abraham stated explicitly: he would not let any man be able to say that the king of Sodom had made Abraham rich. The independence of his wealth mattered to Abraham as much as the wealth itself. He would not be obligated to Sodom. He would not be the client of a king whose city was, as Abraham already knew, heading toward destruction.

The Humility He Brought to the Negotiation

What followed the war was a different kind of test. Abraham went to God and began to negotiate for Sodom's survival. Bereshit Rabbah records his words before beginning the negotiation: I am dust and ashes. It was not a rhetorical gesture. Abraham had just won a battle against four kings with an army that should not have been able to do it. He stood before God in the full consciousness of what had almost happened to him at the hands of Amraphel, the king he had fought, and what had almost happened earlier at the hands of Nimrod. Had Amraphel killed him, he would be dust. Had Nimrod burned him, he would be ashes. The man who refused the king of Sodom's treasure was the same man who stood before God naming his own near-annihilation as the ground on which he dared to speak.