Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 14:9) makes a small geographical translation that reframes the entire conflict. The Hebrew Bible names four kings: Kedarlaomer of Elam, Tidal, Amraphel, and Arioch. The Aramaic renders Shinar — Amraphel's kingdom — as Pontos.
This is the Targum's habit. It retranslates the archaic map into the nomenclature of its own era. Pontos is the Black Sea region of the Roman world. Amraphel, in the Targum's geopolitical imagination, is not a Mesopotamian king; he is an emperor of the known northern rim. The Aramaic has modernized the atlas so the reader can feel the scale.
The Targumist also calls Tidal king of the nations obedient to him — a phrase that turns Tidal from a minor monarch into something closer to a warlord commanding tributary peoples. Four kings, but not four equals. One emperor of the east, one warlord of subject nations, one king of the north, and Arioch of Thelasar.
And they line up against five. The Aramaic gets the arithmetic right: four kings arrayed in battle against five. The plain of Sodom is outnumbered — nominally. The outcome will prove the count meaningless. A smaller, more organized coalition can defeat a larger, more corrupted one. Five local kings whose names are moral verdicts cannot withstand four foreign kings who have already cleared the giants from the plains east of the Jordan.
The Targumist is setting up the intervention to come. Abram, who is not yet in the battle, will soon be pulled in. When he arrives with three hundred and eighteen servants, he will not join either side. He will be a third party whose smallness eclipses both the four and the five. Heaven likes to disrupt these counts.