A roster of kings is usually a place where readers skim. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 14:2) will not let you skim. It reads the names.
The Aramaic treats each royal name as a moral diagnosis. Bera of Sodom is the one whose deeds were evil. Birsha of Amorah is the one whose deeds were with the wicked. Shinab of Admah is the one who hated his father. Shemebar of Zeboim is the one who corrupted himself with fornication. And the nameless king of Bela — whose city name the Targum glosses as the city which consumed its dwellers — rules Zoar, the city that literally swallowed its inhabitants.
This is the Targumist's sermon method. Hebrew names are almost never decorative in the Jewish tradition; they are verdicts. Bera, Birsha, Shinab, Shemebar — each name contains a root that matches a vice. The Targum excavates the roots and hands you the ledger.
Five kings at war, and every one of them morally bankrupt. This is the Targumist's setup for the entire chapter of (Genesis 14). The war about to unfold is not a battle of equals. It is a collapse of wickedness upon itself, with Abram about to enter as the lone adult in the room.
The instruction is sharp. When a whole coalition is evil, the one righteous man is drafted whether he wants to be or not. Abram, sitting peacefully in Mamre (Genesis 13:18), does not know yet that the war of these five kings will eventually pull him off his mountain. The names in the roster are his future problem.
Sometimes the newsreel of history is really a list of moral diagnoses, waiting for the righteous to notice.