The campaign continues with the defeat of the Horites in the hill country of Seir as far as El Paran near the desert. Seir — later associated with Esau/Edom — is included in the sweeping arc of Chedorlaomer's victories. The geographical range of the campaign is enormous: from the region north of Canaan down through the Transjordan and into the Sinai peninsula. The comprehensiveness of the eastern coalition's power makes Abram's eventual rescue of Lot all the more remarkable — it is not a local skirmish but an intervention against a coalition that has just swept through an entire region. The application: when God calls his people to act against overwhelming odds, the odds are always clearly established before the action is described. The narrator is making sure the reader knows how formidable the opposition is before Abram appears on the scene with 318 trained men.

COMMUNITY REFLECTIONS

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