14:1-12 The wars of nations make great figure in history, but we should not have had the record of this war if Abram and Lot had not been concerned. Out of covetousness, Lot had settled in fruitful, but wicked Sodom. Its inhabitants were the most ripe for vengeance of all the descendants of Canaan. The invaders were from Chaldea and Persia, then only small kingdoms. They took Lot among the rest, and his goods. Though he was righteous, and Abram's brother's son, yet he was with the rest in this trouble. Neither our own piety, nor our relation to the favourites of Heaven, will be our security when God's judgments are abroad. Many an honest man fares the worse for his wicked neighbours: it is our wisdom to separate, or at least to distinguish ourselves from them, 2Co 6:17. So near a relation of Abram should have been a companion and a disciple of Abram. If he chose to dwell in Sodom, he must thank himself if he share in Sodom's losses. When we go out of the way of our duty, we put ourselves from under God's protection, and cannot expect that the choice made by our lusts, should end to our comfort. They took Lot's goods; it is just with God to deprive us of enjoyments, by which we suffer ourselves to be deprived of the enjoyment of him.

Verse 6. - And the Horites. Literally, dwelling in caves; from char, a cave. In their mount Seir. Literally, wooded (Gesenius); hairy (Furst); rugged (Lange); probably with reference to the thick brushwood and forests that grew upon its sides. The cave men of Seir were the earlier inhabitants of the region lying between the Dead Sea and the Gulf of Elam, afterwards taken possession of by the Edomites (Deuteronomy 2:12; Jeremiah 49:16; Obadiah 1:3, 4). Unto El-paran I.e. the oak or terebinth of Paran. Which is by the wilderness. Between the land of Edom and the fertile country of Egypt, and to the southward of Palestine, identified as the plateau of the Tih, across which the Israel-itish march lay from Sinai (Stanley, 'Sinai and Palestine,' p. 92).

And the Horites in their Mount Seir,.... Or the Horim who dwelt in Mount Seir, so called from Seir the Horite, who continued here till they were drove out by the sons of Esau or Edom, from whom their country was afterwards called Edom or Idumea, see Genesis 36:20 Deuteronomy 2:12,

unto Elparan, which is by the wilderness; so far these Horites inhabited, and the four kings smote all they met with unto this place, which was either the plain or oak of Paran, near a wilderness of the same name; the wilderness of Arabia, through which the Israelites travelled forty years, in their way to Canaan.

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