Genesis Chapter 14 verse 3 Holy Bible

Pulpit Commentary

Pulpit CommentaryVerse 3. - All these - the last-named princes - were joined together - i.e. as confederates (so. and came with their forces) - in (literally, to) the vale of Siddim. The salt valley (LXX.); a wooded vale (Vulgate); a plain filled with rocky hollows (Gesenius), with which Ver. 10 agrees; the valley of plains or fields (Onkelos, Raschi, Keil, Murphy). Which is the salt sea. i.e. where the salt sea afterwards arose, on the destruction of the cities of the plain - Genesis 19:24, 25 (Keil, Havernick; cf. Josephus, ' Bell. Jud.,' 4:08, 4); but the text scarcely implies that the cities were submerged-only the valley (cf. Quarry, p. 207). The extreme depression of the Dead Sea, being 1300 feet below the level of the Mediterranean ("the most depressed sheet of water in the world:" Stanley's 'Sinai and Palestine,' Genesis 7.), conjoined with its excessive saltness (containing 26.25 per cent of saline particles), renders it one of the most remarkable of inland lakes. Its shores are clothed with loom and desolation. Within a mile from northern embouchure the verdure of the rich Jordan valley dies away. Strewn along its desolate margin lie broken canes and willow branches, with trunks of palms, poplars, and other trees, half embedded in slimy mud, and all covered with incrustations of salt. At its south-western corner stands the mountain of rock salt, with its columnar fragments, which Josephus says, in his day was regarded as the pillar of Lot s wife.

Ellicott's Commentary

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(3) All these were joined together.--Were united in a confederacy, and so formed a pentapolis, or group of five allied towns, like the Philistine league with its five lords (1Samuel 6:16-18).The vale of Siddim.--Mr. Conder (Tent-work, ii. 16) says that the name Sidd is still given by the Arabs to the cliffs or banks of marl which run along the southern edge of the plain of Jericho; and with this agrees Aben-Ezra's explanation, who derives the word from the Hebrew sid, chalk. Mr. Conder searched throughout the Ciccar for traces of the ruined cities, but in vain; and "the gradual rise of the level of the plain, caused by the constant washing down of the soft marl from the western hills, would effectually," he thinks, "cover over any such ruins." He found, however, copious springs of water upon the north-western side of the lake, and considers that the five cities were in their neighbourhood.Which is the salt sea.--From these words commentators have rashly concluded that the vale of Sodom was swallowed up by the Dead Sea; but not only is no such convulsion of nature mentioned in Genesis 19, but Abram is described as seeing the Ciccar-land not submerged, but smoking like a furnace (Genesis 19:28). Probably "the vale of Siddim" was the name of the whole district in which these sidds, or bluffs, are situated, and which extend round all the northern shores of the lake. Mr. Conder, after tracing the lines of former beaches, which show that the Dead Sea has long been shrinking in extent, tells us (Tent-work, ii. 43) that geologists hold that it had reached its present condition long before the days of Abram. It still, indeed, covered a much larger space, for the rains at that time were far more copious in Palestine than at present; but it no longer extended over the whole Arabah, as, by the evidence of these beaches, was once the case.(3) The Horites.--Cave-men, the aboriginal inhabitants of Mount Seir, subsequently conquered by the Edomites (Deuteronomy 2:12; Deuteronomy 2:22). The miserable condition of these earth-men is described in Job 30:3-8. . . .