While Abram was at Hebron, a revolt of five petty kings in the Jordan valley against their over-lord Chedorlaomer of Elam brought from the East a great punitive expedition, in which no fewer than four powerful monarchs took part. A successful campaign—the course of which is traced in detail—ended in the complete defeat of the rebels in a pitched battle in what is now the Dead Sea basin, followed by the sack of Sodom, and the capture of Lot (1–12). Abram, with a handful of slaves, pursues the victorious allies to Dan, routs them in a night attack, and rescues the captives, including Lot (13–16). On his homeward journey he is met by Melchizedek, king of Salem, who blesses him in the name of God Most High, and to whom he pays tithes (18–20); and by the king of Sodom, whose offer of the spoil Abram rejects with proud and almost disdainful magnanimity (17. 21–24).—Such is in brief the content of this strange and perplexing chapter, in its present form and setting. It is obvious that the first half is merely introductory, and that the purpose of the whole is to illustrate the singular dignity of Abram’s position among the potentates of the earth. Essentially peaceful, yet ready on the call of duty to take the field against overwhelming odds, disinterested and considerate of others in the hour of victory, reverential towards the name and representative of the true God, he moves as a ‘great prince’ amongst his contemporaries, combining the highest earthly success with a certain detachment and unworldliness of character.—Whether the picture be historically true or not—a question reserved for a concluding note—it is unfair to deny to it nobility of conception; and it is perhaps an exaggeration to assert that it stands in absolute and unrelieved opposition to all we elsewhere read of Abram. The story does not give the impression that Abram forfeits the character of ‘Muslim and prophet’ (Wellhausen) even when he assumes the rôle of a warrior.
Literary character.—Many features of the chapter show that it has had a peculiar literary history. (a) The vocabulary, though exhibiting sporadic affinities with Priestly-Code (רְכוּשׁ, 11. 12. 16. 21; יְלִיד בַּֽיִת, ¹⁴; נֶפֶשׁ [= ‘person’], ²¹) or Elohist (האמרי, 7. 13; בִּלְעָדַי, ²⁴), contains several expressions which are either unique or rare (see the footnotes): חָנִיךְ, ¹⁴; (ἅπαξ λεγόμενον); הֵרִיק, ¹⁴; הַפָּלִיט, ¹³; קֹנֶה, אֵל עֶלְיוֹן, 18–20. 22; מִגֵּן, ²⁰; מָרַד, ⁴.¹—(b) The numerous antiquarian glosses and archaic names, suggesting the use of an ancient document, have no parallel except in Deuteronomy 210–12. 20–23 39. 11. 13b. 14; and even these are not quite of the same character. (c) The annalistic official style, specially noticeable in the introduction, may be genuine or simulated; in either case it marks the passage sharply off from the narratives by which it is surrounded.—That the chapter as it stands cannot be assigned to any of the three sources of Genesis is now universally acknowledged, and need not be further argued here. Some writers postulate the existence of a literary kernel which may either (1) have originated in one of the schools Yahwist or Elohist,² or (2) have passed through their hands.³ In neither form can the theory be made at all plausible. The treatment of documentary material supposed by (1) is unexampled in Genesis; and those who suggest it have to produce some sufficient reason why a narrative of (say) Elohist required to be so heavily glossed. As for (2), we have, to be sure, no experience of how Elohist or Yahwist would have edited an old cuneiform document if it had fallen into their hands,—they were collectors of oral tradition, not manipulators of official records,—but we may presume that if the story would not bear telling in the vivid style that went to the hearts of the people, these writers would have left it alone. The objections to Priestly-Code’s authorship are equally strong, the style and subject being alike foreign to the well-marked character of the Priestly narration. Chapter xiv. is therefore an isolated boulder in the stratification of the Pentateuch, a fact which certainly invites examination of its origin, but is not in itself an evidence of high antiquity.
1–4. The revolt of the five kings.—1. The four names (see below) do double duty,—as genitve after בִּימֵי and as subject to עָשׂוּ מ׳—a faulty syntax which a good writer would have avoided (v.i.). The suggestion that the first two names are genitive and the last two subject,¹ has the advantage of putting Kĕdorlā‘omer, the head of the expedition (4. 5. 9. 17), in the place of honour; but it is without warrant in the Hebrew text; and besides, by excluding the first two kings from participation in the campaign (against 5. 9. 17), it necessitates a series of changes too radical to be safely undertaken.—2. The group of five cities (Pentapolis, Wisdom 10⁶) is thought to be the result of an amalgamation of originally independent traditions.
In chapter 19, only Sodom and Gomorrah are mentioned as destroyed (1924. 28 [18²⁰]; so 13¹⁰, Isaiah 19 f., Jeremiah 23¹⁴ etc.) and Zoar (1917 ff.) as spared. Admah and Ẓeboim are named alone in Hosea 11⁸, in a manner hardly consistent with the idea that they were involved in the same catastrophe as Sodom and Gomorrah. The only passages besides this where the four are associated are 10¹⁹ and Deuteronomy 29²², although ‘neighbour cities’ of Sodom and Gomorrah are referred to in Jeremiah 49¹⁸ 50⁴⁰, Ezekiel 1646 ff.. If, as seems probable, there were two distinct legends, we cannot assume that in the original tradition Admah and Ẓeboim were connected with the Dead Sea (see Cheyne Encyclopædia Biblica, 66 f.).—The old name of Zoar, בֶּלַע (Destruction?), appears nowhere else.
The four names in verse ¹ are undoubtedly historical, although the monumental evidence is less conclusive than is often represented. (1) אַמְרָפֶל (Ἀμαρφαλ) is thought to be a faulty transcription of Ḫammurabi (Ammurab[p]i), the name of the 6th king of the first Babylonian dynasty, who put an end to the Elamite domination and united the whole country under his own sway (circa 2100 B.C.).¹ The final ל presents a difficulty which has never been satisfactorily explained; but the equivalence is widely recognised by Assyriologists.² It is, however, questioned by Jensen³, absolutely rejected by Bezold,⁴ and pronounced ‘problematical’ by Meyer Geschichte des Alterthums², I. ii. 551.—(On שִׁנְעָר, see 10¹⁰.)—(2) אַרְיוֹךְ (compare Daniel 2¹⁴, Judith 1⁶), it seems, is now satisfactorily identified with Eri-agu, the Sumerian equivalent of Arad-Sin, a king of Larsa, who was succeeded by his more famous brother, Rîm-Sin, the ruler who was conquered by Ḫammurabi in the 31st year of the latter’s reign (Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament³, 16, 19). The two brothers, sons of the Elamite Kudurmabug, were first distinguished by Thureau-Dangin in 1907 (Die sumerischen und akkadischen Königsinschriften 210 f.; compare King, Chronicles concerning early Babylonian Kings, volume i. 68²; Meyer Geschichte des Alterthums², I. ii. page 550 f.). Formerly the two names and persons were confused; and Schrader’s attempt to identify Rîm-Sin with Arioch,⁵ though accepted by many, was reasonably contested by the more cautious Assyriologists, e.g. Jensen (Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft, 1896, 247 ff.), Bezold (op. cit. 27, 56), and Zimmern (Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament³, 367). The objections do not hold against the equation Arioch = Eriagu = Arad-Sin, provided Arad-Sin be kept distinct from Rîm-Sin. The discovery by Pinches⁶ in 1892 of the name Eri-[E]aku or Eri-Ekua stands on a somewhat different footing. The tablets on which these names occur are admittedly late (not earlier than the 4th century B.C.); the identity of the names with Eri-Aku is called in question by King;⁷ who further points out that this Eri-Ekua is not styled a king, that there is nothing to connect him with Larsa, and that consequently we have no reason to suppose him the same as either of the well-known contemporaries of Ḫammurabi. The real significance of the discovery lies in the coincidence that on these same late fragments (and nowhere else) the two remaining names of the verse are supposed to occur.—(3) כְּדָרְלָעֹמֶר (Χοδολλογομορ) unquestionably stands for Kudur-lagamar, a genuine Elamite proper name, containing the name of a known Elamite divinity Lagamar (Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament³, 485), preceded by a word which appears as a component of theophorous Elamite names (Kudur-mabug, Kudur-Nanḫundi, etc.). It is extremely doubtful, however, if the actual name has yet been found outside of this chapter. The “sensational” announcement of Scheil (1896), that he had read it (Ku-dur-nu-uḫ-ga-mar) in a letter of Ḫammurabi to Sinidinnam, king of Larsa, has been disposed of by the brilliant refutation of King (op. cit. xxv–xxxix. Compare also Delitzsch Beiträge zur Assyriologie und semitischen Sprachwissenschaft, iv. 90). There remains the prior discovery of the Pinches fragments, on which there is mentioned thrice a king of Elam whose name, it was thought, might be read Kudur-laḫ-mal or Kudur-laḫ-gu-mal.⁸ The first element (Kudur) is no doubt right, but the second is very widely questioned by Assyriologists.⁹ There is, moreover, nothing to show that the king in question, whatever his name, belonged to the age of Ḫammurabi.¹⁰ (4) תִּדְעָל (LXXᴱᴸ Θαργαλ, Peshiṭtå (‡ Syriac word)) was identified by Pinches with a “Tu-ud-ḫul-a, son of Gaz ...,” who is named once on the tablets already spoken of (see Schrader Sitzungsberichte der Königlich-Preussischen Akadamie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, 1895, xli. 961 ff.). The resemblance to Tid‛al is very close, and is naturally convincing to those who find ’Ariok and Kedorla‛omer in the same document; there is, however, no indication that Tudḫula was a king, or that he was contemporary with Ḫammurabi and Rîm-Sin (King, op. cit.).—גּוֹיִם can hardly be the usual word for ‘nations’ (LXX, Vulgate, Targum), either as an indefinite expression (Tuch) or as a “verschämtes et cetera” (Holzinger). We seem to require a proper name (Peshiṭtå has (‡ Syriac word)); and many accept the suggestion of Rawlinson, that Guti (a people North of the Upper Zab) should be read. Peiser (309) thinks that מֶלֶךְ גּוֹיִם is an attempt to render the common Babylonian title šar kiššati.
The royal names in verse ² are of a different character from those of verse ¹. Several circumstances suggest that they are fictitious. Jewish exegesis gives a sinister interpretation to all four (TargumJonathan, Bereshith Rabba § 42, Rashi); and even modern scholars like Tuch and Nöldeke recognise in the first two a play on the words רַע (evil) and רֶשֶׂע (wickedness). And can it be accidental that they fall into two alliterative pairs, or that each king’s name contains exactly as many letters as that of his city? On the other side, it may be urged (a) that the textual tradition is too uncertain to justify any conclusions based on the Hebrew (see the footnote); (b) the namelessness of the fifth king shows that the writer must have had traditional authority for the other four; and (c) Sanibu occurs as the name of an Ammonite king in an inscription of Tiglath-pileser IV. (Delitzsch Wo lag das Paradies? 294, Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek, ii. 21). These considerations do not remove the impression of artificiality which the list produces. Since the names are not repeated in verse ⁸, it is quite possible they are late insertions in the text, and, of course (on that view), unhistorical.—בֶּלַע is elsewhere a royal name (36³²).
1. בִּימֵי] LXX ἐν βασιλείᾳ; Vulgate in illo tempore, reading all the names in the nominative. LXX has the first in genitive and the rest nominative; LXXᴬ further inserts καί between the second and third. The reading of the Sixtine edition (first two names in genitive coupled by καί), which is appealed to in support of Winckler’s construction, has very little MS authority. “I have little doubt that both in H. and P. 19 (which is a rather carelessly written MS) and in 135 the reading is due to a scribe’s mistake, probably arising from misreading of a contracted termination and induced by the immediately preceding βασιλέως. How it came into the Roman edition, I do not feel sure.”¹—2. בֶּלַע] LXX Βαλλα, etc.—שִׁנְאָב] LXX Σεννααρ.—שֶׁמְאֵבֶר] LXX Συμοβορ, Συμορ The Samaritan Recension of the Pentateuch שמאבר (‘name has perished’), Peshiṭtå (‡ Syriac word).—הִיא] the first of the 11 instances of this Kethîb in Pentateuch (see on 2¹²).
3. all these] not the kings from the East (Dillmann, Driver), but (see verse ⁴) those of the Pentapolis. That there should be any doubt on the point is an indication of the weak style of the chapter. What exactly the verse means to say is not clear. The most probable sense is that the five cities formed a league] of the Vale of Siddim, and therefore acted in concert. This is more natural than to suppose the statement a premature mention of the preparations for battle in verse ⁸.—the Vale of Siddîm] The name is peculiar to this narrative, and its meaning is unknown (v.i.). The writer manifestly shares the belief (13¹⁰) that what is now the Dead Sea was once dry land (see page 273 f. below).—The Sea of Salt] one of the Old Testament names for the Dead Sea (Numbers 34³, Deuteronomy 3¹⁷, Joshua 3¹⁶ 15⁵ etc.): see Palestine Exploration Fund: Quarterly Statements., 1904, 64. Winckler’s attempt to identify it with Lake Ḥuleh is something of a tour de force (Geschichte Israels in Einzeldarstellungen, ii. 36 f.; compare 108 f.).—4. they rebelled] by refusal of tribute (2 Kings 18⁷ 241. 20 etc.). An Elamite dominion over Palestine in the earlier part of Ḫammurabi’s reign is perfectly credible in the light of the monumental evidence (page 272). But the importance attributed in this connexion to the petty kings of the Pentapolis is one of the features which excite suspicion of the historicity of the narrative. To say that this is due to the writer’s interest in Lot and Sodom is to concede that his conception of the situation is determined by other influences than authentic historical information.
3. חברוּ אל־] apparently a pregnant construct (Gesenius-Kautzsch § 119 ee) = ‘came as confederates to’; but this is rather harsh. אֶל after חבר naturally refers to that to which one is joined (Exodus 26³; of a person, Sirach 12¹⁴): that being impossible here, חבר must be understood absolutely as Judges 20¹¹ (vide Moore or Budde ad loc.) and the אל may have some vague local reference: ‘all these had formed a confederacy at (?) the Vale of Siddim.’—עֵמֶק הַשֵּׁדִּים] LXX τὴν φάραγγα τὴν ἁλυκήν, apparently a conjecture from the context, Vulgate vallem silvestrem. TargumOnkelos has חקליא (from שָׂדֶה), TargumJonathan פרדיסיא; Peshiṭtå ‘valley of the Sodomites’: on the renderings of Aquila and Theodotion see Field’s Note, page 30 f. It is evident the Versions did not understand the word. Nöldeke (Untersuchungen zur Kritik des Alte Testament 160³), Renan (History i. 116), Wellhausen (Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels⁵ 105), Jeremias (Das Alte Testament im Lichte des alten Orients², 351), al. think the true form is שֵׁדִים: ‘valley of demons.’—4. וּשְׁלשׁ] Accusative of time (Gesenius-Kautzsch § 118 i); but The Samaritan Recension of the Pentateuch ובשלש is better.—מרד] rare in Hexateuch (Numbers 14⁹, Joshua 2216. 18. 19. 29 [Priestly-Code]); and mostly late.
5–7. The preliminary campaign.—One of the surprising things in the narrative is the circuitous route by which the Eastern kings march against the rebels. We may assume that they had followed the usual track by Carchemish and Damascus: thence they advanced southwards on the East of the Jordan; but then, instead of attacking the Pentapolis, they pass it on their right, proceeding southward to the head of the Gulf of Aḳaba. Then they turn North-west to Ḳadesh, thence North-east to the Dead Sea depression; and only at the end of this long and difficult journey do they join issue with their enemies in the vale of Siddim.
In explanation, it has been suggested that the real object of the expedition was to secure command of the caravan routes in West Arabia, especially that leading through the Arabah from Syria to the Red Sea (see Tuch 257 ff.). It must be remembered, however, that this is the account, not of the first assertion of Elamite supremacy over these regions, but of the suppression of a revolt of not more than a few months’ standing: hence it would be necessary to assume that all the peoples named were implicated in the rebellion. This is to go behind the plain meaning of the Hebrew narrator; and the verisimilitude of the description is certainly not enhanced by Hommel’s wholly improbable speculation that the Pentapolis was the centre of an empire embracing the whole region East of the Jordan and the land of Edom (The Ancient Hebrew Tradition as illustrated by the Monuments, 149). If there were any truth in theories of this kind, we should still have to conclude that the writer, for the sake of literary effect, had given a fictitious importance to the part played by the cities of the Jordan valley, and had so arranged the incidents as to make their defeat seem the climax of the campaign. (See Nöldeke, 163 f.)
The general course of the campaign can be traced with sufficient certainty from the geographical names of 5–7; although it does not appear quite clearly whether these are conceived as the centres of the various nationalities or the battlefields in which they were defeated.—עַשְׁתְּרוֹת קַרְנַיִם (‘Astarte of the two horns’:¹ Eusebius Præparatio Evangelica i. 10; or ‘Astarte of the two-peaked mountain’²) occurs as a compound name only here. A city ‛Astārôth of Bashan, the capital of Og’s kingdom, is mentioned in Deuteronomy 1⁴, Joshua 9¹⁰ 12⁴ 1312. 31, 1 Chronicles 6⁵⁶ [= בְּעֶשְׁתְּרָה, Joshua 21²⁷]. Ḳarnaim is named (according to a probable emendation) in Amos 6¹³, and in 1 Maccabees 526. 43 f., 2 Maccabees 12²¹. It is uncertain whether these are two names for one place, or two adjacent places of which one was named after the other (‛Astārôth of [i.e. near] Ḳarnaim); and the confusing statements of the Onomastica Sacra (845 ff. 86³² 108¹⁷ 209⁶¹ 268⁹⁸) throw little light on the question. The various sites that have been suggested—Sheikh Sa’d, Tell ‛Aštarah, Tell el-‛Aš‛ari, and El-Muzêrîb—lie near the great road from Damascus to Mecca, about 20 miles East of the Lake of Tiberias (see Buhl, Geographie des alten Palaestina, 248 ff.; Driver A Dictionary of the Bible, i. 166 f.; George Adam Smith in Encyclopædia Biblica, 335 f.). Wetzstein’s identification with Boẓrah (regarded as a corruption of Bostra, and this of בְּעֶשְׁתְּרָה, Joshua 21²⁷), the capital of the Ḫaurân, has been shown by Nöldeke (Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft, xxix. 431¹) to be philologically untenable.—Of a place הָם nothing is known. It is a natural conjecture (Tuch al.) that it is the archaic name of Rabbath, the capital of ‛Ammon; and Sayce (The Higher Criticism and the Verdict of the Monuments, 160 f.) thinks it must be explained as a retranscription from a cuneiform source of the word עַמּוֹן. On the text v.i.—שָׁוֵה קִרְיָתַיִם is doubtless the Moabite or Reubenite city קִר׳, mentioned in Jeremiah 48²³, Ezekiel 25⁹, Numbers 32³⁷, Joshua 13¹⁹ (Onomastica Sacra, Καριαθαειμ, Καριαθα), the modern Ḳuraiyāt, East of the Dead Sea, a little South of the Wādī Zerka Ma‛īn. שָׁוֵה (only here and verse ¹⁷) is supposed to mean ‘plain’ (Syriac (‡ Syriac word)); but that is somewhat problematical.—On the phrase הַרְרָם שֶׁעִיר, see the footnote. While שֶׁעִיר alone may include the plateau to the West of the Arabah, the commoner הַר שֶׁעִיר appears to be restricted to the mountainous region East of that gorge, now called eš-Šera‛ (see Buhl, Geschichte der Edomiter, 28 ff.).—אֵיל פָּארָן (v.i.) is usually identified with אֵילַת (Deuteronomy 2⁸, 2 Kings 14²² 16⁶) or אֵילוֹת (1 Kings 9²⁶, 2 Kings 16⁶), at the head of the East arm of the Red Sea, which is supposed to derive its name from the groves of date-palms for which it was and is famous (see especially Tuch 264 f.). The grounds of the identification seem slender; and the evidence does not carry us further than Tuch’s earlier view (251), that some oasis in the North of the desert is meant (see Cheyne Encyclopædia Biblica, 3584).³ The ‘wilderness’ is the often mentioned ‘Wilderness of Paran’ (21²¹, Numbers 10¹² etc.), i.e. the desolate plateau of et-Tīh, stretching from the Arabah to the isthmus of Suez. There is obviously nothing in that definition to support the theory that ’Êl-Pârān is the original name of the later Elath.—קָדֵשׁ (16¹⁴ 20¹ etc.), or ק׳ בַּֽרְנֵעַ (Numbers 34⁴, Deuteronomy 12. 19 2¹⁴). The controversy as to the situation of this important place has been practically settled since the appearance of Trumbull’s Kadesh-Barnea in 1884 (see Guthe, Zeitschrift des deutschen Palästina-Vereins, viii. 183 ff.). It is the spring now known as ‛Ain Ḳadîs, at the head of the Wādī of the same name, “northward of the desert proper,” and about 50 miles South of Beersheba (see the description by Trumbull, op. cit. 272–275). The distance in a straight line from Elath would be about 80 miles, with a difficult ascent of 1500 feet. The alternative name עֵין מִשְׁפָּט (‘Well of Judgement’) is found only here. Since קָדֵשׁ means ‘holy’ and מִשְׁפָּט ‘judicial decision,’ it is a plausible conjecture of William Robertson Smith that the name refers to an ordeal involving the use of ‘holy water’ (Numbers 5¹⁷) from the sacred well (Lectures on the Religion of the Semites², 181). The sanctuary at Kadesh seems to have occupied a prominent place in the earliest Exodus tradition (Wellhausen Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels⁶ 341 ff.); but there is no reason why the institution just alluded to should not be of much greater antiquity than the Mosaic age.—חַצְצֹן תָּמָר is, according to 2 Chronicles 20², ‛Ēn-gĕdî (‛Ain Ǧidī), about the middle of the West shore of the Dead Sea. A more unsuitable approach for an army to any part of the Dead Sea basin than the precipitous descent of nearly 2000 feet at this point, could hardly be imagined: see Robinson, Biblical Researches in Palestine, i. 503. It is not actually said that the army made the descent there: it might again have made a detour and reached its goal by a more practicable route. But certainly the conditions of this narrative would be better satisfied by Kurnub, on the road from Hebron to Elath, about 20 miles West-south-west of the South end of the Dead Sea. The identification, however, requires three steps, all of which involve uncertainties: (1) that ח׳ תָּמָר = the תָּמָר of Ezekiel 47¹⁹ 48²⁸; (2) that this is the Thamara of Onomastica Sacra (85³, 210⁸⁶), the Θαμαρω of Ptolemy xvi. 8; and (3) that the ruins of this are found at Kurnub. Compare Encyclopædia Biblica, 4890; Buhl, Geographie des alten Palaestina, 184.
The six peoples named in verses 5–7 are the primitive races which, according to Hebrew tradition, formerly occupied the regions traversed by Chedorlaomer. (1) The רְפָאִים are spoken of as a giant race dwelling partly on the West (15²⁰, Joshua 17¹⁵, 2 Samuel 21¹⁶, Isaiah 17⁵), partly on the East, of the Jordan, especially in Bashan, where Og reigned as the last of the Rephaim (Deuteronomy 3¹¹, Joshua 12⁴ etc.).—(2) The זוּזִים, only mentioned here, are probably the same as the Zamzummîm of Deuteronomy 2²⁰, the aborigines of the Ammonite country. The equivalence of the two forms is considered by Sayce (Zeitschrift für Assyriologie, iv. 393) and others to be explicable only by the Babylonian confusion of m and w, and thus a proof that the narrative came ultimately from a cuneiform source.—(3) הָאֵימִים] a kind of Rephaim, aborigines of Moab (Deuteronomy 210 f.).—(4) הַחֹרִי] the race extirpated by the Edomites (3620 ff., Deuteronomy 212. 22). The name has usually been understood to mean ‘troglodytes’ (see Driver A critical and exegetical commentary on Deuteronomy 38); but this is questioned by Jensen (Zeitschrift für Assyriologie, x. 332 f., 346 f.) and Hommel (The Ancient Hebrew Tradition as illustrated by the Monuments, 264²), who identify the word with Ḫaru, the Egyptian name for South-west Palestine.¹—(5) הָעֲמָלֵקִי] the Amalekite territory (שָׂדֶה), was in the Negeb, extending towards Egypt (Numbers 13²⁹ 1443. 45, 1 Samuel 27⁸). In ancient tradition, Amalek was ‘the firstling of peoples’ (Numbers 24²⁰), although, according to Genesis 36¹² its ancestor was a grandson of Esau.—(6) הָֽאֱמֹרִי] see on 10¹⁶; and compare Deuteronomy 1⁴⁴, Judges 1³⁶.—While there can be no question of the absolute historicity of the last three names, the first three undoubtedly provoke speculation. Rephāîm is the name for shades or ghosts; ’Emîm probably means ‘terrible ones’; and Zamzummîm (if this be the same word as Zûzîm), ‘murmurers.’ Schwally (Das Leben nach dem Tode, 64 f., and more fully Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, xviii. 127 ff.) has given reasons to show that all three names originally denoted spirits of the dead, and afterwards came to be applied to an imaginary race of extinct giants, the supposed original inhabitants of the country (see also William Robertson Smith in Driver A critical and exegetical commentary on Deuteronomy 40). The tradition with regard to the Rephaim is too persistent to make this ingenious hypothesis altogether easy of acceptance. It is unfortunate that on a matter bearing so closely on the historicity of Genesis 14 the evidence is not more decisive.