Week 1 Genesis 14
I know I’ve got a lot of names to deal with in Genesis and in general the way I tend to mentally manage them is to figure that a) a lot of names might not be too important to me but b) they do connect (in one way or another) to the big story. But then I get to chapter 14.
The first paragraph gives details about two opposing military alliances. For twelve years the five-tribe group of Bera-Birsha-Shinab-Shemeber-Zoar were subjects of the Amraphel-Arioch-Kedorlaomer-Tidal group (led by Kedorlaomer). The Group of Five rebelled against the Group of Four. Kedorlaomer squashed the Five and in the process sacked and looted the towns of Sodom & Gomorrah. Part of that included taking captives. And one of the captives was Lot – Abraham’s nephew.
I had started by asking: what do these tribal leaders have to do with anything? (my preliminary answer was: it looks like they don’t). But actually they do. They captured Lot. So Abraham is forced into action.
So the Nine are there for a reason. Even so…it’s hard not to think of them as almost completely irrelevant in the big picture.
A couple of days ago I was thinking about names and I divided people into two groups: The Main Family group (Abraham & Co.) and the Other Secondary Families group (everyone else). But with chapter 14 I’m thinking about adding another group: the Almost Totally Irrelevant group.
I probably won’t add it officially. But I’ll keep it in mind.