Genesis 14 took place only a few years after the events of chapter 12. Now we see that Abrahams trained servants, in this particular case he was fighting a small skirmish, he had 318 trained servants. Now because of the circumstance, I take that to mean that this was a personal bodyguard, a retinue of soldiers that he had with him, you might say his crack troops. This would be the ones that surrounded a man of position, the patriarch, and protected him and others that were on the journey with him. Three-hundred and eighteen who were born in his own house.
Let us just make some assumptions to that. These are all soldiers, 318 soldiers. Now suppose each one of those soldiers had a wife. If they were soldiers, I would say they were probably about 20 or 30 years of age, it is very likely that they had wives, and I think just for the sake of counting here, let us say each one had two children. Now by this time we are multiplying four times three-hundred and eighteen. We are now in the neighborhood of twelve hundred people that may involve just his crack troops, the bodyguard that surrounded the patriarch that protected him and his party as they went along.
Now what about cooks? What about people who took care of the herds and the flocks, the shepherds, the caretakers of one kind or another? What about household servants? We know that Abraham did not have a house per say, but I am sure, when we get into chapter 13 where it says Abraham was very rich, even though he lived in a tent it was probably one of the nicest tents you will ever see. Maybe a ten, twelve, or fourteen room tent. I do not know. At any rate, I get the picture of a man who led a group of somewhere in the neighborhood of at least one-thousand people and maybe up to two thousand people.
We are talking about a large portion of Terah’s family, Lot’s family, all of that group of people, all of their possessions, and the people whom they had acquired. These are not, I get the impression here, those born in his house, the three-hundred and eighteen, but the people he had acquired. Remember that I was on that verse the last week. These could have represented people that he hired to be carriers, scribes, whatever, mule drivers, donkey drivers, you name it, whatever they needed in the way of beasts of burden. They could have been people who were convinced by the teaching of Abraham and decided to attach themselves to him and made the pilgrimage with him down into Canaan and down into Egypt.
Now by comparison the area that is encompassed by these five kings that is confederated here against them, is very tiny, and I do not think we would consider them to be much more than mayors of small city-states. When they rebelled in the fourteenth year of Chedorlaomer, who seems to be the chief king here, they counter attacked against these five kings. They did alright. They defeated the five kings.
Alright, the second positive example. This one I call, "Get on the Offensive!" This is part of the story of Abraham. The background of this is the Confederation of Kings which make war against Sodom and Gomorrah, where Lot lived.
What he had told him was that Lot had been taken by these kings.
And if we would go on we would find that Abraham also put God first and gave a tithe of all that he had there to Melchizedek, and then he gave everything else back to the owners. He did not keep anything for himself.
Here was another catastrophe. Lot, his nephew, was taken captive by an enemy army, and was being hustled off to their homeland. Abraham could have just sat their and said, "Woe is me! Woe is me! What am I going to do?"
But there is no hesitation. Abraham got his people together and they were off. He took action. He did something constructive. He did not just sit there and pile dirt on his head. He made the best of the situation. He tried to help.
I think that the worst thing one could do is nothing!
We, like Abraham in this example, can in wisdom go on the offensive, and restore peace and tranquility to our lives, and others who have been affected by the disaster. Take action in wisdom, of course, but take action. Do not just do nothing and sit there.
