the Week of Proper 26 / Ordinary 31
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Bible Dictionaries
Chedorlaomer
Fausset's Bible Dictionary
or Genesis 14. King of Elam, who for twelve years had in subjection to him the kings of Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboiim, and Bela, or Zoar. In the 13th they revolted, whereupon he, with his subordinate allies, the kings of Shinar (Babylonia), and Ellasar, and Tidal, "king of nations" (Median Scyths, belonging to the old population) smote the Rephaims in Ashteroth Karnaim, the Zuzims in Ham, the Emims in Shaveh Kiriathaim, the Horites in mount Seir, the Amalekites, and the Amorites in Hazezon Tamar; and finally encountered and defeated the five allied kings in the vale of Siddim. Among the captives whom he took was Lot. Abraham with 318 armed servants however defeated him in turn, and rescued Lot, and pursued the invader to Hobah on the left of Damascus. A recently deciphered record states that an Elamite king, Kudur-Nakhunta, conquered Babylon about 2290 B.C.
Assurbanipal, king of Assyria 668 B.C., recovered an image of Nana captured by the Elamires from Uruk = Erech 1635 years previously, i.e. 2286. Babylonian documents of the age 2200-2100 B.C. also allude to an interruption in the native dynasty about this date by a king from Elam or Susiana between the Tigris and Persia. There is mentioned among the Babylonian kings one who held his court at Ur in Lower Chaldaea, an Elamite prince, Kudur-Mabuk (or Chedorlaomer; Lagomer being an Elamite goddess of which Mabuk is the Hamitic name). Kudur is thought to mean mother, i.e. attendant or worshipper of Lagomer. Kudur the king bears in the inscriptions the surname Apda Martu, "the ravager of the West." He did not establish a lasting empire over Syria, as his Assyrian and Babylonian successors, but was simply its "ravager," exactly as the Bible represents him. He was Semitic, and had made himself lord paramount over the Hamite kings of Shinar and Ellasar.
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Fausset, Andrew R. Entry for 'Chedorlaomer'. Fausset's Bible Dictionary. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/fbd/c/chedorlaomer.html. 1949.
