The Battle of the Vale of Siddim, also often called the War of Nine Kings or the Slaughter of Chedorlaomer, is an event reported in the Hebrew Bible's Book of Genesis, portrayed as taking place during the days of Abram and Lot. The Vale of Siddim was the battleground for the cities of the Jordan River plain which had rebelled against Mesopotamian rule.
Whether this event occurred in history has been disputed by scholars. According to Ronald Hendel, "The current consensus is that there is little or no historical memory of pre-Israelite events in Genesis."
Background The Book of Genesis explains that during the days of Lot, the Vale of Siddim was a river valley where the Battle of Siddim occurred between four Mesopotamian armies and five cities of the Jordan plain. According to the biblical account, before the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the Elamite King Chedorlaomer and three allied kings had subdued the tribes and cities surrounding the Jordan River plain:
After 12 years of service to Chedorlaomer, four kings of the cities of the Jordan plain revolted against his rule. In response, after two further years, Chedorlaomer and three other kings started a campaign against King Bera of Sodom and four other allied kings.
Location The Vale of Siddim or Valley of Siddim, ‘emeq haś-Śiddim, equated with the "Salt Sea" in , itself equated with the "Sea of the Arabah" in , is the same as the "Dead Sea".Freedman, Myers, and Beck, Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible, 2000, (, ), p. 1218, Siddim, Valley of Genesis 14 also notes that "the vale of Siddim was full of slime pits" or "tar pits".: Jewish Publication Society's version, cf. "tar pits" in the New International Version
Siddim is thought to be located on the southern end of the Dead Sea. It has been suggested by theologians that the destruction of the cities of the Jordan Plain by divine fire and brimstone may have caused Siddim to become a salt sea, what is now the Dead Sea.
The Dead Sea is also called the "east sea" in (Compare ), Bahr Lut (the Sea of Lut) in Arabic, and Lake Asphaltites in the works of Josephus.
The battle Four kings' forces were pitched against five. Ryle notes that "The description of the battle itself has most unfortunately not been preserved: ... the narrative is so fragmentary, or condensed, that only the rout is recorded":Ryle, H. E. (1921), Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges on Genesis 14, accessed on 20 March 2026 the Northern forces overwhelmed the Southern kings of the Jordan plain, driving some of them into the asphalt or tar pits that littered the valley.
Those who escaped fled to the mountains, including the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah. Their two cities were then spoiled of their goods and provisions, or possibly their cavalry, and some of their citizens were captured. The other three cities "are passed over in silence". Among the captives was Abram's nephew, Lot.
Aftermath When word of Lot's capture reached Abram, while he was staying in Elonei Mamre with Aner and Eshcol, he immediately mounted a rescue operation, arming 318 of his trained servants, who went in pursuit of the enemy armies that were returning to their homelands. They caught up with them in the city of Dan, flanking the enemy on multiple sides during a night raid. The attack ran its course as far as Hobah, north of Damascus, where he defeated Chedorlaomer and his forces. Abram recovered all the goods and the captives (including Lot).
The distance between the setting of the battle and the northern points of Dan and Hobah is noteworthy: "that Abram should overtake and smite his enemy at the furthest northern limit of the future Israelite country, is a feature in the story not without symbolical significance. This passage is the only biblical indication that the "entirely peaceable Abraham" took part in a military engagement.Whybray, R. N., 4. Genesis, in Barton, J. and Muddiman, J. (2001), The Oxford Bible Commentary, p. 50, archived on 2 November 2017
After this victory, Bera, king of Sodom, met with Abram at the Valley of Shaveh, or the King's Valley. There, Melchizedek, king of Salem, brought out bread and wine and blessed Abram, who gave him a tenth of the plunder as tithes. Melchizedek is not encountered elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible.Holyhead, V. (2006), Welcoming the Word in Year C: With Burning Hearts, p. 85, Liturgical Press, Collegeville, Minnesota Then Bera came to Abram and thanked him, requesting that he keep the plunder but return his people. Abram declined, saying, "I swore I would never take anything from you, so you can never say 'I have made Abram rich.'" What Abram accepted from Bera instead was food for his 318 men and his Amorite neighbours.
Scholarly analysis Identifying the Mesopotamian kings Amraphel Amraphel has been thought by some scholars such as the writers of the Catholic Encyclopedia (1907) and The Jewish Encyclopedia (1906)Jewish Encyclopedia to be an alternate name of the famed Hammurabi. The name is also associated with Ibal-pi-el II of Esnunna.Michael Roaf "Cambridge Atlas of Archaeology – king lists p 111 and pp 108–123 However, this view has been largely abandoned in recent years as there were other kings named Hammurabi in Yamhad and Ugarit.Robert North (1993). "Abraham". In Bruce M. Metzger; Michael D. Coogan (eds.). The Oxford Companion to the Bible. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 5. .Gard Granerød (26 March 2010). Abraham and Melchizedek: Scribal Activity of Second Temple Times in Genesis 14 and Psalm 110. Walter de Gruyter. pp. 118-121. . William F. Albright reconstructed the name as Akkadian *Amurru-ippal, *Amurru-apil, *Amurru-apili, or *Amurru-ipul, all of which translate to some variation of "Amurru rewards." Other scholars have identified Amraphel with Aralius, one of the names on the later Babylonian king-lists, attributed first to Ctesias.
David Rohl has argued for an identification with Amar-Sin, the third ruler of the Ur III dynasty.Rohl, David (2010). The Lords of Avaris. Random House. p. 294. Some suggest that Amraphel is a semitic name that is composed of two elements, "Amar", which was also used by Sumerian King, Amar-Sin, and "a-p-l".Walton, John H., and Craig S. Keener. NRSV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible: Bringing to Life the Ancient World of Scripture. Zondervan, 2019. p. 39. John Van Seters, in Abraham in History and Tradition, rejected the historical existence of Amraphel.Seters, John Van (1975). Abraham in History and Tradition. Yale University Press. . According to Stephanie Dalley, Amraphel was "[e]ither Hammurabi with an unexplained suffix -el, or Amud-piʾel, king of Qatna, with the common misreading of the letter r for d; possibly a confusion of the two names."
Arioch Arioch has been thought to have been a king of Larsa (Ellasar being an alternate version of this). It has also been suggested that it is URU KI, meaning "this place here". Others identify Ellasar with Ilānṣurā which is a city known from second millennium BC Mari archives in the vicinity of north of Mari, and Arioch with Arriuk who appears in Mari archives as a subordinate of Zimri-Lim.K.A. Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament [OROT], William B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2003. p. 320. The identification of Arioch with the ruler Arriuk mentioned in the Mari archives has been recently supported by the Assyrologists Jean-Marie Durand and Stephanie Dalley. According to Genesis Apocryphon (col. 21), Arioh was king of Cappadocia.
Chedorlaomer The Septuagint transcribes Chedorlaomer's name as Khodollogomor, preserving the ancient Hebrew ghayn which had become merged with ayin following the 3rd century BC. Following the discovery of documents written in the Elamite language and Babylonian language, it was thought that Chedorlaomer is a transliteration of the Elamite compound Kudur-Lagamar, meaning servant of Lagamaru – a reference to Lagamaru, an Elamite deity whose existence was mentioned by Ashurbanipal. However, no mention of an individual named Kudur Lagamar has yet been found; inscriptions that were thought to contain this name are now known to have different names (the confusion arose due to similar lettering).'Chedorlaomer' at JewishEncyclopedia.comKudur-Lagamar from History of Egypt by G. Maspero According to Dalley, the lack of extrabiblical attestations of the king's name is explained by the fact that there were several concurrent Elamite leaders in the 18th century BC, and that they are commonly referred to by their titles rather than by their names.
In the so-called "Chedorlaomer Tablets", from the Spartoli tablets collection in the British Museum, a "king of Elam" called Kudur-Laḫgumal is mentioned as defeating "Dur-ṣil-ilani, son of Eri-e-Aku" and "Tudḫula, son of Gazza-X". These tablets, written sometime between the 7th and 2nd centuries BC, use cryptic or ambiguous names to refer to kings, as such, Kudur-Laḫgumal is thought to represent the king Kutir-Nahhunte II.Hendel, Ronald (1994). "Finding Historical Memories in the Patriarchal Narratives". Biblical Archaeology Review. 21 (4): 52–59, 70–72. Kutir-Nahhunte II reigned in the 11th century BC, hundreds of years after the Battle of Siddim supposedly would have taken place, but his namesake, Kutir-Nahhunte I of the Sukkalmah dynasty, was contemporary with Hammurabi, and indeed, his reign in the 19th—18th century BC would have seen the only time that Elam was one of the dominant powers of Mesopotamia, as to align with its depiction in the Bible.De Graef, Katrien. 2018. "In Taberna Quando Sumus: On Taverns, Nadītum Women, and the Cagum in Old Babylonian Sippar." In Gender and Methodology in the Ancient near East: Approaches from Assyriology and beyond, edited by Stephanie Lynn Budin et al., 136. Barcino monographica orientalia 10. Barcelona: University of Barcelona.Potts, Daniel T. 2012. "The Elamites", in The Oxford Handbook of Iranian History, edited by Touraj Daryaee and Tūraǧ Daryāyī, 43-44. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.Charpin, Dominique. 2012a. "Ansi parle l' empereur' à propos de la correspondance des sukkal-mah." In Susa and Elam. Archaeological, Philological, Historical and Geographical Perspectives: Proceedings of the International Congress Held at Ghent University, December 14–17, 2009, edited by Katrien De Graef and Jan Tavernier, 352. Leiden: Brill.
Tidal Tidal, cf. Akkadian tD ("have stretched themselves"), has been considered to be a transliteration of Tudhaliya – either referring to the first king of the Hittite New Kingdom (Tudhaliya I) or the proto-Hittite king named Tudhaliya. With the former, the title king of Nations would refer to the allies of the Hittite kingdom such as the Ammurru and Mittani; with the latter the term "goyiim" has the sense of "them, those people". al ("their power") gives the sense of a people or tribe rather than a kingdom. Hence td goyim ("those people have created a state and stretched their power").Freedman, Meyers & Beck, Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (, ), 2000, p.232 Others identify Goyim with the Hittites, Hurrians and other groups in central Anatolia. According to Genesis Apocryphon (col. 21), Goyim was located in the land between the two rivers (i.e., Mesopotamia). Granerød proposes that the Goyim of Tidal could be related to the "islands of nations (goyim)" appearing in Genesis 10:5.
Geopolitical context Alliances It was common practice for vassals/allies to accompany a powerful king during their conquests. For example, in a letter from about 1770 BCE reporting a speech aimed at persuading the nomadic tribes to acknowledge the authority of Zimri-Lim of Mari: There is no king who can be mighty alone. Ten or fifteen kings follow Hammurabi the man of Babylon; as many follow Rim-Sin the man of Larsa, Ibal-pi-El the man of Eshnunna, and Amut-pi-El the man of Qatna and twenty kings follow Yarim-Lim the man of Yamhad.