Genesis 14:1-4 - Arthur Peake's Commentary on the Bible

The Four Kings Make War with the Five Rebel Kings. The four kings of Lower Babylonia, Larsa, Elam, and (?) Guti, made war on the five kings of the cities of the Plain, who had formed a confederacy in the Vale of Siddim, a district now covered by the Dead Sea, and after twelve years'subjection threw off the yoke of Elam. Amraphel is by most scholars identified with Hammurabi (p. 51), in spite of serious objections which others regard as insuperable. The date of Hammurabi has been much disputed (pp. 119, 130). He threw off the sovereignty of Elam, then overthrew Rim-Sin, the brother and successor of Arad-Sin or Eri-aku, and created a united kingdom of Babylonia after the conquest of Sumer and Accad. He has become specially famous in recent times through the discovery of the legislation, known as the Code of Hammurabi, which, apart from its intrinsic interest for the student of jurisprudence, is important from its affinities with Hebrew Law, especially the Book of the Covenant. Arioch is probably to be identified with Eri-aku or Arad-Sin (not Rim-Sin), king of Larsa, now Senkereh, the son of Kudurmabug of Elam. The name of Chedorlaomer has not yet been discovered on the inscriptions. In Elamite it would be Kudurlagamar. Tidal has been identified by some with a Tudkhula mentioned in a late inscription, but this must be regarded as very uncertain. Goiim, in this context, should be the name of a country or people; it can hardly bear its usual Heb. sense, nations (mg.). It may stand for the Guti, a people on the Upper Zab in E. Kurdistan. Nothing is known of the five kings. The site of the cities was probably at the S. extremity of the Dead Sea.