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Genesis 13

1Abram went up from Egypt into the Negev, he and his wife and everything he had, with Lot beside him. 2Abram was very wealthy in livestock, silver, and gold. 3He traveled by stages from the Negev as far as Bethel, to the place where his tent had been at first, between Bethel and Ai, 4to the site of the altar he had made there earlier. There Abram called on Yahweh's name. 5Lot, who traveled with Abram, also had flocks, herds, and tents. 6The land could not support them living together, because their possessions were so great that they could not live together. 7Quarreling arose between the herders of Abram's livestock and the herders of Lot's livestock. The Canaanites and Perizzites were then living in the land.

8Abram said to Lot, “Please let there be no quarreling between me and you or between my herders and yours, because we are brothers. 9Is not the whole land before you? Please separate from me. If you go left, I will go right; if you go right, I will go left.” 10Lot lifted his eyes and saw the whole Jordan plain, that all of it was well watered—before Yahweh ruined Sodom and Gomorrah—like Yahweh's garden, like the land of Egypt, toward Zoar. 11Lot chose for himself the whole Jordan plain, and Lot traveled eastward. So they separated from one another. 12Abram lived in the land of Canaan, and Lot lived among the cities of the plain, pitching his tents as far as Sodom. 13The men of Sodom were evil and sinned greatly against Yahweh.

14After Lot had separated from him, Yahweh said to Abram, “Please lift your eyes and look from the place where you are: north, south, east, and west. 15For all the land you see I will give to you and to your offspring forever. 16I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth. If anyone can count the dust of the earth, then your offspring too can be counted. 17Get up, walk through the land, through its length and breadth, because I will give it to you.” 18Abram moved his tents and came to live by the oaks of Mamre, at Hebron. He built an altar there to Yahweh.

Translation notes 3

13:2–4 — Wealth; tent. “Wealthy” renders the contextual sense of the word “heavy,” here with possessions. Verse 3 follows the reading tradition “his tent”; the written spelling has an older or ambiguous suffix form. No different tent-owner is introduced.

13:8–11 — Brothers; east. Abram calls his nephew a brother, expressing close kinship. Left and right are retained as offered directions. The directional phrase in verse 11 can also be read “from the east”; movement toward the Jordan from the Bethel region favors eastward here. The same expression has a different defensible construal at 11:2.

13:10–18 — Land; promise. The narrator anticipates Sodom's destruction before telling it. “Toward Zoar” has an uncertain attachment in the comparison but is retained. The promise's dust image and “forever” stand as spoken; the draft does not add a modern territorial application or specify the mechanism of possession.