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Updated: June 28, 2025
Amorite tribes and kingdoms were to be found in all parts of Palestine. Southward, as we have seen, Kadesh-barnea was in "the mountain of the Amorites," while Chedor-laomer found them on the western shores of the Dead Sea. But we learn from the Egyptian inscriptions, and more especially from the Tel el-Amarna tablets, that the chief seat of Amorite power lay immediately to the north of Palestine.
In the days of the patriarch himself the rulers of Babylonia claimed to be also rulers of Canaan; for thirteen years did the Canaanite princes "serve" Chedor-laomer and his allies, the father of Arioch is also "the father of the land of the Amorites" in his son's inscriptions, and at a little later date the King of Babylon still claimed sovereignty over the West.
Pinches has lately discovered the name of Jacob-el among the persons mentioned in contracts of the time of the Babylonian sovereign Sin-mu-ballidh, who was a contemporary of Chedor-laomer. We thus have monumental evidence that the name of Jacob was well known in the Semitic world in the age of the Hebrew patriarchs.
Chedor-laomer the Elamite was the leader of the expedition; he too was the suzerain lord of his allies; and nevertheless the campaign is dated, not in his reign, but in that of one of the subject kings.
There we read how Chedor-laomer, the king of Elam, with the three vassal princes, Arioch of Ellasar, Amraphel of Shinar, and Tidal of Goyyim invaded Canaan, and how the kings of the vale of Siddim with its pits of asphalt became their tributaries. For thirteen years they remained submissive and then rebelled. Thereupon the Babylonian army again marched to the west.
This would be an additional reason for the tithes given to him by Abram. Long after the defeat of Chedor-laomer and his allies, if we are to accept the traditional belief, Abraham was again destined to visit Jerusalem. But he had ceased to be "Abram the Hebrew," the confederate of the Amorite chieftains in the plain of Mamre, and had become Abraham the father of the promised seed.
In the course of the second dynasty it received a vast increase, being carried in one direction to the Elamitic mountains, and in another to the Mediterranean, by the conquest of Kudur-Nakhunta and Chedor-laomer. On the defeat of the latter prince it again contracted, though to what extent we have no means of determining.
The "land of the Amorites" formed the basis and starting-point for the expedition of Naram-Sin into Magan; it must, therefore, have reached to the southern border of Palestine, if not even farther. The road trodden by his forces would have been the same as that which was afterwards traversed by Chedor-laomer, and would have led him through Kadesh-barnea.
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