Genesis 13 picks up where chapter 12 left off — Abram returning from the Egyptian detour back to the altar between Bethel and Hai, “unto the place of the altar, which he had made there at the first.” There he “called on the name of the LORD.” The chapter’s first movement is restoration, not novelty: Abram comes back to the place of worship he had abandoned when famine drove him south.
But prosperity has come with the journey. Abram is “very rich in cattle, in silver, and in gold”; Lot, who has traveled with him, also has flocks and herds and tents. The land cannot support both households together, and a strife arises between their herdsmen — the first explicit family-level conflict in the patriarchal narrative. The Canaanite and the Perizzite “dwelled then in the land,” the text notes; the strife between the two believing households happens in plain view of the watching nations.
What Abram does next is the chapter’s quiet center. He, the elder and the bearer of the promise, defers to Lot. “Let there be no strife, I pray thee, between me and thee… for we be brethren. Is not the whole land before thee? separate thyself, I pray thee, from me: if thou wilt take the left hand, then I will go to the right; or if thou depart to the right hand, then I will go to the left.” The man to whom the land has been promised offers his nephew first choice of the land. The promise does not make Abram grasp; it makes him generous. The chapter has a small but theologically rich pattern: the bearer of the promise does not need to seize what is given.
Lot lifts up his eyes and looks. He sees the Jordan plain “well watered every where… even as the garden of the LORD, like the land of Egypt.” The double comparison is exact and theologically loaded — Eden on one side, Egypt on the other. The plain looks like paradise; it also looks like the place Abram has just been delivered from. Lot chooses by sight; he chooses the plain; he “pitched his tent toward Sodom.” The text adds in the next verse the note that the rest of the chapter will lean on: “But the men of Sodom were wicked and sinners before the LORD exceedingly.” The reader is told before Lot is told what kind of neighbor he has chosen. Genesis 19↗ will narrate the consequence.
The chapter then turns back to Abram. With Lot separated from him, the Lord says to Abram: “Lift up now thine eyes, and look from the place where thou art northward, and southward, and eastward, and westward: for all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed for ever.” The promise of Genesis 12:7↗ is reaffirmed and expanded — all the land in every direction, for ever, to seed that will be “as the dust of the earth,” innumerable. And the Lord invites Abram to walk the land: “Arise, walk through the land in the length of it and in the breadth of it; for I will give it unto thee.” The patriarch is asked to inhabit the promise bodily — to step the ground that is already his by promise though not yet by possession.
The chapter ends with Abram removing his tent to the plain of Mamre near Hebron, where he builds another altar to the Lord. Three altars now mark Abram’s path through the land — at Shechem (Genesis 12:6–7↗), between Bethel and Hai (Genesis 12:8↗, Genesis 13:4↗), and now at Mamre. The promise is unfolding in worship-marked steps.
The New Testament gives Lot’s choice its later commentary. Peter calls Lot “just” and “righteous” — the man’s heart was right even when his judgment was poor — and notes that his “righteous soul” was “vexed… from day to day” by the wickedness he had chosen to live near (2 Peter 2:7–8↗). Hebrews honors Abraham’s faith specifically in the form chapter 13 displays: “by faith [Abraham] sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles” — at home as a wanderer, secure without grasping (Hebrews 11:9↗).
Language & Translation Notes
Abram’s deference and the structure of the promise. Genesis 13 is the first chapter where the patriarchal narrative invites the reader to see what kind of person the bearer of the promise becomes. Abram has every legal and moral claim to the land’s best portion: he is the elder, the head of household, the one to whom the Lord has spoken. He gives Lot first choice anyway. The episode reads as the inverse of Genesis 3’s grasp (“the woman saw… took”) — Lot here likewise lifts up his eyes and sees and takes, but Abram, having heard the promise, does not. The promise frees him from needing to secure his own portion. The chapter quietly suggests that the covenant transforms not just Abram’s destiny but his disposition; the man God blesses can afford to be generous. Read forward, this disposition will set up the contrast with Jacob (“the supplanter”) in Genesis 25:26↗ and following.