The Jews, indeed, have an old tradition that Nimrod cast Abraham
into a fiery furnace for refusing to worship the host of heaven with
him. The story is very likely untrue, but still it is of use in
shewing what sort of reputation Nimrod left behind him in his own
part of the world. We may thus see that Abraham would need warning
against these habits of violence, tyranny, and plunder, into which
the men of Babel and other tribes were falling. And this was what
God meant to teach him by keeping him a stranger and a pilgrim in
the very land which God had promised to him for his own. Thus
Abraham learnt respect for the rights and properties of his
neighbours; thus he learnt to look up in faith to God, not only as
his patron and protector, but as the lord and absolute owner of the
soil on which he stood.

Now in the 14th chapter of Genesis there is an account of Abraham's
being called on to put in practice what he had learnt, and, by doing
so, learning a fresh lesson. We read of four kings making war
against five kings, against Chedorlaomer, king of Elam or Persia,
who had been following the ways of Nimrod and the men of Babel, and
conquering these foreign kings and making them serve him. We read
of Chedorlaomer and four other kings coming down and wantonly
ravaging and destroying other countries, besides the five kings who
had rebelled against them, and at last carrying off captive the
people of Sodom and Gomorrah, and Lot, Abraham's nephew. We read
then how Abraham armed his trained servants, born in his own house,
three hundred and eighteen men, and pursued after these tyrants and
plunderers, and with his small force completely overthrew that great
army. Now that was a sign and a lesson to Abraham, as much as to