Notes 12. Separation (13:5-18)

SYNOPSIS: Abram and his nephew Lot decide to separate to avoid conflicts between their growing flocks. Abram lets Lot decide and he chooses the Jordan plain, and settles in Sodom. After he has left, God repeats his promise to give the land around him to Abram.

• Text of the passage in Nawat

13:6 w'lo nasa otam ha'áretz lashévet yaxdaw...
This may sound surprising: how could there not be room in the same district for two flocks of sheep, no matter how big? But there were critical resources to consider, of which the most important might have been the availability of sufficient water. However, perhaps the main factor we must remember here is what is mentioned in 13:7b.

13:7 w'hakk'na‛ani w'happ'rizzi az yoshev ba'áretz
The first impression is that this is a strangely placed repetition of 12:6b (w'hakk'na‛ani az ba'áretz) with the addition now of the Perizzites. Isn't this redundant? But it isn't, of course: in the present context the point is that the land which must support both flocks is not theirs alone; they are sharing it with the locals.

w'happ'rizzi
And who were the Perizzites? Not much is known, but since they are named in addition to the Canaanites the assumption is that they were not themselves Canaanites. Perhaps the word refers to indigenous pre-Canaanite (i.e. non-West-Semitic) inhabitants. Another opinion holds that the word means 'villagers' (or peasants?). Perizzites are mentioned twice more in Genesis, once in a list of peoples over whom God promises Abram dominion (15:20), and again when Jacob refers to the local inhabitants as the Canaanites and the Perizzites, just as here (34:30).

13:9 im hass'mol w'emina, w'im hayyamin w'asm'ila
A highly language-specific and hardly translatable word-play which is both poetic and concise. 

13:10 et kol kikkar hayyarden
Speiser suggests 'plain' for kikkar, and JPS follows.

13:12 ‛ad Sodom
'Near Sodom' acc. to EAS and JPS.

13:14 min hammaqom asher atta sham
'From the place where you are.'