Lot

• Abraham’s nephew; went to Salem

93:5.5A few weeks af­ter the death of Abra­ham’s fa­ther, Terah, Mel­chiz­e­dek sent one of his stu­dents, Jaram the Hit­tite, to ex­tend this in­vi­ta­tion to both Abra­ham and Na­hor: “Come to Salem, where you shall hear our teach­ings of the truth of the eter­nal Cre­ator, and in the en­light­ened off­spring of you two broth­ers shall all the world be blessed.” Now Na­hor had not wholly ac­cepted the Mel­chiz­e­dek gospel; he re­mained be­hind and built up a strong city-state which bore his name; but Lot, Abra­ham’s nephew, de­cided to go with his un­cle to Salem.

93:5.6Upon ar­riv­ing at Salem, Abra­ham and Lot chose a hilly fast­ness near the city where they could de­fend them­selves against the many sur­prise at­tacks of north­ern raiders. At this time the Hit­tites, As­syr­i­ans, Phil­is­tines, and other groups were con­stantly raid­ing the tribes of cen­tral and south­ern Pales­tine. From their stronghold in the hills Abra­ham and Lot made fre­quent pil­grim­ages to Salem.

93:5.7Not long af­ter they had es­tab­lished them­selves near Salem, Abra­ham and Lot jour­neyed to the val­ley of the Nile to ob­tain food sup­plies as there was then a drought in Pales­tine. Dur­ing his brief so­journ in Egypt Abra­ham found a dis­tant rel­a­tive on the Egyp­tian throne, and he served as the com­man­der of two very suc­cess­ful mil­i­tary ex­pe­di­tions for this king. Dur­ing the lat­ter part of his so­journ on the Nile he and his wife, Sarah, lived at court, and when leav­ing Egypt, he was given a share of the spoils of his mil­i­tary cam­paigns.

93:5.8It re­quired great de­ter­mi­na­tion for Abra­ham to forgo the hon­ors of the Egyp­tian court and re­turn to the more spir­i­tual work spon­sored by Ma­chi­venta. But Mel­chiz­e­dek was revered even in Egypt, and when the full story was laid be­fore Pharaoh, he strongly urged Abra­ham to re­turn to the ex­e­cu­tion of his vows to the cause of Salem.

• went to Sodom to engage in trade, animal husbandry

93:5.9Abra­ham had kingly am­bi­tions, and on the way back from Egypt he laid be­fore Lot his plan to sub­due all Ca­naan and bring its peo­ple un­der the rule of Salem. Lot was more bent on busi­ness; so, af­ter a later dis­agree­ment, he went to Sodom to en­gage in trade and an­i­mal hus­bandry. Lot liked nei­ther a mil­i­tary nor a herder’s life.

• Abraham’s nephew; went to Salem

93:5.12Abra­ham, be­cause of his close con­nec­tion with the il­lus­tri­ous Mel­chiz­e­dek, pos­sessed great ad­van­tage over the sur­round­ing petty kings; they all revered Mel­chiz­e­dek and un­duly feared Abra­ham. Abra­ham knew of this fear and only awaited an op­por­tune oc­ca­sion to at­tack his neigh­bors, and this ex­cuse came when some of these rulers pre­sumed to raid the prop­erty of his nephew Lot, who dwelt in Sodom. Upon hear­ing of this, Abra­ham, at the head of his seven con­fed­er­ated tribes, moved on the en­emy. His own body­guard of 318 of­fi­cered the army, num­ber­ing more than 4,000, which struck at this time.

• Moses gathered descendants of

96:5.9When Moses turned over the com­mand of the He­brews to Joshua, he had al­ready gath­ered up thou­sands of the col­lat­eral de­scen­dants of Abra­ham, Na­hor, Lot, and other of the re­lated tribes and had whipped them into a self-sus­tain­ing and par­tially self-reg­u­lat­ing na­tion of pas­toral war­riors.