30. Now there dwelt in Sodom a man of foreign race and great wealth, Lot, the nephew of Abraham. For Abraham and his tribe no longer lived at Chaldean Ur. The change of masters, and very probably the harsher rule, if not positive oppression, consequent on the Elamite conquest, had driven them thence. It was then they went forth into the land of Canaan, led by Terah and his son Abraham, and when Terah died, Abraham became the patriarch and chief of the tribe, which from this time begins to be called in the Bible "Hebrews," from an eponymous ancestor, Heber or Eber, whose name alludes to the passing of the Euphrates, or, perhaps, in a wider sense, to the passage of the tribe through the land of Chaldea.[AQ] For years the tribe travelled without dividing, from pasture to pasture, over the vast land where dwelt the Canaanites, well seen and even favored of them, into Egypt and out of it again, until the quarrel occurred between Abraham's herdsmen and Lot's, (see Genesis, Chap. XIII.), and the separation, when Lot chose the plain of the Jordan and pitched his tent toward Sodom, while Abraham dwelt in the land of Canaan as heretofore, with his family, servants and cattle, in the plain of Mamre. It was while dwelling there, in friendship and close alliance with the princes of the land, that one who had escaped from the battle in the vale of Siddim, came to Abraham and told him how that among the captives whom Khudur-Lagamar had taken from Sodom, was Lot, his brother's son, with all his goods. Then Abraham armed his trained servants, born in his own household, three hundred and eighteen, took with him his friends, Mamre and his brothers, with their young men, and starting in hot pursuit of the victorious army, which was now carelessly marching home towards the desert with its long train of captives and booty, overtook it near Damascus in the night, when his own small numbers could not be detected, and produced such a panic by a sudden and vigorous onslaught that he put it to flight, and not only rescued his nephew Lot with his goods and women, but brought back all the captured goods and the people too. And the King of Sodom came out to meet him on his return, and thanked him, and wanted him to keep all the goods for himself, only restoring the persons. Abraham consented that a proper share of the rescued goods should be given to his friends and their young men, but refused all presents offered to himself, with the haughty words: "I have lift up mine hand unto the Lord, the most high God, the possessor of heaven and earth, that I will not take a thread, even to a shoe-latchet, and that I will not take anything that is thine, lest thou shouldest say, I have made Abraham rich."