Genesis 13:10

All the plain of Jordan. Less noble than his uncle, Lot proceeded immediately to take advantage of the offer. In his mind he surveyed the country as far as he knew it. He had noticed that the plain of the Jordan, called in ancient times the Kikkar, today el-Ghor, was well watered. Lot, a citizen of Mesopotamia, where rivers and canals imparted great fertility to the land, could not have failed to compare his former homeland with the mountainous and seemingly less fertile country to which he had come. Abram had induced him to come to Canaan, he reasoned, and accordingly should see to it that he was comfortably settled.

Western Palestine does not possess any rivers worth the name. The only river of importance is the Jordan, and most of its tributaries flow from the east. With its source in the Anti-Lebanon Mountains, the Jordan runs through what was once Lake Huleh in Upper Galilee, some 7 ft. above sea level. Falling then rapidly in altitude, it enters the Sea of Galilee 10 mi. south of Lake Huleh, 685 ft. below sea level. Leaving the Sea of Galilee, the Jordan flows for 65 mi., as the crow flies, to the Dead Sea. But in that distance it meanders 200 mi., entering the Dead Sea at an altitude of 1,275 ft. below sea level. Lying deeply embedded between the mountains of western Palestine and the high plateau of Transjordan, the whole valley of the Jordan has a tropical climate all the year round with a corresponding fertility.

Sodom and Gomorrah. For the first time the two wicked cities of Sodom and Gomorrah are linked with Lot’s fortunes. These cities seem to have been situated to the south of the Dead Sea, which in the time of Abram was much smaller than now (see chs. 14:3 and 19:24, 25). Hence the valley in which these cities lay is probably included by Moses in the expression the “plain of the Jordan,” called in v. 12 simply the “plain.”

As the garden of the Lord. The fertile Jordan valley, with its tropical vegetation, seemed to compare favorably with what Moses had heard of the long-lost Paradise, and with the fertile Nile delta, which Lot and Abram had recently left.