What Does Genesis 13:7 Mean?

And quarreling arose between Abram's herders and Lot's herders. The Canaanites and Perizzites were also living in the land at that time. The conflict descends from the households to the servants. Abram and Lot are not fighting with each other; their employees are fighting over resources on their behalf. This is how many family conflicts actually play out: the principals are not directly in conflict, but those in their service whose welfare depends on the success of their employer's operation fight the battles that the principals would be embarrassed to fight themselves.

The parenthetical note about the Canaanites and Perizzites living in the land creates a context for the quarrel beyond its immediate pastoral dimensions. Two families of the covenant community are fighting in front of witnesses from the surrounding population. The theological stakes are explicit: how the covenant family handles its internal conflicts in the presence of the world is a testimony about the God they claim to worship. The quarrel between herders was a public relations problem as much as a pastoral one.

The presence of Canaanite witnesses to the family dispute adds urgency to Abram's resolution offer in the following verse. A person who has called on the name of the Lord at an altar in the Promised Land but whose household is publicly quarreling with his nephew's household is not advertising God's blessing convincingly. The observation that the Canaanites were watching is the narrator's way of raising the stakes of what might otherwise seem like a simple management dispute. The witness of the covenant people to their surrounding world is always part of the covenant's purpose.