Génesis 13:8-9

"And Abram said unto Lot, Let there be no strife, I pray thee, between me and thee, and between my herdsmen and thy herdsmen; for we are brethren. Is not the whole land before thee? separate thyself, I pray thee, from me; if thou wilt take the left hand, then I will go to the right; or if thou take the right hand, then I will go to the left."

Here Abram's action is truly in character, quite unlike the shameful episode in the previous chapter. As the leader of the expedition into the land of Canaan, as the patriarch and senior kinsman of Lot, Abram had every right to demand his own choice of direction, but he magnanimously and graciously yielded the choice of pasturage to his nephew. To paraphrase the thought here, we might say that Abram simply declared, "There must be no quarrel between us, because we are brethren." The term "brethren" here is used in a wider sense as it is found frequently in the O.T.

"Left hand ... right hand ..." We might think of this as North and South; but Leupold assures us that, "Left and right here apparently refer to the East and West respectively," citing also the Targum as supporting this view.[9]