Genèse 14:14

And when Abram heard that his brother was made captive, he armed his young men who were trained for war, grown up in his house; but they willed not to go with him. And he chose from them Eliezer the son of Nimrod, who was equal in strength to all the three hundred and eighteen; and he pursued unto Dan.

וירדוף עד דן, in his pursuit to attack them suddenly.

וישמע...אחיו, the word אחיו here is used in the sense of “his relative.” Nephews are often considered as like “brothers.” Avram himself had used this term when he spoke to his nephew in 13,8 and said כי אנשים אחים אנחנו, “we are men who are brothers.”

וירק, he issued weapons to them, the verb is in the transitive mode. We encounter it in a similar meaning in Psalms 35,3 והרק חנית, “make ready the spear.”

חניכיו, an adjective, similar to שרידיו and פליטיו, his trainees, people whom he had instructed in true monotheism. The word occurs in this sense in Proverbs 22,6 חנוך לנער על פי דרכו, train the lad in an appropriate manner, in accordance with his natural talents.”

ילידי ביתו, people born in his household, to parents who had come with him already from Charan as well as those later in the land of Canaan. They totaled שמונה עשר ושלש מאות, 318. According to a Midrash quoted by Rashi, he took only Eliezer with him, the numerical value of the letters in his name amounting to a total of 318. If so, why did the Torah have to tell us that he took with him people born in his household? The Torah must have meant that he took an undisclosed number of people of his household with him, plus Eliezer, who was equivalent to 318 trained men.

וירדף עד דן, the place was not called Dan until much later, when the tribe of Dan expanded its territory under Joshua in the north of the country. At that time the Danites named the place after their tribe’s founding father.

וירק את חניכיו, “he mobilised all those whom he had trained;” Avraham told all these men that they were about to go to war and if someone was afraid for his life due to sins he had committed, he was free to go back home. (Compare Deuteronomy 20,8) When they heard this, they all decided to return to their homes, with the exception of his loyal servant Eliezer. G–d told Avraham not to worry and to let them go home, as He would empower Eliezer to possesss as much power as all these men had possessed combined. The numerical value of the letters in the name אליעזר total 318, and that is why the Torah described his ”army” as consisting of 318 men. (Compare Talmud, tractate Nedarim, folio 31) In addition, we have two interpretations of the Talmud scholars Rav and Sh’muel, respectively, the former saying that the word וירק in our verse refers to “pouring words of Torah into these potential soldiers, whereas Sh’muel says that he overcame their fears by giving them large quantities of gold. (same folio in the Talmud) His objective was to instill in these men the will to save as many lives as possible, not to fight for the sake of the loot they might capture by killing fellow human beings. [This editor has some difficulty with the explanations offered, as in verse 24 of our chapter Avraham insists that the men who had fought with him receive their share of the loot. Ed.]