Aner

Aner, whose name may mean a boy or affliction, appears in two distinct contexts in Scripture. The first and more prominent is a Canaanite chieftain and ally of Abraham who joined the pursuit of Chedorlaomer along with his brothers Mamre and Eshcol after the kings of the east carried away Lot and the inhabitants of Sodom (Gen. 14:13, 24). Abraham refused to take any plunder from the recovered spoil for himself, though he acknowledged that Aner and his companions were entitled to their share.

A second Aner is a Levitical city on the west bank of the Jordan in the territory of Manasseh, assigned to the Kohathite Levites (1 Chr. 6:70). It may correspond to Taanach, which appears in the parallel list in Joshua 21:25. The name thus designates both a historical ally of the patriarchal period and a geographic site in the later tribal settlement of Canaan.