Siddim, Vale of

The Vale of Siddim was the battlefield where the four kings led by Chedorlaomer of Elam defeated the five Canaanite kings of the cities of the plain — including the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 14:3, 8–10). The valley is said to be the Salt Sea in the text's own explanatory gloss (that is, the Salt Sea), suggesting that by the time of writing the valley had been submerged under the waters of the Dead Sea. The valley contained bitumen pits into which the fleeing kings of Sodom and Gomorrah fell. Most scholars place it at the southern end of the Dead Sea, where the shallow waters cover what was once habitable lowland terrain. The catastrophe of Sodom and Gomorrah, which followed shortly after, fits with the tradition of a once-fertile region destroyed and submerged.