Until recently, I've assumed that every empire in scripture (Egypt, Babylon, Assyria, Rome, etc.) represented wickedness. But the more I'm reading through Genesis 14, the more I'm coming to a different conclusion. Perhaps Empire is not the culmination of wickedness. It is the culmination of man.
The shift for me here is that empire does represent bondage and slavery, and these things are definitely not good. But they are not the same as “wickedness,” which is also not good, but they are different, and treated differently in the text.