Genesis 14

The country around Hebron gives one an idea of what Palestine once was in agricultural wealth, and of what it again might be with a thrifty people and an honest government. The hills are terraced, step above step, and planted with the grape-vine, the fig-tree, the pomegranate, the apricot and the olive, or are sown in grain. Hebron has two elements of interest to all travellers: the first is its almost unrivalled age, its history stretching back as far as any still-existing cities can be traced with certainty

—Damascus being its one rival, Sidon, perhaps, another; the second, its close association with the life of that grand figure of antiquity, Abraham, and his immediate descendants, the patriarchs of the Hebrews. It was from Hebron that Abram started northward in pursuit of the confederate chieftains from Mesopotamia who had harried the cities of the plain, taking captive his nephew Lot. It was at Hebron that the promise was given to the childless patriarch that his seed should be as the stars of heaven. It was at Hebron that Sarah died, and that Abraham acquired by purchase a burial-place—the only ground he ever owned in the land promised to his children—the cave of Machpelah. Here he buried Sarah, and here he too was laid to rest. Here Isaac was buried, and Rebekah. Hither the embalmed body of Jacob was brought from Egypt and laid beside the tomb of Leah. Dulles.

1. AND it came to pass in the days of Amraphel king of Shinar, Arioch king of Ellasar, Chedorlaomer king of Elam, and Tidal king of Goiim, that they made war with Bera king of Sodom, and with Birsha king of Gomorrah, Shinab king of Admah, and Shemeber king of Zeboiim, and the king of Bela (the same is Zoar). All these joined together in the vale of Siddim (the same is the Salt Sea). Twelve years they served Chedorlaomer, and in the thirteenth year they rebelled. And in the fourteenth year came Chedorlaomer, and the kings that were with him, and smote the Rephaim in Ashteroth-karnaim, and the Zuzim in Ham, and the Emim in Shaveh-kiriathaim, and the Horites in their mount Seir, unto El-paran, which is by the wilderness. And they returned, and came to En-mishpat (the same is Kadesh), and smote all the country of the Amalekites, and also the Amorites, that dwelt in Hazazon-tamar. And there went out the king of Sodom, and the king of Gomorrah, and the king of Admah, and the king of Zeboiim, and the king of Bela (the same is Zoar); and they set the battle in array against them in the vale of Siddim; against Chedorlaomer king of Elam, and Tidal king of Goiim, and Amraphel king of Shinar, and Arioch king of Ellasar; four kings against the five. Now the vale of Siddim was full of slime pits; and the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah fled, and they fell there, and they that remained fled to the mountain. And they took all the goods of Sodom and Gomorrah, and all their victuals, and went their way. And they took Lot, Abram’s brother’s son, who dwelt in Sodom, and his goods, and departed. And there came one that had escaped, and told Abram the Hebrew: now he dwelt by the oaks of Mamre the Amorite, brother of Eshcol, and brother of Aner; and these were confederate with Abram. And when Abram heard that his brother was taken captive, he led forth his trained men, born in his house, three hundred and eighteen, and pursued as far as Dan. And he divided himself against them by night, he and his servants, and smote them, and pursued them unto Hobah, which is on the left hand of Damascus. And he brought back all the goods, and also brought again his brother Lot, and his goods, and the women also, and the people. And the king of Sodom went out to meet him, after his return from the slaughter of Chedorlaomer 18 and the kings that were with him, at the vale of Shaveh (the same is the King’s Vale). And Melchizedek king of Salem brought forth bread and wine: and he was priest of God Most 19 High. And he blessed him, and said, Blessed be Abram of God Most High, possessor of 20 heaven and earth: and blessed be God Most High, which hath delivered thine enemies into 21 thy hand. And he gave him a tenth of all. And the king of Sodom said unto Abram, Give 22 me the persons, and take the goods to thyself. And Abram said to the king of Sodom, I have 23 lift up mine hand unto the LORD, God Most High, possessor of heaven and earth, that I will not take a thread nor a shoelatchet nor aught that is thine, lest thou shouldst say, I have 24 made Abram rich: save only that which the young men have eaten, and the portion of the men which went with me; Aner, Esheol, and Mamre, let them take their portion.

Joshua came upon the Canaanites as an invader, to dispossess or to exterminate. He found a population before him dense enough to occupy the whole land, numerous communities living in walled towns. Everywhere he met with hostile, defiant tribes, bold to resist each footstep of advance. Abraham came in peace, a wandering shepherd-prince, coveting no territory, aiming at no dispossession, for whom and his pursuits there was room enough without any clashing of interests between him and the inhabitants around. These were comparatively few in number, mostly dwellers in villages, tillers of the ground, cultivators of the vine, or rude artificers. There is no instance of the Canaanites resisting or resenting the residence of Abraham among them. He openly worshipped, and that exclusively, the one great God of heaven and earth. Wherever he pitched his tent he raised his altar. But his worship was the simplest and least offensive in its form and manner; nor does it appear anywhere to have been interfered with or opposed. We are not surprised, therefore, that all Abraham’s relationships and intercourse with the Canaanitish chiefs were of the friendliest description, and that a speedy and close confederacy was formed between him and the three Amoritish brothers beside him at Mamre. W. H.

1-24. In this chapter a graphic though brief account is given of the invasion of Palestine by certain Eastern princes, during the life of Abraham; and, independent of all views about inspiration, the narrative bears strong internal evidence of historical accuracy. Names, places, and lines of march are given with the clearness and minuteness of contemporary history. J. L. P.—If any one were inclined, with this unique piece before him, to doubt the real existence of Abraham and Lot, or the historical greatness of the former, he could scarcely be supposed to have commenced the study of the marks by which any really historical circumstance can be recognized. Ewald.—The acceptance and incorporation of such earlier true narratives into this history, no more militates against its proper Mosaic authorship than the introduction of large extracts from Bradford or Morton, or other and later sources of contemporary information, interferes with the proper authorship of a history of the United States by Bancroft; and when this latter historian, recording with quotations a condensed statement of the establishment of Fort du Quesne, adds, “where now is Pittsburgh,” he almost exactly imitates the Hebrew historian, in Gen. 14, with a mere substitution of the English idiom. S. C. B.—This account of a general raid by the powers on the Euphrates and Tigris upon the whole western region near the Mediterranean Sea is introduced here only incidentally as explanatory of the story of Lot after he had separated from his uncle and chosen the beautiful bottom land of the Jordan, “pitching his tent toward Sodom.” Its spiritual lesson is deeply interesting, bringing out, as it does, the hero of the faith and the man of peace, who said, “Let there be no strife between me and thee, for we are brethren,” in the new character of the brave man of war and the magnanimous conqueror. S. R.

1. Amraphel, the king of Shinar, the country whereof Babylon was the capital, is plainly, in the entire narrative, secondary and subordinate to Chedorlaomer, king of Elam. The conquered monarchs “serve” Chedorlaomer (ver. 4), not Amraphel; Chedorlaomer leads both expeditions, the other kings are “with him” (vs. 5, 17), as subordinate allies, or, more probably, as tributaries. This is an inversion of the usual position occupied by Babylonia toward Elam, its eastern neighbor, of which, until recently, there was no profane confirmation. Recently, however, traces have been found of an Elamitic conquest of Babylon, and also of an Elamitic dynasty there at an early date, which show that there were times when the more eastern of the two countries which lay side by side upon the Lower Tigris had the greater power, and exercised dominion over the more western. G. R.

—Elam lies beyond Chaldea, on the east side of the Tigris, and embraces the rich flats which separate that river from the bounding mountain range of Zagros. Its capital was the very ancient and powerful city of Susa. Its present ruler, whose name reads in Genesis Chedorlaomer, but in the monuments Khudur-Lagamer, now extended his arms as far as Canaan. His object is evident. The ambition of all empires on the Euphrates, from the earliest time, was to keep open communication with their rivals in Egypt. The only practicable route betwixt the Euphrates and the Nile, either for military marches or for commerce, traversed the great Syrian Desert south-westward till it struck the northern end of the Jordan valley, then either crossed to the coast or held down that valley as far as the south of the Dead Sea. Possession of this route, or at least political supremacy over the tribes along its course, became, therefore, a supreme object with conquerors from the farther East. It was in this way that Palestine became in every age involved in that gigantic strife betwixt the states of Euphrates and Nile, which fills ancient history. Dykes.

Arioch king of Elbasar was also of the company. And, curiously enough, not only has his capital city Larsa (now Senkereh on the east of the Euphrates) been identified, but Eriaku, the same with the Hebrew Arioch, is found to be the son of Kudur-Mabuk and to have dwelt in Larsa. The fourth of these royal aggressors, Tidal king of “Goiim,” is less definitely localized either in the narrative or the inscriptions, Guti or Gutium, both of which sources favor the idea that his monarchy was over less consolidated tribes to the north. S. C. B.—Goyyim or “nations” has been shown by Sir Henry Rawlinson to be a misreading for Gutium, the name given to the tract of country northward of Babylonia, which stretched from Mesopotamia to the mountains of Kurdistan, and within which the kingdom of Assyria afterward arose. G. R.—In striking correspondence to and explanation of this consecutive narrative, the inscriptions disclose great expeditions of Kudur-Mabuk and Arioch, with conquests in Syria, whereby the former attained the title “lord of Martu,” i.e., of the god of the West; and Rawlinson, Sayce and Lenormant all bring the date singularly close to the time of Abraham, Rawlinson 2100 B.C., Sayce 2000, Lenormant “approximately to the time of Abraham.” S. C. B.—By aid of these disentombed inscriptions on the plains of Chaldea we have the means of verifying this account in Moses of events among the nations of the earth some four thousand years ago, and therefore this is no mere ancient legend, but veritable history. The theory of non-historic years, on the one hand, is demonstrated to be a “fond imagination,” as the Scotch fathers call it. And, on the other hand, the ethnological chart of the 10th chapter of Genesis is in precise accordance with all the relics which we have of the histories of those early civilizations. S. R.

2-4. Each of the more important Canaanitish towns had, as the book of Joshua shows, its king. We find something like this in the earlier Greek times. The Canaanites of the rich valley Siddim, in spite of their inferior power, trusted so much to their own strength that they set themselves against the combined forces of the important countries of the east. Geil.

The five towns attempted after 12 years to shake off the yoke. To chastise this revolt, Chedorlaomer undertook a second expedition. Combining his own forces with those of the three vassal rulers in the Euphrates valley, he swept across the desert, and fell upon the wild tribes which then harbored in the mountains of Bashan and Moab. The invader’s plan was to ravage the country to the east, south, and south-west of the Jordan towns, before actually investing them, so as to cut them off from support from their neighbors. His progress can be tracked from tribe to tribe. Formidable clans of aborigines of great stature then held the fastnesses to the east of Jordan: the Rephaim, in the north, which was later termed Bashan; the Zusim, between the Jabbok and the Arnon, whom afterward the Ammonites expelled; south of the Arnon, the Emim, where Moab was by and by to dwell. Beyond the southern end of the Dead Sea, the conqueror came upon a race of cave-dwellers or Horites, in those singular rock excavations of Mount Seir which the art of a later time enlarged into the cave palaces, temples, and tombs that still astonish the traveller. This was his southern limit. Turning then sharply to the westward, the Elamites ravaged the desert which stretches between Edom and Egypt. Thence they turned back to retrace their steps eastward. Dykes.

10. Bitumen-pits of asphalt or bitumen, from which the Dead Sea was afterward called Lacus Asphaltites, or Sea of Asphalt. E. H. B.—Bitumen, in Hebrew chémâr, sometimes translated “slime,” was used for cementing the bricks of Babylon. It is found in the neighborhood of that city, and also in connection with the Dead Sea. The bitumen pits in the vale of Siddim caused the defeat of the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah. Deane.

12. They took Lot.** They took Abram’s brother’s son, who dwelt in Sodom. So near a relation of Abram should have been a companion and disciple of Abram, and should have abode by his tents; but if he choose to dwell in Sodom, he must thank himself, if he share in Sodom’s calamities. When we go out of the way of our duty, we put ourselves from under God’s protection, and cannot expect that the choices which are made by our lusts should issue to our comfort. Particular mention is made of their taking Lot’s goods, those goods which had occasioned his contest with Abram, and his separation from him. H.—That wealth which was the cause of his former quarrels is made a prey to merciless heathens; that place which his eye covetously chose betrays his life and goods. How many Christians, while they have looked at gain, have lost themselves! Bp. H.—See how Lot’s choice came back on him. He grasped recklessly at worldly advantage, and twice he lost his entire possessions,—the second time, as it would seem, beyond recovery. In the first instance, the kings of the East plundered Sodom, and carried off Lot and all he had. “They took Lot and his goods,"—an emphatic conjunction. There was much property, and it was much to him, for his heart was in it. No doubt it was a sore blow to Lot, and was meant as a warning to quit the place. But he refused to take it, and the stroke came next time direct from God, and with more crushing weight. He who would not leave Sodom of his own free will must be driven from it by the sword of the avenging angel. He went out poorer than he entered, and all his wealth perished with the men of Sodom. Ker.

13,14. There was no question in Abram’s mind that he should do his utmost to deliver his kinsman. Though he could hope for success only by joining for the time with the Canaanitish sheiks, and seeming to be on the side of the king of Sodom, yet he did not hesitate to take that course and leave the issue with God. Herein he has left us an example which is not without its significance. There are movements, some political, some moral, in which we can hope to succeed only by accepting the alliance of men with whom in the highest parts of our nature we have no sympathy. So there are many enterprises of benevolence in which we can take no part unless we consent to work with persons of whose characters we cannot in all respects approve. What then? Must we refuse to sit at a benevolent board because Aner, Esheol and Mamre are there also? No! So long as we are in the world we shall have to meet the men of the world; we shall have to work with them, too, in benevolent matters. And they who hold back from the fear of contamination are signally deficient in that faith for which Abraham was remarkable. W. M. T.

Abraham is treated by the native princes and chieftains of the land as “a mighty prince,” an equal, if not a superior, to themselves. His house-born servants able to bear arms and to make a rapid march were not less than 318. A body of such men can be furnished only by a population four times its own number, including women and children. We can, therefore, not reckon the patriarch’s camp as containing less than 1272 souls; and this number of people could not well have been accommodated in so few as 100 tents. Kit.

15,16. In Egypt, Abram had shown how distrustful and pusillanimous he could be. It was the capture of his nephew with all his household and fortune which roused the family spirit in the son of Terah; and the pressure of this great need threw him once more upon God as the arm of his strength. Though the Amorite leaders beside him had their own griefs to avenge, yet Abram was the soul of the league as well as its head. Dykes.—He appeals to the three brother chiefs, his immediate neighbors, who rally at his cry. If each of them brought with him a following anything like Abraham’s, it may have been a band of nearly 1000 men who set off in pursuit. A five or six days’ rapid march carries them up to Dan, at the sources of the Jordan. There are the invaders and their prey; three times, let us suppose, as numerous as their pursuers, but lying in loose array, in imagined security, ignorant of the pursuit. Abraham espies them, but does not rush rashly to the attack. He waits till nightfall, pursues the tactics that Gideon afterward pursued, divides his forces, from different quarters flings each company in upon the sleepers. The success is complete; a panic is created; they fly in all directions, leaving all their spoil behind. The victorious band chases them over the mountains to Hobah on the left hand (i.e., north) of Damascus, and returns. W. H.—The success was principally due to the faith of Abram, and to the assistance of God. At the same time we must not forget that the re-enforcements of his neighbors may probably have increased the army of Abram to a thousand men, while it is erroneous to suppose that the army of Chedorlaomer, which was only intended for a foray, would be very considerable. Besides, we have to keep in mind that the enemy thought himself perfectly secure, was suddenly overtaken during a dark night by the army of Abram, who evidently came upon them from different directions, and that confusion and panic must have ensued. K.

17. Abraham never stood higher in honor among his fellow-men than when the king of Sodom came out to meet him, and bowed before him.—18. But there came out another before whom Abraham in his turn bowed—Melchizedek, the representative of a higher than earthly honor, a greater than earthly royalty. The two men who met that day and stood in each other’s presence in the “King’s Dale,” were each solitary in his sphere, unique in the spiritual position he occupied. The one a last surviving confessor of the faith intrusted to Noah; the other the first recipient of that new light from Heaven, which, concentrated in the Levitical institute, was to burn for centuries in Judea for the world’s enlightenment. Mysterious he is, and must remain—this king and priest of Salem, emerging from his hidden nook, his pedigree untold, his office undescribed, not a single event in all his former or in all his latter history related, appearing on that single occasion, to do that single act, to be recognized as a greater than Abraham, and then to pass away, coming and going like a spirit, casting no shadow before or behind. W. H.

Melchizedek. Bearing a title which Jews in after-ages would recognize as designating their own sovereign, bearing gifts which recall to Christians the Lord’s Supper, this Canaanite crosses for a moment the path of Abram, and is unhesitatingly recognized as a person of higher spiritual rank than the friend of God. Disappearing as suddenly as he came in, he is lost to the sacred writings for a thousand years; and then a few emphatic words for another moment bring him into sight as a type of the coming Lord of David. Once more, after another thousand years, the Hebrew Christians are taught to see in him a proof that it was the consistent purpose of God to abolish the Levitical priesthood. Bulloch.

He is mentioned in Ps. 110 : 4, and again in the New Testament (Heb. 5-7), where the comparison between the royal priesthood of Melchizedek and that of Jesus is drawn out at length. The special points of resemblance of Melchizedek to Christ are : 1. That he was not of the Levitical order, local, national, but previous to the giving of the Law, catholic, universal; 2. That he was superior to Abraham, blessed and took tithes of him; 3. That he was both king and priest; 4. That no beginning and no end are assigned either to his priesthood or his life; 5. His names too, “king of righteousness ness and king of peace,” are eminently suited to a type of the Son of God (Heb. 7 : 2, 3).

King of Salem. Josephus, Onkelos and all the Targums understand Jerusalem, which is called Salem in Ps. 76 : 2, and this is pretty certainly the true interpretation. Probably Salem was the oldest, Jebus the next, and Jerusalem the more modern name of the same city. E. H. B.

It is interesting to see the view taken of this incident by Kalisch, a Jew: “Everything is here significant, everything typical: it is obvious that the dim background is designed to veil a grand religious and political future. Melchizedek brought forth to Abraham bread and wine, not to refresh him or his men, for Abraham had, among the booty of the enemies, seized their large stores of provisions also, but to perform a symbolical ceremony, in which bread and wine had a typical meaning. For bread represents the ordinary daily food, the necessities of physical subsistence, while the wine points to the cheering delights of life and to the spiritual cravings of religion, in the rites of which it formed an important object.” Alf.

He was priest. This is the first time that the word priest, Cohen, occurs in the Bible, and it is in connection with the worship of an ancient people, perhaps not related by blood to the chosen race. The etymological meaning of the word is unknown. The word itself is applied afterward both to the Levitical priesthood and to the priesthood of false religions. The patriarchs seem to have had no other priesthood than that of the head of the family; but here we find Melchizedek designated as a priest and as performing many priestly acts, solemnly blessing, taking tithes, etc. E. H. B.—The evidence that his priesthood was acknowledged to be of a higher order lies in two facts: first, in the bestowal of the divine blessing upon Abram by his lips; and next, in the offering of Abram’s tithe to God through his hands. Both were strictly sacerdotal acts. He brought to the conqueror bread and wine,—not simply, as Josephus puts it, for the refreshment of his followers, but as a symbol of the divine blessing, which as God’s priest he invoked upon the head of God’s prophet and servant. For the first time these type-forms of all solid and liquid food—destined long after to become sacramental symbols of the nutriment of the spirit’s higher life—occur as emblems of every material blessing. They represent all those products of the soil which minister to man. The blessing which was uttered over the hero, along with such symbols of benediction, recognized his military success as given by God. God is the true ruler of the rescued land, and the only giver of victory to the arms of its defenders. Dykes.

The most high God. Here we meet with a new name of God, El, the Lasting, the Mighty, cognate with Elohim, and previously occurring in the compound proper names Mehujal, Mahalal, and Bethel. We have also an epithet of God, Elion the most high, now appearing for the first time. Hence we perceive that the unity, the omnipotence, and the absolute pre-eminence of God were still living in the memory and conscience of a section at least of the inhabitants of this land. M.—It is to be observed that there is not used regarding him, nor does he use, the title of Jehovah, but that of the High God, a title found also in the question addressed by the Moabitish king Balak to his prophet Balaam: but that Abram in answering the King of Sodom probably in his presence, affirms the identity of his covenant-God, Jehovah, with the High God, possessor of heaven and earth, of whom Melchizedek had spoken. Alf.

Take all philosophy from Plato to Cousin, and where do we find any ideas of God more elevated than those that are associated with these grand epithets so frequent in the Old Testament, and most frequent in its oldest parts? What is there which carries us farther toward the infinite in all directions? And yet, it should be observed, with what unshrinking boldness the Bible writers connect with them the ideas of the local and the finite. This is, in fact, one chief peculiarity of the Scriptures. The Divine Being is very near, and yet very far off. The God of the universe is at the same time regarded as a patrial Deity, the “God of his people.” He who “fills heaven and earth,” is spoken of as dwelling in consecrated localities. The Governor of all worlds in time and space, the Most High, the Almighty, the Everlasting, is at the same time the God of Mamre, of Bethel, of Peniel. El Olam, El Shaddai, El Elioun, is at the same time El Elohe Israel. . . . It would have been far better for the growth of Biblical knowledge in the common mind, had more of these old Hebrew terms, as Sheol and the Divine names Elohim, El Olam, El Shaddai, El Elioun, etc., been transferred directly into our common English version. They would long ere this have become naturalized. The spirit of the word, which is ever strongly attached to its old body, would have come down with it. T. L.

Melchizedek is mentioned elsewhere in the Scriptures only in the 110th Psalm and in the Epistle to the Hebrews (chaps. 5, 6, 7), where the apostle, aiming to show the pre-eminence of

Christ’s priesthood over that of Aaron, avails himself of the somewhat remarkable coincidences which subsisted between what is here related of Melchizedek and what he designed to affirm of Christ. As Melchizedek combined in his own person the dignity both of king and priest, this fact enabled him to illustrate more strikingly, to the Jews to whom he wrote, the union of the same offices in Christ, who sits “a priest upon his throne.” Again, as far as appears from the sacred record, Melchizedek was a priest, not by inheritance, but by immediate divine appointment. He derived his office from no predecessor, and delivered it down to no successor, but stands before us in the sacred record single and alone, constituting himself an order of priesthood. In this respect he was eminently “made like the Son of God,” who was also a priest, not after the manner of the sons of Aaron, by descent from their predecessors, but after the similitude of Melchizedek, that is, by an immediate, divine constitution. Bush.

King David himself (Ps. 110) was guided to borrow this venerable figure of the grand, dim priest-king of old, before whom even the founder of his people took the second place, in order to foreshadow that coming Seed of Abram in whom was to meet every office of dignity and of service. A Priest He was to be above all consecrated men of Israel’s race; a King nobler far in blood and ampler in sway than the royal singer who owned Him for his Lord. . . . No priestly Israelite, sprung from Abram through his great-grandson Levi, can claim as lofty or divine priesthood as the man before whom Abram himself was content to bend for the blessing. If “perfection” had been attained “through means of the Levitical priesthood,” it was fair for the Christian teacher to ask his Jewish brethren, “what further need there was that another priest should rise after the order of Melchizedek.” Dykes.

Amid the abundance of genealogical details of that period we know absolutely nothing of his descent; in the roll of kings and their achievements, his name and reign, his birth and death remain unmentioned. Considering the position which he occupies toward Abram, that silence must have been intentional, and its intention typical; that is, designed to point forward to corresponding realities in Christ. Still more clearly than its silence does the information which Scripture furnishes about Melchizedek show the deep significance of his personality. His name is “King of Righteousness,” his government that of the “Prince of Peace;” he is “a priest,” neither in the sense in which Abram was, nor yet “after the order of Aaron,” his priesthood being distinct and unique; he blesses Abram, and his blessing sounds like a ratification of the bestowal of the land upon the patriarch; while Abram gives “him tithes of all.” There is in this latter tribute an acknowledgment of Melchizedek both as king and priest—as priest in giving him “tithes,” and as king in giving him these tithes of all the spoil, as if he had royal claim upon it; while Abram himself refuses to touch any of it, and his allies are only allowed to “take their portion.” What lay in germ in Melchizedek was to be gradually unfolded—the priesthood in Aaron, the royalty in David—till both were most gloriously united in Christ. Melchizedek was, however, only a shadow and a type; Christ is the reality and the antitype. It is for this reason that Scripture has shut to us the sources of historical investigation about his descent and duration of life, that by its silence it might point to the heavenly descent of Jesus. A. E.

To this person, simply because he was a righteous king and priest of the Most High God, Abraham, the elect of God, the possessor of the promises, paid tithes, and received from him a blessing; and did it, too, at the very time he stood so high in honor, and kept himself so carefully aloof from another king then present—the king of Sodom. He placed himself as conspicuously below the one personage as he raised himself above the other. Melchizedek already in a measure possessed what Abraham still only hoped for—he reigned where Abraham’s seed were destined to reign, and exercised a priesthood which in future generations was to be committed to them. The union of the two in Melchizedek was in itself a great thing—greater than the separate offices of king and priest in the houses respectively of David and Aaron; but it was an expiring greatness: it was like the last blossom on the old rod of Noah, which thenceforth became as a dry tree. In Abraham, on the other hand, was the germ of a new and higher order of things—the promise, though still only the budding promise, of a better inheritance of blessing; and when the seed should come in whom the promise was more especially to stand, then the more general and comprehensive aspect of the Melchizedek order was to reappear, and find its embodiment in one who could at once place it on firmer ground, and carry it to unspeakably higher results. Here, then, was a sacred enigma for the heart of faith to ponder, and for the spirit of truth gradually to unfold: Abraham, in one respect, relatively great, and in another relatively little; personally inferior to Melchizedek, and yet the root of a seed that was to do for the world incomparably more than Melchizedek had done; himself the type of a higher than Melchizedek, and yet Melchizedek a more peculiar type than he! It was a mystery that could be disclosed only in partial glimpses beforehand, but which now has become comparatively plain by the person and work of Immanuel. What but the wonder-working finger of God could have so admirably fitted the past to be such a singular image of the future! P. F.

20. Gave a tithe.** To God, under the same character as Lord of the soil and Arbiter in battle, who alone has ordained to every tribe the bounds of its habitation, Abram devoted one tenth of the recovered spoil. The origin of this proportion—a tithe—is too remote now to be traced. Plainly it was a religious sacrifice of thanksgiving. Dykes.

21-24. Here is a war undertaken by Abram on motives the most honorable and conscientious—it was to repel aggression, and to rescue the innocent from the heaviest of sufferings and the worst of slavery; not for the purpose of plunder, nor the extension of his territories; therefore he takes no spoils, and returns peaceably to his own possessions. A. C.—He had, or might have had, a double title to the goods. They were his by the law of arms and nations; having won them in the field, and in a just war; and they might have been his by the king’s free donation, if he had been minded to accept the offer. But Abram would not take them: contenting himself with what the Lord had blessed him with, he did not desire, neither would he take “from a thread even to a shoelatch,” of anything that appertained to the king of Sodom. Bp. Sanderson.

This unwillingness to incur even the shadow of an obligation may have arisen from the anxiety that not a word of reproach might be cast on him as a worshipper of the one true God; but mingling with this may there not have been here a stirring of honest pride, the spirit of independence, a touch of nature telling us that Abraham was a true brother of our humanity? The brotherly affection, the friendly alliance with the Amorites, the spirit, energy, and skill displayed, the quick and complete success, the renouncing of all personal advantages, the tender care for his confederates, must have raised Abraham to high repute among the Canaanitish tribes. W. H.