NOTES for Gen 14:1-24
The account of the war of the kings in the Book of Genesis is mysterious. Not because it describes a war between kings whom historians have still been unable to identify—there were many kings, or rather rulers of city-states, in Palestine in Abraham's time. Nor because Abraham managed to recover the booty and captives in a sudden night attack—the urban militias of the Palestinian cities were not especially well organized; they were no Roman army with its carefully designed military camp and disciplined soldiers who understood sentry duty. The most interesting figure here is Melchizedek, the mysterious “king of Salem,” “priest of God Most High.”
This is the very man to whom Abraham gives a tithe. He gives it to him and to his god, a god who has nothing to do with the God of Abraham. “God Most High” is merely an attempt to translate the name of Melchizedek's god—in Hebrew it sounds like El Elyon. This El Elyon is the god whom Melchizedek serves. The God of Abraham is never called by this name anywhere; He has other names of His own, which He reveals to Abraham and later to Moses. The name El Elyon is not among them.
Melchizedek's god is worshipped in Shalem (Salem in the Synodal Translation)—the old name of Jerusalem. A sanctuary existed there, in Jerusalem, even before Abraham appeared in Palestine, and it became Yahwistic only after David's conquest of Jerusalem, then still called Shalem, much later than the events described in the account. Melchizedek was most likely a servant in this sanctuary. Only not a priest, of course. The corresponding Hebrew word denotes a Levitical priest, of whom there were none in Abraham's time. Etymologically, however, its root is connected with the concept of prophecy, so that the word originally denoted a prophet rather than a priest.
Thus Melchizedek—king of Shalem-Salem and prophet of a deity called El Elyon—blesses Abraham, who, incidentally, is called “the Hebrew” in the account. The Hebrews never called themselves Hebrews in their own language; their self-designation was always different. In antiquity only an outsider could call a Hebrew a Hebrew, someone for whom the Hebrews were nomads, newcomers, barbarians. The account was evidently composed by the local inhabitants of pre-Hebrew Palestine—they worshipped El Elyon and his prophet Melchizedek.
Melchizedek blesses Abraham, and Abraham accepts his blessing. He still knows too little about his God to distinguish Him from El Elyon, a local thunder god who, like all thunder gods, was “lord of heaven and earth,” and sometimes, like another thunder god, Zeus, also “father of gods and men.” The time will come when Abraham understands the difference between a thunder god and his God. It will come, but not at once: there will be further encounters that will explain much to Abraham. The whole path still lies ahead, including his acquaintance with the unknown God.