Genesis: 1a 1b 1c 1d 2a 2b 2c 2d 3 4a 4b 4c/5 6a 6b 7 8 9 10 11a 11b 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25a 25b 26a 26b 27 28a 28b 29 30a 30b 31a 31b/32a 32b 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44a 44b 45 46 47a 47b 48 49 50
THE WAR OF THE KINGS
The war probably did take place, somewhere between the 20th and 17th centuries BCE. The story suggests the Emorite conquest of Hurrian Kena'an, followed by the defeat of the Emorites by the Hyksos. This would explain the covenant to Av-Ram's descendants who, on their return from Mitsrayim (Egypt), would thereby have had a legitimate claim to inheritance.
14:1 VA YEHI BIYMEY AM-RAPHEL MELECH SHIN'AR AR'YOCH MELECH ELASAR KEDAR-LA-OMER MELECH EYLAM VE TID'AL MELECH GOYIM
וַיְהִי בִּימֵי אַמְרָפֶל מֶלֶךְ שִׁנְעָר אַרְיוֹךְ מֶלֶךְ אֶלָּסָר כְּדָרְלָעֹמֶר מֶלֶךְ עֵילָם וְתִדְעָל מֶלֶךְ גּוֹיִם
KJ (King James translation): And it came to pass in the days of Am-Raphel king of Shinar, Arioch king of Ellasar, Chedorlaomer king of Elam, and Tidal king of nations;
BN (BibleNet translation): And it came to pass in the days of Am-Raphel king of Shinar, of Ar'yoch king of El-Esar, of Kedar-la-omer king of Eylam, and of Tidal king of Goyim.
All of whom take us back to the world of Ur Kasdim, from which Av-Ram's father migrated hus family not two chapters ago.
AM-RAPHEL (אמרפל): see the earlier notes to Arphachshad (Genesis 10:22 and 11:10). Usually identified with Hammurabi of Babylon (though David Rohl's new chronology would not allow this); Hammurabi united the city-states into an empire, defeated Eylam (Elam) and conquered all the way to the Mediterranean. His codification of Babylonian Law is thought to be the root of Mosaic Law, though was also Ur-Nammu's lawcode before him. Usually placed 1945-1902 BCE. Wanting Am-Raphel to be Hammurabi (and Hammurabi to be Nimrod), this is the date normally used when trying to place Av-Raham; and it is obviously misleading.
However there is also an Arrapkha, the ancient name for modern Kirkuk, in Mesopotamia, which suggest Arphachshad even more strongly. Shad in Akkadian (as in El Shadai - אל שדי - in Yehudit) means either "mountain" or "breast".
SHIN'AR (שנער): Is this the same as Shin'ar which is Mesopotamia? Or is this Shankhar in Akkad, as some scholars, undertaking comparison with the Greek descriptions of the ancient world, suggest? The Aramaic Targum always gives it as Babylonia, as though it were a synonym; and being Aramaic, and the right period, it should know better than the rest of us moderns. As in Genesis 10:10, there may be a misreading of Sumer (Sumeria). There was a Shin'ar within ancient Baghdad as well.
AR'YOCH (אריוך): Ariaka = "Honoured One" in Old Iranian; is there a link to Erech (ארך) = Warak? Eriaku king of Larsa perhaps, which is midway between Babylon and the mouth of the Euphrates.
ELASAR (אלסר): Graves and Patai reckon it is Ilansra, a royal city between Charan and Carchemish mentioned in the Mari documents.
KEDAR-LA-OMER (כדרלעמר): The Yehudit form of Kudur = "servant of", and Lagamar, an Eylamite deity. The name means "a handful of sheaves" and thereby denotes yet another variant upon Tammuz-Osiris-Dagon, the corn-god, though in this case in his capacity as Lord of the Underworld rather than the sacrificial symbol of vegetal fertility. (It is entirely possible that his correct name was known, and that Kedar-la-Omer, "a handful of sheaves" was intended satirically).
EYLAM (עילם): if the dates are right, and this is Hammurabic times, then Eylam was under Babylonian supremacy.
TID'AL (תדעל): Identified with Tudkhalya, a Chitite king-name. Cuneiform texts give Tudghula. The Beney Chet (Hittites) were the progenitors of the northern Kurds, who at that time were called Gutians. Their capital was Gutium, which may have given rise to the Yehudit "Goyim" (but see the reference to "Goyim" in the previous sedra). The name means "to fear", in the sense of "reverence".
GOYIM (גוים): Or possibly Go'im. But not "nations"; at least, not in this context. Earlier references suggest the Ionian peoples, but this is unlikely in the context, unless the Lebanese Phoenicians joined in.
Why does this text regulate according to Babylonian etc kings and not Kena'anite ones? See the next verse for an answer.
Probably this is not a Beney Yisra-El story at all, but a Babylonian, possibly linked to Nimrod; the geographical range makes it implausible that Av-Raham would have been involved. However, as we know from countless Midrashim, any stories connected with Babylon and Eylam and the lands to the east of Kena'an tended to be attributed to Av-Raham, regardless of historical authenticity. It provides one more argument in favour of Av-Ram and Av-Raham as alternative names for either a dynasty or a god worshipped at a particular epoch: "in the time of Av-Ram" allows all these stories to be attributed, but like saying "during the Middle Ages", or "pre-Columban".
14:2 ASU MILCHAMAH ET BERA MELECH SEDOM VE ET BIRSHA MELECH AMORAH SHIN'AV MELECH ADMAH VE SHEM-EVER MELECH TSEVOYIM U MELECH BELA HI TSO'AR
עָשׂוּ מִלְחָמָה אֶת בֶּרַע מֶלֶךְ סְדֹם וְאֶת בִּרְשַׁע מֶלֶךְ עֲמֹרָה שִׁנְאָב מֶלֶךְ אַדְמָה וְשֶׁמְאֵבֶר מֶלֶךְ צְבֹיִים וּמֶלֶךְ בֶּלַע הִיא צֹעַר
KJ: That these 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, which is Zoar.
BN: They went to war with Bera, the king of Sedom, and with Birsha, the king of Amorah, Shin-Av, the king of Admah, and Shem-Ever, the king of Tsevoyim, and with the king of Bela - that is to say: Tso'ar.
What were the names of the other 3 cities of the plain: we are told five were destroyed, but only Sedom and Amorah are named in the tale? Is this perhaps the answer: Admah, Tsevoyim and Bela, aka Tso'ar? But see Genesis 19:20/23, which tells us that Tso'ar was not destroyed;it was to Tso'ar that Lot and his daughters will flee after that devastation. So there must have been yet one more town in the plain.
Going over these texts at very different periods of my life, and world history, different ideas come for different reasons. I started these fragments when Rabin was assassinated, but am perusing them now to put in the Yehudit text when the 2nd Gulf War is still in post-mortem: pretty much the same territory as the one in this Biblical chapter. History, as we know, is written by the winners, and therefore from the perspective of the winners. Today we hear a lot about "the axis of evil" which is an American Christian Evangelical term, much favoured by President Bush, for what Richard Coeur de Lion would have called "the Infidel". Here, in Genesis, we have a war between the "coalition", including YHVH-inspired Av-Ram (the Bush-Blair faction), taking on an enemy that includes that very town of Sedom which will be god-blasted as soon as the war is done (Hiroshima rather than Nagasaki). So how much of the Sedom and Amorah story should we therefore read as political propaganda, the pretextualising of a war of massive destruction, how much as an allegory of straightforward human immorality, and how much simply as putting in the story of this war, at this moment of the Bible, because the names of the key towns just happen to coincide?
BERA (ברע): possibly connected to Bera-Ba'al = "the splendour of Ba'al". Kings in this story probably just means local sheikhs, or "petty princes". Bera means "a gift".
BIRSHA (ברשע): possibly connected with the Arabic Burshu. The name may mean "son of wickedness" (Ben Resha/בן רשע), though this is an unlikely name to give one's son! Unless, following the commentary above, we are dealing in epithets rather than sobriquets - think of Amr ibn Hisham in the story of Muhammad, known by the people of Mecca as Abu Hakam, "Father of Wisdom" but by the followers of Muhammad as Abu Jahl, "Father of Foolishness".
SHIN-AV (שנאב): Should it not read VE ET SHIN-AV (ואת שנאב)? Sanibu, an 8th century BCE Amonite king, bears the same name. Shin-Av in Yehudit would mean "father's tooth" (שין אב), another rather nice epithet – "the shark" in today's tabloid equivalents!
ADMAH (אדמה): Presumably Edom itself, or a town in Edom; Hosea 11:8 makes reference to it. Possibly Adamah (Joshua 19:36) or Adam (Joshua 3:16) which Robert Graves and Raphael Patai claim is now Tel Adamiya on the eastern bank of the Yarden (Jordan) near the mouth of the Yavok (Jabbok) River.
SHEM-EVER (שמאבר): probably means "soaring on high", from SHAMEH (שמה) = "height"; but it must be said that Gesenius' explanation is vague to the point of uncertainty.
TSEVOYIM (צביים): Gesenius suggests this is an error for צביאם = "gazelles" or "hyenas", which would further endorse this reading; Hosea 11:8 (צבים) as well as Genesis 10:19 and Deuteronomy 29:22 refer to the town, both naming it alongside Sedom, Amorah and Admah, and thereby confirming that we do know the names of the Five Cities - Tso'ar being the fifth. Is it a masculine form of Tseva'ot, whence Lord of Hosts?
BELA HI TSO'AR (בלע היא-צער): Genesis 36:32/3 gives Bela as an Edomite king of Dinhavah; cf also Genesis 46:21 and 1 Chronicles 5:8. Tso'ar (צער), which was mentioned in the separation of Av-Ram and Lot in the previous chapter, = "little"; identified with Zukhr, mentioned in the Tel Amarna letters and called Zoara by Josephus, and later Segor by the Crusaders. North-East of the Dead Sea, probably at modern Tel El-Zara. Genesis 19:20/23 gives it as the only place to survive the destruction of the cities of the plain. Bela is given the meaning "destroyed" in Genesis 13:10.
BELA occurs several times in the Tanach besides this chapter:
1) Genesis 36:32-33: "And Bela the son of Be'or reigned in Edom: and the name of his city was Dinhavah... And Bela died, and Yovav the son of Zerach of Batsrah reigned in his stead."
which is paralleled in 1 Chronicles 1:43-44
2) Genesis 46:21: "And the sons of Bin-Yamin were Belah, and Vecher, and Ashbel, Gera, and Na'aman, Echi, and Rosh, Mupim, and Chupim, and Ard."
3) Numbers 26:38: "The sons of Bin-Yamin after their families: of Bela, the family of the Bali: of Ashbel, the family of the Ashbeli: of Achi-Ram, the family of the Achi-Rami."
4) Numbers 26:40: "And the sons of Bela were Ard and Na'aman: of Ard, the family of the Ardi, and of Na'aman, the family of the Na'ami."
5) 1 Chronicles 5:8: "And Bela the son of Azaz, the son of Shema, the son of Yo-El, who dwelt in Aro'er, even as far as Nevo and Ba'al Me'on."
6) 1 Chronicles 7:6-7 "The sons of Bin-Yamin; Bela, and Vecher, and Yedi'a-El, three. And the sons of Bela; Etsbon, and Uzi, and Uzi-El, and Yerimot, and Iri, five; heads of the house of their fathers, mighty men of valour; and were reckoned by their genealogies twenty and two thousand and thirty and four."
7) 1 Chronicles 8:1-3 "Now Bin-Yamin begat Bela his firstborn, Ashbel the second, and Achrach the third...And the sons of Bela were, Adar, and Gera, and Avi-Hud."
So this must indeed be the Emorite invasion of Kena'an, sweeping down through Babylon and Assyria to destroy practically everything in its wake. Interestingly the Emorites tended to burn cities to the ground as they passed; and we are very shortly to see the destruction of the five Cities of the Plain, all of whom are mentioned in this verse as having fought the Emorites - can we then rewrite the stories of Sedom and Amorah as Holocaust by man and not by god? Something like "we must have been very sinful, therefore the gods sent the Emorites to destroy us" - Yesha-Yahu (Isaiah) and co would have liked that as an allegory for the destruction of the 10 tribes by Sennacherib, and of Yehudah by Nebuchadnezzar. And of course, given that Av-Ram was on their side, this may either be the true story of his arrival in the land, or offer an alternative to the pastoral account given previously. Either way we have two versions of the Emorite arrival, and however we read it, Av-Ram conquered and subsumed, he did not arrive and assimilate. And it matters: the Jewish claim to the land is based on this. (Unless we regard Av-Ram as the god and not the tribal chieftain, in which case any Emorite invasion would have had the name of Av-Ram on its banner).
HI TSO'AR: Why is this in the feminine, and not the masculine - HU TSO'AR? If Bela was the name of the king, it would be masculine; so in fact it is the name of the town.
14:3 KOL ELEH CHAVRU EL EMEK HA SIDIM (HU YAM HA MELACH)
כָּל אֵלֶּה חָבְרוּ אֶל עֵמֶק הַשִּׂדִּים הוּא יָם הַמֶּלַח
KJ: All these were joined together in the vale of Siddim, which is the salt sea.
BN: All these came as allies to the Vale of Siddim - the Salt Sea.
This would have been the westernmost point of the war; but clearly an Edomite not a Beney Yisra-El war, so why is Av-Ram involved?
EMEK SIDIM (HU YAM HA MELACH): A valley that is now remembered as a sea? That surely can only happen if what was once a valley went through some dramatic event that transformed it into a sea. The first hint that the destruction of the Cities of Plain was volcanic.
CHAVRU (חברו): the root of CHEVRON (חברון) = "to bind together", "to befriend" - here it means quite straightforwardly that they formed an alliance or signed a treaty; we can deduce that this is the origin of the early Beney Yisra-El confederation, and that CHEVRON was probably established now, replacing the old name Kiryat Arba; the name thus means "the place of the alliance", and it enters history much as Yalta or Versailles have done in modern times. Its importance is thus political and not religious, though we know from later texts that there was a religious shrine there, and such would have been needed to validate the oaths of alliance: but the shrine was to Ephron, the Beney Chet (Hittite) sun-god, and his sister-wife (note that!) Yah, the moon-goddess. This may also explain why Av-Ram moved to Chevron from Beit-El.
These were my original thoughts, but I am no longer inclined to them. The reference to Av-Ram moving to Chevron at the end of the last chapter, as so often in the tales, is a line dropped into the text to prepare us for what will come up shortly (e.g. Lot and Tso'ar). The ancientness of the shrine of Chevron is attested by the Cave of Machpelah and the Terebinths of Mamre; but where else would people of those times go to make an alliance than the altar of a god or goddess; indeed, the priest or priestess would have been a vital figure in the swearing ceremony. Nevertheless we have for certain the meaning of the name.
EMEK HA SIDIM (עמק השדים): Gesenius reckons Sidim comes from the root SADEH (שדה) = "field"; but this tells us nothing, unless we go back to Genesis 13:10 and the comment that it was a beautiful valley before the destruction of the cities of the plain; "the valley of the fields" then, as fertile as anywhere else in that part of the world. Destroyed perhaps by the salt that brought the Dead Sea into being, in place of the Five Cities. Which leaves open the question: what brought the salt? We know the Dead Sea is below sea level, and that its floor is potash – the probability is that the whole region was once volcanic, and that what is at the bottom of the Dead Sea is laval residue; in which case, can we read the destruction of the Five Cities as a memory of that event?
Sidim makes more sense as the plural of Sid (שיד) = "lime", in the sense of limestone rather than Key West meringue.
YAM HA MELACH (ים המלח): Known today as the Dead Sea, known then as the Salt Sea and sometimes as the Sea of Aravah.
14:4 SHETEYM ESREH SHANAH AVDU ET KEDAR-LA-OMER U SHELOSH ESREH SHANAH MARADU
שְׁתֵּים עֶשְׂרֵה שָׁנָה עָבְדוּ אֶת כְּדָרְלָעֹמֶר וּשְׁלֹשׁ עֶשְׂרֵה שָׁנָה מָרָדוּ
KJ: Twelve years they served Chedorlaomer, and in the thirteenth year they rebelled.
BN: Twelve years they served Kedar-la-omer, and in the 13th year they rebelled.
In other words the Persians (Eylamites) won, and the allies were forced into slavery on their own land for twelve years. Most translations say "in the" thirteenth year they staged a rebellion (as though the Yehudit read בשלש עשרה rather than ושלש עשרה - "in" rather than "and"); clearly the text doesn't agree with this, even though logic does.
AVDU: "served" here could simply mean the paying of tribute. Either way we are dealing with an early conquest of Kena'an by a people from well to the East; this is worthy of some further work on what is known about Eylam, especially any mythological overlaps at this early stage (i.e. pre-Zoroastrianism). Or, should we be asking, is the supremacy of Eylam intended as a statement to Koresh (Cyrus) of the Medes at the time of his supremacy, and the return of the exiles who owed him a great place in their history? (Probably not, because Av-Ram then drove them out!)
14:5 U VE ARBA ESREH SHANAH BA CHEDARLAOMER VE HA MELACHIM ASHER ITO VA YAKU ET REPHA'IM BE ASHTEROT KARNAYIM VE ET HA ZUZIM BE HAM VE ET HA EYMIM BE SHAVEH KIRYATAYIM
וּבְאַרְבַּע עֶשְׂרֵה שָׁנָה בָּא כְדָרְלָעֹמֶר וְהַמְּלָכִים אֲשֶׁר אִתּוֹ וַיַּכּוּ אֶת רְפָאִים בְּעַשְׁתְּרֹת קַרְנַיִם וְאֶת הַזּוּזִים בְּהָם וְאֵת הָאֵימִים בְּשָׁוֵה קִרְיָתָיִם
KJ: And in the fourteenth year came Chedorlaomer, and the kings that were with him, and smote the Rephaims in Ashteroth Karnaim, and the Zuzims in Ham, and the Emims in Shaveh Kiriathaim,
BN: And in the 14th year came Kedar-la-omer, and the kings who were his allies, and defeated the Repha'im at Ashterot Karnayim, and the Zuzim at Ham, and the Eymim at Shaveh Kiryatayim.
The rebellion failed and was put down mercilessly, again supporting the theory that Sedom and Amorah were destroyed by Emorites and/or Eylamites and not by YHVH, or more probably still, that two entirely separate incidents of history are being concatenaed into one here, the original volcanic eruption or tectonic event which made the land as it is today, and the historic battle and conflagration which destroyed the cities later built on that land.
U VE ARBA ESREH SHANAH: As in the previous verse, the manner of stating the year is highly unusual grammatically.
BE ASHTEROT KARNAYIM (בעשתרת קרנים): the horns of Ishtar no less! A sacred shrine, or a peculiar rock formation; knowing the area it could easily be the latter, exactly as Lot's wife turning to stone was probably a peculiar outcrop of potash-carved stone. Nonetheless it does appear to testify to a matriarchal religion in Edom, and to the worship of Astarte, Inanna, Yah, Eshet (Isis), Ashtoret, Esther, or any other name one cares to use to describe... once again... the triple goddess, the one who, just across the Yarden, was the Banot al-Lah: al-Lat, Manat and al-Uzza. Ishtar the goddess of love, war, fertility, and sexuality, mother of Tammuz, two of whose own shrines were just a few miles away, the one on the threshing-floor of Beit Lechem Ephratah (Bethlehem), the other on the threshing-floor of Ornah, or Araunah, at Yeru-Shala'im (Jerusalem).
But the text does have one little problem, which the regular reader is unlikely to know, or even be able to deduce, because the way the tale has been written suggests that we are around the Dead Sea; in fact the city of Ashterot Karnayim was located 21 miles east of the Sea of Galilee, which means well north, and then well east, up and over the Golan Heights, and well down the track towards Damasek (Damascus); beyond Kena'an; well beyond Kena'an; well beyond the attempt at an explanation given above. And why then is that explanation given, knowing it couldn't hold? To demonstrate the way in which Biblical exegesis works, and has always worked. We try to take the text literally – and we simply can't. We try to take it allegorically – and often that doesn't work either. We try to interpret, based on what else we know – and it's the best we can do, but still hypothesis, speculation. Unlike the "men in uniform" sect of Judaism, and the evangelical Creationists, no claim for absolute validity can ever be made.
REPHA'IM (רפאים): Kena'anite giants, known to the Beney Gil'ad by this name. As with the Zuzim, Eymim and Chorim also mentioned here, they were the aboriginal inhabitants of what would become Edom, Mo-Av and Amon (cf Deuteronomy 2:9 ff); so their mention here is either anachronism, or allows us to date the war much earlier, and read it now as historical memory (but that would discount Av-Ram's participation).
HA ZUZIM (הזוזים): properly called the Zamzumim = "Busy Ones" and identified with wasps; they were a tribe of Amonite "giants" (a term that usually infers "aboriginals") defeated by the early Kena'anites; and as such this part of the story is probably a recollection of a much earlier Kena'anite myth. According to the Book of Jubilees (which anyone seriously interested in the Tanach should read in full, because it offers some very interesting variations and additional data not in the Tanach itself, but coming from the pre-Christian era, which is to say the pre-Midrashic era, when what was not in the Tanach was not yet collected, and most of Jubilees failed to make it) they were fifteen feet tall. In Ugaritic mythology they are called "spectres", Anakim = "giants" (as here), Awwim = "devastators" (in Yehudit that would be pronounced Avim and would mean "ancestors"), Giborim = "Heroes" (Nimrod was described as a GIBOR TSAYID in Genesis 10:9), Nephilim = "fallen ones" (Genesis 6:4). As "spectres" we can identify them with the Greek "shades", as giants with the Greek Titans.
HAM (הם): Ham, not Cham; this has nothing to do with the son of No'ach who is mis-pronounced as Ham in English, but is the early name of the Amonite capital Rabah, twenty-five miles north-east of the upper end of the Yam ha Melach (Dead Sea); once again we see that the war is taking place well beyond Kena'an.
HA EYMIM (האימים): = "terrors"; again Kena'ani giants, possibly the same ones, but here with their Beney Mo-Av name. As the "spectres" reminded us of the Greek "shades", so "terrors" seems reminiscent of the Greek "Furies", or Erinyes, a demoniacal version of the same triple-goddess, female chthonic (underworld) deities of vengeance, often described as "infernal goddesses" - and this may be the clue to the connection between the Lot story and this war: the daughters of al-Lah as Beney Mo-Av Erinyes (and if you think I am overstating the Greek connection, wait until Lot's wife turns into a pillar of salt, just like Eurydice in the Orpheus legend; and then go explore the life of King David, as I have done in my novel "City of Peace", and you will see that Orpheus and Ephron and Phoroneus are dialect variations of the same name, the same sun-god, and that David is their Beney Yisra-El equivalent - they even share a constellation, Lyra, which is also the instrument that both of them became famous for playing - I wonder if Philip Pullman was aware of that when he created his heroine for "His Dark Materials"? "The common source", as William Jones called it, is far more than just shared origins of language.)
SHAVEH KIRYATAYIM (שוה קריתים): Kiryat = "village", therefore Kiryatayim means either "two villages" or "a conurbation of villages"; the most famous use of Kiryat in the Christian Bible is Yehudah Ish Ha Kerayot, "Yehudah, a man from Kerayot" or "Yehudah, a man from the villages", but somehow lost in the Greek and converted into Judas Iscariot. "The plain of the two towns", as in this verse, is thought to be modern Kureyat (if you follow this link, go to the section on Numbers 32:34), ten miles east of the Dead Sea - but note again that we are outside Kena'an and inside Edom.
SHAVEH (שוה) = "a plain" or "valley", from the root SHAVAH meaning "equal": the point at which the land equals out.
KIRYATAYIM: Or was it Kiryat Yam (קרית ים), and the two words somehow became ellided? "The village by the sea"; and the sea in question here, again, Yam ha Melach, the Dead Sea. Kiryatayim, from the multiple plural ending, would suggest a collection of hamlets. Or was KIRYATAYIM their way of saying "city states"?
14:6 VE ET HA CHORI BE HARERAM SE'IR AD EYL PA'RAN ASHER AL HA MIDBAR
וְאֶת הַחֹרִי בְּהַרְרָם שֵׂעִיר עַד אֵיל פָּארָן אֲשֶׁר עַל הַמִּדְבָּר
KJ: And the Horites in their mount Seir, unto Elparan, which is by the wilderness.
BN: And the Chori in their mountain, Se'ir, as far as Eyl Pa'ran, which is by the wilderness.
HARERAM: Translated as though it were HAREM = "their mountain"; which anyway doesn't mean mountain, but "destroyed places", according to Isaiah 19:18, which specifically associates this with the Five Cities of the Plain destroyed at the time of the apocalypse (albeit in Egypt).
But the word here is HARERAM, which is a root connected with the act of conception, whether physical or intellectual, and can only mean "mountain" metaphorically, with the "concept" of a mountain bulging from the earth like the belly of a pregnant woman - language of a poetical sophistication, and with a metaphysical base, that cannot date it earlier than the 6th century BCE. The plurality of the word as used here requires translating either as "their mountain ruins" or, more generously but less accurately, "their mountain strongholds".
SE'IR (שעיר): Mount Se'ir is normally identified with the Beney Edom, not the Beney Chor; and especially with Yishma-El and Esav (Esau). The mountainous region south-east of the Dead Sea.
EYL PA'RAN (איל פארן): Why this time do most English versions give El-Paran, when it isn't; and hyphenate it, which it isn't; and often don't give El when it is? Probably Aqaba, at the northern end of the Red Sea, though for worthy matriotic reasons many Jewish scholars prefer to regard it as neighbouring Eilat.
14:7 VA YASHUVU VA YAVO'U EL EYN MISHPAT HI KADESH VA YAKU ET KOL SEDEH HA AMALEKI VE GAM ET HA EMORI HA YOSHEV BE CHATSETSON TAMAR
וַיָּשֻׁבוּ וַיָּבֹאוּ אֶל עֵין מִשְׁפָּט הִוא קָדֵשׁ וַיַּכּוּ אֶת כָּל שְׂדֵה הָעֲמָלֵקִי וְגַם אֶת הָאֱמֹרִי הַיֹּשֵׁב בְּחַצְצֹן תָּמָר
KJ: And they returned, and came to Enmishpat, which is Kadesh, and smote all the country of the Amalekites, and also the Amorites, that dwelt in Hazezontamar.
BN: And they turned back, and came to the holy place of Eyn Mishpat, and ravaged the entire territory of the Amalekites, and also the Emorites who live at Chatsetson Tamar.
VA YASHUVU (וישבו): "Turned back". The route till now appears to have been south-west, judging from the order in which towns are listed; they therefore now go north-west - but at no time are they ever in Kena'an!
EYN MISHPAT (עין משפת): means "fountain" or "well" of judgement; the fountain identifies it with water and is thus a goddess shrine; Yehudit has two concepts of judgement, one legal, the other prophetic. For legal judgement it is Dan (דן), the same word that gives the name of one of the sons of Ya'akov, and in its feminine form, Dinah (דינה), Ya'akov's only daughter. Then there is MISHPAT (which is also, just to complicate matters, both a prison-sentence and a grammatical one). The Book of Judges, meaning the Book of Prophets in the strictest sense, is called in Yehudit SHOPHTIM (שופתים), from the same root as EYN MISHPAT (עין משפת) here. Clearly oracular from its title; presumably a judicial oracle for the settlement of disputes.
HI KADESH (קדש): Given as "which is KADESH", but this is probably a mis-translation, or simply a failure to translate at all; more likely it means "EYN MISHPAT - which is a holy place" from KADOSH (קדוש) = "holy". There are in fact several places named Kadesh, mostly connected, and important in, the story of the Exodus from Mitsrayim (Egypt). Deuteronomy 1:2 and 46 reckon Kadesh Barne'a, on the south-east frontier of Yehudah - but rather than repeat myself, there are extensive notes on both Eyn Mishpat and Kadesh in the Dictionary of Names, just click the links.
AMALEKI (עמלקי): the Amalekites, founded by one of Esav's grandsons according to Genesis 36:12, became one of the Beney Yisra-El's chiefest enemies, starting with the massacre of the women and children at the back of the Yisra-Eli camp in Exodus 17:8 ff, for which they were condemned to annihilation, an action attempted by King Sha'ul (1 Samuel 15), though he ultimately failed, as did King David (1 Samuel 30). 1 Chronicles 4:42-43 informs us that Beney Shim'on in the time of King Chizki-Yah (Hezekiah) were the ones who finally completed the divinely-approved, indeed divinely-sanctioned genocide.
SEDEH: "Country" is a problematic word here, because they were famously nomadic; we must treat it as meaning the land they occupied at that time. Exodus 17:8 has them preventing the Beney Yisra-El from crossing the Sinai Peninsula. Esav named his grandson Amalek according to Nachmanides, in honour of the eponymous Amalekite chieftain, rather than he himself being the founder of that people.
EMORI (אמרי): Ah, this rather disputes the above; unless this was another group of Emorites; perhaps the invasion then wasn't Emoritic at all, but Chaldean. This needs more thinking about, but the hints that we have noted above suggest the invaders were predominantly Eylamites, and it is likely that "Emorites" was a generic term in those days for easterners, in the way that we today use the term "Caucasians" for anyone of European origins. Hertz reckons it is a generic name for all pre-Yisra-Eli inhabitants of Kena'an, and if this is correct, then Yechezke-El's statement (Ezekiel 16:45-46) that the paternal line was Emorite and the maternal Beney Chet (Hittite) makes even more sense.
CHATSATSON TAMAR (חצצון תמר): CHATSATS (חצץ) = "to divide", whence CHATSITSAH (חציצה) = "an axe" or "adze". The Talmud uses the word to mean "to prune", which makes more sense here as TAMAR (תמר) = "a date" or "date-palm". The town was situated on the western shore of the Dead Sea, very close to Sedom, at the place where Ein Gedi now stands. Tamar was the daughter-in-law of Yehudah on whom he fathered Parets and Zerach (Genesis 38); in 2 Samuel 13 Tamar was a daughter of King David who was raped by her half-brother Amnon; but that story, like the impregnation of Tamar by Yehudah, and the rape of Dinah by Shechem (Genesis 34), is itself a diminution into myth of a goddess story, for Tamar is the date goddess.
14:8 VA YETS'E MELECH SEDOM U MELECH AMORAH U MELECH ADMAH U MELECH TSEVOYIM U MELECH BELA HI TSO'AR, VA YA'ARCHU ITAM MILCHAMAH BE EMEK HA SIDIM
וַיֵּצֵא מֶלֶךְ סְדֹם וּמֶלֶךְ עֲמֹרָה וּמֶלֶךְ אַדְמָה וּמֶלֶךְ צְבֹיִים וּמֶלֶךְ בֶּלַע הִוא צֹעַר וַיַּעַרְכוּ אִתָּם מִלְחָמָה בְּעֵמֶק הַשִּׂדִּים
KJ: 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 joined battle with them in the vale of Siddim;
BN: And the king of Sedom went out, and the king of Amorah, and the king of Admah, and the king of Tsevoyim, and the king of Bela - that is to say: Tso'ar - and they set the battle in array against them in the Vale of Sidim.
The names of the kings in this verse is not the same as the list in verse 2, yet verse 9 makes clear it is still the same war.
Where is Lot through all this; and why doesn't he join in - see verse 12 ff. Which side would Av-Ram have been on, if any?
HI TSO'AR: Why the need to tell us again that Bela is Tso'ar? Is this because the place is about to become significant in the tale of Lot and his daughters?
14:9 ET KEDAR-LA-OMER MELECH EYLAM VE TID'AL MELECH GOYIM VE AM-RAPHEL MELECH SHIN'AR VE ARYOCH, MELECH ELASAR ARBA MELACHIM ET HA CHAMISHAH
אֵת כְּדָרְלָעֹמֶר מֶלֶךְ עֵילָם וְתִדְעָל מֶלֶךְ גּוֹיִם וְאַמְרָפֶל מֶלֶךְ שִׁנְעָר וְאַרְיוֹךְ מֶלֶךְ אֶלָּסָר אַרְבָּעָה מְלָכִים אֶת הַחֲמִשָּׁה
KJ: With Chedorlaomer the king of Elam, and with Tidal king of nations, and Amraphel king of Shinar, and Arioch king of Ellasar; four kings with five.
BN: Against Kedar-la-omer king of Eylam, and Tidal king of Goyim, and Am-Raphel king of Shin'ar, and Aryoch king of Elasar; four kings against the five.
a) Being of Babylonian origin, we would expect Av-Ram to support the four; unless his dad's real reason for leaving Padan Aram in the first place had turned him against the place. b) Being a new arrival in Kena'an, and hoping to be accepted there, we would expect him to support the five, unless he still felt deep loyalty to the land of his nativity. This paradox is Kafka's explanation of cause and effect, and of human motivation. He used the example of Robinson Crusoe, but it applies just as well here.
In fact Av-Ram's reason for joining the war, and confirmation of which side he fought on, will be given in verse 12.
14:10 VE EMEK HA SIDIM BE'EROT BE'EROT CHEMAR VA YANUSU MELECH SEDOM VE AMORAH VA YIPLU SHAMAH VE HA NISHARIM HERAH NASU
וְעֵמֶק הַשִׂדִּים בֶּאֱרֹת בֶּאֱרֹת חֵמָר וַיָּנֻסוּ מֶלֶךְ סְדֹם וַעֲמֹרָה וַיִּפְּלוּ שָׁמָּה וְהַנִּשְׁאָרִים הֶרָה נָּסוּ
KJ: And the vale of Siddim was full of slimepits; and the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah fled, and fell there; and they that remained fled to the mountain.
BN: Now the Vale of Siddim was full of slime pits; and the kings of Sedom and Amorah fled there, and fell into them, and those who were left alive fled to the mountain.
BE'EROT BE'EROT CHEMAR (בארת בארת חמר): wonderful poetry! but not a metaphorical description of what happens to beauty spots when responsible capitalists see opportunities to make money, but "a right filthy mess of nasty, slimy potash - hole upon hole of the stuff"; yet ironically, today, as illustrated above, people think it's so health-giving they daub themselves in it head to foot and sun-bathe like hippopotami on the banks of the Dead Sea, and then sell the bottled water for healing purposes in the slime-pits of responsible capitalism all over the globe!
For a second time (or for the first, depending on how you read the chronology above) the rebellion is heavily defeated. No coincidence that the dead kings should be from Sedom and Amorah.
Defeated but not killed; they that remained must have included the king of Sedom, for he is still very much alive in v17 (unless that is a new king, his successor).
And what mountain? The land around the Dead Sea, today anyway, is desert; on the Israeli side there is Masada, the hilltop fortress of King Herod, which rises to about 200 feet above sea level - except that the whole area is way below sea level, and those cliffs are actually about 1500 feet! On the eastern side of the Dead Sea, around Wadi al Mujib, even more canyon-like than Masada, but around the same height. But desert, and canyons, dry places. Only the Dead Sea itself is slime, and its immediate shoreline. Which leaves me wondering what the terrain looked like back then, and what caused it to change, if change it did, and seems from this account that it must have done. A Dead Sea that was all but dried out? The consequences of some ancient meteorite - the numbers of Ka'abas in the Hejaz, this part of Jordan, and in Kena'an; geologists reckon that the baetyloi that are called Beit-El, like the black rocks of Jerusalem and Mecca and elsewhere, are all meteorite shards? Or volcanic activity, previous to the tale about to unfold?
14:11 VA YIKCHU ET KOL RECHUSH SEDOM VA AMORAH VE ET KOL ACHLAM VA YELECHU
KJ: And they took all the goods of Sodom and Gomorrah, and all their victuals, and went their way.
BN: And they took everything that was worth pillaging in Sedom and Amorah, and everything there was to eat there, and they went on their way.
Let us be clear: Sedom and Amorah have been defeated, by Kedar-la-omer, their kings killed, and now its people, including Lot and his family as the next verse will confirm, taken away with all their wealth and goods, presumably as slaves. And yet, not too many verses on, we will find the city still intact, with a new king, a settled population, and Lot and his family still inhabiting the place (we shall let pass for the moment the surprise that he has become a town-dweller, given that his wealth was all in sheep and cattle; presumably he lost all that in the war, and was obliged to take refuge in the city); how do we get from this point to that point? Unless the war wasn't really a war at all, but a raid, in search of booty, and then depart once you have raped and sacked to your satisfaction.
"They" here being the Eylamites etc, not the five kings. When we recognise that the Bible's apparent chronology is false - or at least artificial - we can then begin to understand the nature of the destruction of the Cities of the Plain. The editors had two stories to tell: one supposed history, the other pure mythology. Since they were dealing with Sedom and Amorah already, it was logical to put the two together; but we can safely presume that either the original pillar of salt and destruction story had nothing to do with Av-Ram, or that it had nothing to do with Lot, or even both.
14:12 VA YIKCHU ET LOT VE ET RECHUSHO BEN ACHI AV-RAM VA YELECHU VE HU YOSHEV BI SEDOM
KJ: And they took Lot, Abram's brother's son, who dwelt in Sodom, and his goods, and departed.
BN: And they took Lot, Av-Ram's brother's son, who dwelt in Sedom, and all his goods, and departed.
ACHI (אחי): Why the genitive here - Achi means "my brother"? Presumably a scribal error rather than a grammatical error. It should be ACHO (אחו), but the scribe had shortened the Vav so that it looks like a Yud; a common error throughout the text, and in both directions, Yud for Vav and Vav for Yud.
14:13 VA YAVO HA PALIT VA YAGED LE AV-RAM HA IVRI VE HU SHOCHEN BE ELONEY MAMRE HA EMORI ACHI ESHKOL VE ACHI ANER VE HEM BA'ALEY VERIT AV-RAM
KJ: And there came one that had escaped, and told Abram the Hebrew; for he dwelt in the plain of Mamre the Amorite, brother of Eshcol, and brother of Aner: and these were confederate with Abram.
BN: But one of those who had escaped came and told Av-Ram the Ivri - he was camped by the terebinths of Mamre the Emorite, the brother of Eshkol, the brother of Aner; and these were confederate with Av-Ram...
Fascinating verse!
HA PALIT: The Biblical name for the "Philistines" is not consistent; at times we are given Pelesht (plural Pelishtim), at others Pelet (plural Peliti). Ha Palit connects to the latter, and makes sense, because PALIT = "refugee", which the "Philistines" were when they came, just as this man is now. (This does not suggest that the man on this occasion was a "Philistine"; merely that the verse gives us evidence of the root-meaning of the name.)
AV-RAM HA IVRI (אברם העברי): this the first time that we have been told explicitly that Av-Ram was an Ivri or "Hebrew"; does the BA'ALEY BRIT imply a confederacy of different tribes, because if it does, and it seems to, then it also infers that Av-Ram was not himself an Emorite; elsewhere we are told he was; unless the confederacy is recent, and with Kena'ani tribes.
Ivri is used here as a title, not by Av-Ram but by others describing Av-Ram. Egyptian and other Middle Eastern records give Habiru, and Apiru, and other variations, appear elsewhere - e.g. the Tel Amarna Tablets, where the Habiri are said to have made war on the Kena'ani towns and peoples. They are generally held to be a middle-class, educated, mercenary lot, who travelled nomadically and rose to prominence wherever they went. This theory is dubious, however (and remains so, three thousand years later, though it is still applied by anti-Semites to their Jewish descendants). Genesis 10:21 and 11:16 both give us EVER as the eponymous founder of the tribe; which is one explanation. Joshua 24:3 has "and I took your father Av-Raham from the other side of the river" (מעבר הנהר), from the root AVAR (עבר) meaning "to cross" or "pass over" (this latter not in the Mosaic sense), and we have seen Yechezke-El's (Ezekiel's) view earlier in this text (and in the note below). So many aetiologies for the name can only imply that the Ivri themselves had no idea why they were called Ivri, and as noted previously it was never used by them to describe themselves.
MAMRE HA EMORI (ממרא האמרי): this the first time we are told that Mamre was a person and not a place; an Emorite (see my note to Genesis 13:18); yet they are involved in an alliance or covenant (BERIT/ברית) with Av-Ram, and not with the five kings; nor were they apparently among the Emorites who were wiped out by the Eylamites in verse 7. But Genesis 35:28 gives Mamre as a place not a person: a section of Kiryat-Arba, later Chevron (Hebron); Genesis 23:18 as Chevron itself.
This is significant because we are later told of the Ivri that "your father was an Emorite" (Ezekiel 16:3); but in this verse he clearly wasn't; "your father" was a man of Charan who entered into a military confederacy with an Emorite.
ACHI (אחי): Again note the unusual use of the genitive.
ESHKOL (אשכל): the name of a valley or wadi near Chevron (Numbers 13:22/4); presumably named because it was a place of cultivation of grapes; ESHKOL means "a cluster" and in modern Ivrit has given ESHKOLIT (אֶשׁכּוֹלִית) for grapefruit.
ANER (ענר): possibly Ne'ir, the hill overlooking Chevron.
BA'ALEY BRIT (בעלי ברית), it sounds like they were the Ba'alim with whom Av-Ram made his covenant! In fact not, because Ba'al means "Lord" or "Master", in the same way that ADON does, and both were then used for the deity because that is the nature of the relationship. But a BA'AL BAYIT is a "proprietor" (ba'al = "master", bayit = "house, therefore "master of the house"), and the word is used in many other contexts, including "husband" and "owner". But what covenant is this; the same one he made with YHVH for ownership of the land, or a human equivalent? We know that he made covenants, in the form of contracts and treaties, with other Kena'anite towns and local leaders, from the covenant with Malki Tsedek later in this chapter.
14:14 VA YISHMA AV-RAM KI NISHBAH ACHIV VA YAREK ET CHANICHAV YELIDEY VEYTO SHEMONAH ASAR U SHELOSH ME'OT VA YIRDOPH AD DAN
KJ: And when Abram heard that his brother was taken captive, he armed his trained servants, born in his own house, three hundred and eighteen, and pursued them unto Dan.
BN: And when Av-Ram heard that his kinsman was taken captive, he set out with those of his clansmen who were trained in the use of weapons, three hundred and eighteen men, and pursued them as far as Dan.
VA YISHMA (וישמע): How come Av-Ram was left alone when the Eylamites swept through the land? (Because, as noted previously, the Eylamites never entered Kena'an, so he was unaffected). Which is why he only gets involved when it becomes personal: we are talking about specific tribal rivalries that don't touch other clans. But in that case his position with respect of the Emorites in all this becomes still more difficult to ascertain.
ACHIV(אחיו): Using "brother" in the more general sense of "kinsman" that we will witness throughout the Tanach.
SHEMONAH...ME'OT (שמנה עשר ושלש מאות): Little more than a bandit-gang of Bedou really! Hardly an army! Nimrod was able to muster thousands. Hammurabi likewise. The Egyptians could muster tens of thousands. Is there any significance in the exactness of the number 318? See the note on Eli-Ezer in Genesis 15:2.
AD DAN (עד דן): The extent of the defeat is massive, Mamre being close to the Dead Sea and Dan a good twenty miles north of the Sea of Galilee! But wait: did the battle go north, or did the battle go west, and Dan was still on the Mediterranean coast, not yet driven out (see Judges 18:1 ff and 19:40 ff)? This is much more complex than at first appears, and one of the best examples we have of what makes Bible reading so difficult (and Bible dating, especially for Torah, so complex):
DAN is of course one of the tribes, and therefore, if the Torah is accurate history, cannot have existed in Av-Ram's time, making the text erroneous. But from recent excavations we know that it preceded the Beney Yisra-El confederacy by several hundred years; see the note about brothers immediately above.
After its move, Dan became the northernmost point occupied by the Beney Yisra-El. Originally called La'ish = "Lion" (Judges 18:7 & especially 29) and later renamed Paneas – today Banyas, where all tourists go to kayak on the river Jordan. It was where Yerav-Am (Jeroboam) raised one of his golden calves (1 Kings 12:28/9), and famous for a grotto sacred to Pan and the Nymphs, from which the river Jordan springs. Herod built a temple there for Augustus; it was later known as Caesarea Philippi, a heathen city studiously avoided by Jesus (Matthew 16:13 and Mark 8:27). The mound over the grotto is today called Tel el-Qadi = "Mound of the Judge", "qadi" being Arabic for Dan/דן = "judge", and is a major archaeological dig. "From Dan to Be'er Sheva" was an idiom, exactly equivalent to the English "from John O'Groats to Land's End" to express the optimum geographical range of Yisra-El.
However, in the early years following the Joshuaic conquest, the area of Kena'an given to the tribe by Yehoshua was on the Mediterranean coast, in Sharon, just north of Aza, more or less where Tel Aviv stands today; inland from Jaffa (Joppa in the Christian Bible, Yafo today) as far as the border of Yehudah at Giv-On and Mitspeh); the Pelishtim later drove it out, and only then did it settle in the extreme north. So if Dan wasn't in La'ish until Yehoshua's time (which orthodoxy requires if the Torah is to be taken as literal and accurate), this reference becomes anachronistic; if Dan was already there, then the Yehoshua division needs rethinking. Is it possible that the move north in fact reflected two separate areas of Danites, the southern group moving to join the northern group after its explusion by the Pelishtim?
The tribe is clearly linked to the Greek Dana'ans (this link isn't actually terribly helpful, but irresistible for the warning at the top of the page; a better link is here, whence Celts, Phoenicians and other important groups - also see my essay "The Leprachauns of Palestine"); are we in fact talking about aboriginal inhabitants, and can we see in this a link to Ya'akov’s move from Kena'an to Padan Aram when he fled? Bear in mind that Dan was supposedly a son of Ya'akov; and Dinah his daughter. There is much to be explored further in this.
Hertz's explanation of the complexity is that it is called Dan "in anticipation" of its later name; that in fact it was now Leshem - לֶשֶׁם - (Joshua 19:47), its original name; or La'yish - לַיִשׁ - (Judges 18:29) which it became before Dan. Either way he places it in the extreme north. By means such as these do the orthodox defend their orthodoxy – sadly without success. The error is equivalent to reading a history of America and being told that Columbus got his entry papers at Ellis Island.
14:15 VA YACHALEK ALEYHEM LAILAH HU VA AVADAV VA YAKEM VE YIRDEPHEM AD CHOVAH ASHER MI SMOL LE DAMASEK
KJ: And he divided himself against them, he and his servants, by night, and smote them, and pursued them unto Hobah, which is on the left hand of Damascus.
BN: And he created two fronts from which to attack them by night, he and his servants, and he slaughtered them, and drove them as far as Chovah, which is on the left hand side of Damasek.
The scale of the victory, and the range of its geography, is truly immense. The tactic is similar to that used by Gid'on (Gideon) in Judges 7:16 ff. But it also reposes the Dan question above, because the original Dan was on the Mediterranean coast, miles south-west of the battle, while Damasek (Damascus) is in Assyria, north-east of the battle, and northern Dan would not be far off-route, whereas western Dan would be: so how does this affect the dating of the event, and the dating of the writing down of the event?
VE AVADAV: (ועבדיו): again note the use of this word; here it does not mean "servants" in the sense that we would mean today, and certainly not "slaves" as it is understood to have meant in the Mosheh stories in Mitsrayim: his "followers", perhaps his "serfs", "vassals" or "bondsmen", is more precise. And if he was the god, represented by a sacred king, then "worshippers" would be even more precise.
CHOVAH (חובה): literally "a hiding place", it was situated 50 miles north of Damasek (which tends to suggest that it was indeed the northern Dan, not the one in the Plain of Sharon, that was intended in verse 14). It is referred to in Judith 4:4 and 15:4. Eusebius, in "The Onomasticon", identifies it as Cocaba, the seat of the Ebionites. The Yehudit equivalent of Cocaba is Cochava (כוכבה) with a Kaf (כ) not a Chet (ח), meaning "star", but given as a feminine.
DAMASEK (דמשק): meaning the region not the city; west of Damascus, on the top of the Golan Heights, probably somewhere around what is now Quneitra - and therefore a very short ride from Banyas/La'ish/northern-Dan. Damascus itself was an important political and commercial centre from the very earliest times, mentioned in Egyptian inscriptions of the 16th century BCE.
14:16 VA YASHEV ET KOL HA RECHUSH VE GAM ET LOT ACHIV U RECHUSHO HESHIV VE GAM ET HA NASHIM VE ET HA AM
KJ: And he brought back all the goods, and also brought again his brother Lot, and his goods, and the women also, and the people.
BN: And he brought back all the goods, and he also brought back his brother Lot, and his goods, and the women also, and the people.
All of which suggests an enormous group of captives, and the sort of victory that must have made Av-Ram quite popular in the Vale of Sidim. But it also suggests confirms this was brigand-raid for loot and booty, not an invasion to secure land; "War of the Kings" may well then be hyperbolous.
14:17 VA YETS'E MELECH SEDOM LIKRA'TO ACHAREY SHUVO ME HAKOT ET KEDAR-LA-OMER VE ET HA MELACHIM ASHER ITO EL EMEK SHAVEH HU EMEK HA MELECH
KJ: And the king of Sodom went out to meet him after his return from the slaughter of Chedorlaomer, and of the kings that were with him, at the valley of Shaveh, which is the king's dale.
BN: And the king of Sedom went out to meet him, after his return from the slaughter of Kedar-la-omer and the kings who were with him, at the Vale of Shaveh - that is to say: the King's Vale.
MELECH SEDOM (מלך-סדם): Seeming to confirm, as noted above, that he did not die in the skirmish.
EMEK HA MELECH (עמק המלך): should this read Emek Ha Moloch? Josephus reckoned that such a royal valley stood about a quarter of a mile from Yeru-Shala'im; one such is also mentioned in 2 Samuel 18:18, connected with Av- Shalom (Absalom). If so, then it is the Valley of Hinnom, or properly Gey Hinnom, whence Gehenna as a Christian metaphor for Purgatory, and also known as Tophet, where (2 Chronicles 28:3) King Achaz performed human sacrifices. The identification of the Akeda, and of Mount Mor-Yah with Yeru-Shala'im may be worth noting in this context. Tophet, incidentally, was not specific to Yeru-Shala'im, nor was the name originally Yehudit; equivalent places were found throughout the ancient world - click here for more detail.
Josephus' Yeru-Shala'im suggestion is supported by the events in the verses that follow.
The reference to the King's Vale helps us in dating the writing of this part of the text as Davidic or later - no Yehudit text would give a "that is to say" reference to a king before the time of King Sha'ul. Is the story told as a way of reflecting David's own victories, or like Henry V as a means of giving moral justification to his land-claims: these are almost identical to the Davidic boundaries after all. Or is it again an example of prefiguration and foreshadowing, as pre-Yeru-Shala'im is about to become central to the text?
14:18 U MALKI TSEDEK MELECH SHALEM HOTSI LECHEM VA YAYIN VE HU CHOHEN LE EL ELYON
KJ: And Melchizedek king of Salem brought forth bread and wine: and he was the priest of the most high God.
BN: And Malki Tsedek, the king of Shalem, brought out bread and wine; he was the priest of El Elyon.
A hugely significant verse.
The first use of the word Kohen (Cohen), for example, and specifically with a Yeru-Shala'im connotation (the Beney Chet "common source" merits noting again here; the word Khan in Persian, and in various Indian contexts, having the same meaning of "leader", whether in the spiritual sense of a priest or the secular of a prince or king).
The first eucharist-kiddush as well: bread and wine (if it had been merely a dinner-party or a reception for a sheikh we can assume there would, at the very least, have been olives, and some pita with chumus, as well!).
The first reference to El Elyon, the god of proto-Yeru-Shala'im.
The first reference to Shalem, one of the seven hillside towns that will later form the conurbation Yeru-Shala'im.
And of course Malki Tsedek as king in Shalem is also an epithet for Shelomoh (Solomon): "King of Righteousness" or "King of Justice", linked to Shelomoh's proverbial Wisdom. Tsedek also gives us Tsadok, the name of David's first High Priest and the man from whom the entire Sadducaic tradition takes its name (though actually that didn't begin until a later High Priest who was also named Tsadok).
Suffer the mistranslations to come unto us! There is only one reading of this, extending it as far as necessary to elucidate that meaning: "Then Malki Tsedek, king of righteousness, king of Shalem, brought the ritual bread and wine which are the centrepieces of the ceremonies of the cult of Tammuz; for he was himself the priest appointed to perform the sacrifices for El Elyon, the god of the high place which is the hill of Yeru-Shala'im now called Mor-Yah though at that time it was still named for Ornan, or Arnan (אָרְנָן - see 1 Chronicles 21:25), or Araunah, or actually Oren-Yah (ארניה - see 2 Samuel 24:18), which are local variations on the name, which was Ishtar." And if anyone can reduce this to something more succinct without losing the full meaning, please post it in the comment box below.
Robert Graves and Raphael Patai concur with this reading: most satisfying! They also point out that Exodus 25:30 and 29:40, inter alia, establish the rules governing shew-bread, wine-libations and sacrifices; and that Leviticus 27:30 ff and Numbers 28:26 ff give the origins of the tithe laws in the festival of Shavu'ot (Weeks). Hertz, inevitably, prefers to think of bread and wine as mere expressions of friendship and hospitality, which of course they are, but not when given by a priest to a conquering sheikh.
Once again the Davidic link is important; because having completed his conquests, it was precisely in Yeru-Shala'im that David set up his kingdom, whither he brought the Ark, where he established the new cultic centre, and whose High Priest - now called Tsadok - anointed him king. So we are reading propaganda here, not history.
Psalm 110:4 has "you are a priest for ever after the manner of Malki Tsedek", meaning, very importantly for both David and the future Mashiyach, that the kingship is a dual-role also combining the priesthood. The name could very well mean "my king is righteousness", as translated, but much more likely it was a king-name: "Moloch the Just".
The Tel Amarna Tablets (15th century BCE letters to the Egyptian ruler from the vassal priest-king of pre-Yeru-Shala'im, known in the Tablets as Uru-Salim) refer to Adoni Tsedek, who is noted as the king of Yeru-Shala'im in Joshua 10:1; though this may be a deliberate alteration of the name to remove its pagan connection. The last Pharaoh of the 18th dynasty was Amenophis (generally remembered in the greekified form as Amenhotep IV) or Akhenaten, who replaced the Egyptian pantheism with a monotheistic worship of Ra as the sun-disc; he moved his capital from Thebes to Avaris (Tel El-Amarna) in Middle Egypt, but died in 1350 BCE a failure; after him the capital went back to Thebes, Amarna was abandoned, the sun-disc likewise, but his royal archive was preserved and found intact in 1887 - his son was Tutenkhamun, whose tomb was discovered by Howard Carter in Egypt's "Valley of the Kings" in 1922. David Rohl has some interesting conjectures about another tomb found there being Yoseph's, and Akhenaten being Yoseph's Pharaoh; a theory that alas holds much that is interesting but little that is proving.
VE MALKI TSEDEK (ומלכי-צדק): As noted above, Joshua 10:1 ff gives Adoni Tsedek as a king of Yeru-Shala'im. Tsedek is also identified with the planet Jupiter (Yo-Pater in Latin translates into Yehudit as Av-Raham, and into Sanskrit as Brahma); which would make him not simply the High Priest of Shalem but of Jupiter, the Latin equivalent of the god of Shalem. Tsedek later came to mean "righteousness". The Amonites called him Zaduk (or possibly Tsaduk – several English-language books on the subject give this, but as they generally mispronounce a Tsaddi (צ) as a Zayin (ז) - as with Zoar which should be Tso'ar in this story - there is a need for verification from an expert).
Shalem, or possibly Salem, or even Salim, is thought to be an early form of Yeru-Shala'im. I would suggest that Uru-Salim meant "City of Shalem", and that its kings bore the name Shalem as part of their title; evidence for this lies after David's conquest, when two of his sons were given Shalem names: Av-Shalom (Absalom) and Shelomoh (Solomon); we know that Shelomoh was really called Yedid-Yah (2 Samuel 12:24) until his coronation - as was David himself, so even that may have been a king-name - and only took the name Shelomoh at anointing-time; we can therefore deduce that Av-Shalom had another name, and took Av-Shalom (or probably Av-Sala'am or Av-Shalem) when (2 Samuel 15 ff) he had himself anointed king, seized the king's harem, and launched the insurrection that ended in the battle in the Wood of the King's Vale (ah, is that what it was called? I wondered why all these connections, davka, here, now! see verse 17).
EL ELYON: still used today: see the opening verse of the Amidah, and also Psalm 78:35 for its only other Biblical occurrence; although the Ras Shamra tablets show that it was a common name for the deity before Mosheh. The name means "god most high".
A Talmudic tradition makes Melchi-Tsedek (as he gets to be misnomered by this time, and still is in English) a convert by Av-Raham and head of a yeshiva, presumably in Yeru-Shala'im. Talmud has most of the Beney Yisra-Eli patriarchs practicing the Rabbinic form of Judaism – Yitschak (Isaac), for example, establishes the minchah (evening) prayers, etc. It is most amusing, but also important in helping us to see, with palpable and incontravertible evidence, how the immutable and fixed-for-all-time religion of Mosheh has gone through change upon change upon change, so that what we are reading in the Tanach can only be a description of the religion at that particular time, including its need to expurgate the parts that didn't fit, and to retroactively validate the new parts it has added.
14:19 VA YEVARCHEHU VA YOMAR BARUCH AV-RAM LE EL ELYON KONEH SHAMAYIM VA ARETS
KJ: And he blessed him, and said, Blessed be Abram of the most high God, possessor of heaven and earth:
BN: And he blessed him, and said, “Blessed be Av-Ram by El Elyon, maker of the heavens and the Earth.
Thus fulfilling the covenant in Genesis 12:2/3 whereby he would be a blessing, and would be blessed by other nations and other gods, as he is here, for it is clear from his neat response in verse 22 that he is not himself a worshipper of El Elyon. But it allows Av-Ram to take over the shrine, which gives David the precedent to do the same (and this becomes the problem today of claiming Yisra-El by right of divine covenant – the origins are false!).
KONEH: Are translators being too narrow when they all, universally, translate KONEH as "maker". In Genesis 1 we saw several verbs, varied according to the nature of the act - creating from chaos or from nothing, fashioning or refashioning the already existing, dividing and separating, etc - but KONEH was never one of them. Nor should it have been, because KONEH is the root that gives the name KAYIN (Cain), and has to do with "obtaining" and "acquiring" - see Genesis 4:1. I strongly suspect that the intention here was to reflect the scale of Av-Ram's stupendous victory in the recent war: he has "obtained" all the land, and all the shrines (not yet Chevron, and probably some others too), in the same way that the gods conquered nothingness, darkness, chaos and the primordial beasts, in order to "obtain" and "acquire" sovereignty over the Cosmos.
14:20 U VARUCH EL ELYON ASHER MIGEN TSAREYCHA BE YADECHA VA YITEN LO MA'ASER MI KOL
KJ: And blessed be the most high God, which hath delivered thine enemies into thy hand. And he gave him tithes of all.
BN: "And blessed be El Elyon, who has delivered your enemies into your hand." And he paid him all the tribute that was due.
Av-Ram is content for the Shalemites to see their salvation as stemming from El Elyon; but at the same time he is not a proselytiser for YHVH (or for El Shadai).
MA'ASER (מעשר): Some translations render this as a "tithe", others specify 10% - which is the amount of tithe that Ya'akov (Jacob) will later promise Elohim at Beit-El (Genesis 28:22). Deuteronomy 14:23 and 38, and 26:12, as well as Nehemiah 10:39 are the other instances of the word's usage, and while all make clear that a tithe is intended, none specify it by quantity, so it is unclear why some translators would assume the Jacobite. What is also clear is that this is a ceremony of welcoming the conquering sheikh, not an act of confederation, and definitely not a state visit for the purposes of tourism: Av-Ram is now the superpower in the region, and what is being agreed with Malki Tsedek is the tribute to be paid, protection money to the local "warlord".
My own translation is slightly naughty, playing on the two concepts behind the word tribute, but also foreshadowing what will happen in the next verse.
End of fourth fragment
14:21 VA YOMER MELECH SEDOM EL AV-RAM TEN LI HA NEPHESH VE HA RECHUSH KACH LACH
KJ: And the king of Sodom said unto Abram, Give me the persons, and take the goods to thyself.
BN: And the king of Sedom said to Av-Ram, "Give me the people, and take the goods for yourself."
MELECH SEDOM: The king of Sedom? But are we not with Malki Tsedek in Shalem? Or was it that, up until this time, the two were part of the same territory, under the same king, with Malki Tsedek as the high priest of Sedom as well?
NEPHESH... RECHUSH: Interesting suggestion. Av-Ram of course has little use for slaves, not being a settled people who can use them in city-toil or field-labour; indeed, being nomadic, they would be a burden. Wealth would have meant much more to him. We assume, as from the Mitsrayim story earlier, that he took his wealth mostly in sheep and cattle. But does it infer that more than the sale of his "wife" may have been involved in that earlier episode? Was he perhaps in Mitsrayim as a mercenary rather than a merchant?
Do not overlook the fact that Lot and his family were among the "people" here, and it was the rescuing of Lot that brought Av-Ram into the war in the first place. Then is this how Lot comes to be living in Sedom when the destruction happens?
14:22 VA YOMER AV-RAM EL MELECH SEDOM HARIYMOTI YADI EL YHVH EL ELYON KONEH SHAMAYIM VA ARETS
KJ: And Abram said to the king of Sodom, I have lift up mine hand unto the LORD, the most high God, the possessor of heaven and earth,
BN: And Av-Ram said to the king of Sedom, "I have lifted up my hand to YHVH El Elyon, maker of the heavens and the Earth...
If this is really what Av-Ram said, then he is carefully slipping in the YHVH at the beginning in order, not to claim the two as one, nor to suggest his god includes El Elyon, but so as to bow to their god while not blaspheming his own - very clever diplomacy! However, we have to assume that this is the Redactor slipping in the YHVH, rather than Av-Ram, because, as noted several times, Exodus 6:3.
What has not been picked up yet, is the back-and-forth between Shalem and Sedom here, as if the two are somehow one. The original reference to El Elyon was to Malki Tsedek's god, in Shalem; now it appears that Sedom had the same god. What impact does that have on our reading of the cataclysm about to follow? For one thing, Av-Ram is a confederate, or at least an ally, of Sedom, through this ceremony – so he has a moral obligation to come to the aid of the city.
KONEH: Note that this is again the verb used - see my note to verse 19.
14:23 IM MI CHUT VE AD SEROCH NA'AL VE IM EKACH MI KOL ASHER LACH VE LO TOMAR ANI HE'ESHARTI ET AV-RAM
KJ: That I will not take from a thread even to a shoelatchet, and that I will not take any thing that is thine, lest thou shouldest say, I have made Abram rich:
BN: "[and sworn] that I will not take so much as a thread or a shoe-lace, nor anything that belongs to you, lest you should say: 'I have made Av-Ram rich'...
Just as he has carefully asserted his religious independence, above, so again he resorts to careful diplomatic language (the technical term is "magnanimity in victory"), not needing to assert his military and political predominance, but definitely needing to ensure that he will be treated henceforth as an accepted newcomer rather than an unknown stranger in the land. This reflects the David story, and the manner in which he established himself in Tsi'on after taking the several towns that would come to form Yeru-Shala'im. And again it binds the two. See 2 Samuel 5 and 1 Chronicles 11.
14:24 BIL'ADAI RAK ASHER ACHLU HA NE'ARIM VE CHELEK HA ANASHIM ASHER HALCHU ITI ANER ESHKOL U MAMRE HEM YIK'CHU CHELKAM
KJ: Save only that which the young men have eaten, and the portion of the men which went with me, Aner, Eshcol, and Mamre; let them take their portion.
BN: "Save only what the young men have eaten, and the share of the men who went with me, Aner, Eshkol and Mamre; let them take their share."
And finally he is magnanimous enough to reward those who were in confederacy with him; after all, he's rich enough to be magnanimous with other people's wealth!
Who really were these three brothers (see the links to the Dictionary of Names: Aner, Eshkol, Mamre)? Any Davidic link? Given that the Terebinths of Mamre were a sacred grove, are we dealing, at least in the original myth, which yet another triad of male gods?
How significant is this relationship to the way Lot will be treated later on?
Samech break; Chapter 14 ends here.
And what mountain? The land around the Dead Sea, today anyway, is desert; on the Israeli side there is Masada, the hilltop fortress of King Herod, which rises to about 200 feet above sea level - except that the whole area is way below sea level, and those cliffs are actually about 1500 feet! On the eastern side of the Dead Sea, around Wadi al Mujib, even more canyon-like than Masada, but around the same height. But desert, and canyons, dry places. Only the Dead Sea itself is slime, and its immediate shoreline. Which leaves me wondering what the terrain looked like back then, and what caused it to change, if change it did, and seems from this account that it must have done. A Dead Sea that was all but dried out? The consequences of some ancient meteorite - the numbers of Ka'abas in the Hejaz, this part of Jordan, and in Kena'an; geologists reckon that the baetyloi that are called Beit-El, like the black rocks of Jerusalem and Mecca and elsewhere, are all meteorite shards? Or volcanic activity, previous to the tale about to unfold?
14:11 VA YIKCHU ET KOL RECHUSH SEDOM VA AMORAH VE ET KOL ACHLAM VA YELECHU
וַיִּקְחוּ אֶת כָּל רְכֻשׁ סְדֹם וַעֲמֹרָה וְאֶת כָּל אָכְלָם וַיֵּלֵכוּ
KJ: And they took all the goods of Sodom and Gomorrah, and all their victuals, and went their way.
BN: And they took everything that was worth pillaging in Sedom and Amorah, and everything there was to eat there, and they went on their way.
Let us be clear: Sedom and Amorah have been defeated, by Kedar-la-omer, their kings killed, and now its people, including Lot and his family as the next verse will confirm, taken away with all their wealth and goods, presumably as slaves. And yet, not too many verses on, we will find the city still intact, with a new king, a settled population, and Lot and his family still inhabiting the place (we shall let pass for the moment the surprise that he has become a town-dweller, given that his wealth was all in sheep and cattle; presumably he lost all that in the war, and was obliged to take refuge in the city); how do we get from this point to that point? Unless the war wasn't really a war at all, but a raid, in search of booty, and then depart once you have raped and sacked to your satisfaction.
"They" here being the Eylamites etc, not the five kings. When we recognise that the Bible's apparent chronology is false - or at least artificial - we can then begin to understand the nature of the destruction of the Cities of the Plain. The editors had two stories to tell: one supposed history, the other pure mythology. Since they were dealing with Sedom and Amorah already, it was logical to put the two together; but we can safely presume that either the original pillar of salt and destruction story had nothing to do with Av-Ram, or that it had nothing to do with Lot, or even both.
14:12 VA YIKCHU ET LOT VE ET RECHUSHO BEN ACHI AV-RAM VA YELECHU VE HU YOSHEV BI SEDOM
וַיִּקְחוּ אֶת לוֹט וְאֶת רְכֻשׁוֹ בֶּן אֲחִי אַבְרָם וַיֵּלֵכוּ וְהוּא יֹשֵׁב בִּסְדֹם
KJ: And they took Lot, Abram's brother's son, who dwelt in Sodom, and his goods, and departed.
BN: And they took Lot, Av-Ram's brother's son, who dwelt in Sedom, and all his goods, and departed.
ACHI (אחי): Why the genitive here - Achi means "my brother"? Presumably a scribal error rather than a grammatical error. It should be ACHO (אחו), but the scribe had shortened the Vav so that it looks like a Yud; a common error throughout the text, and in both directions, Yud for Vav and Vav for Yud.
14:13 VA YAVO HA PALIT VA YAGED LE AV-RAM HA IVRI VE HU SHOCHEN BE ELONEY MAMRE HA EMORI ACHI ESHKOL VE ACHI ANER VE HEM BA'ALEY VERIT AV-RAM
וַיָּבֹא הַפָּלִיט וַיַּגֵּד לְאַבְרָם הָעִבְרִי וְהוּא שֹׁכֵן בְּאֵלֹנֵי מַמְרֵא הָאֱמֹרִי אֲחִי אֶשְׁכֹּל וַאֲחִי עָנֵר וְהֵם בַּעֲלֵי בְרִית אַבְרָם
KJ: And there came one that had escaped, and told Abram the Hebrew; for he dwelt in the plain of Mamre the Amorite, brother of Eshcol, and brother of Aner: and these were confederate with Abram.
BN: But one of those who had escaped came and told Av-Ram the Ivri - he was camped by the terebinths of Mamre the Emorite, the brother of Eshkol, the brother of Aner; and these were confederate with Av-Ram...
Fascinating verse!
HA PALIT: The Biblical name for the "Philistines" is not consistent; at times we are given Pelesht (plural Pelishtim), at others Pelet (plural Peliti). Ha Palit connects to the latter, and makes sense, because PALIT = "refugee", which the "Philistines" were when they came, just as this man is now. (This does not suggest that the man on this occasion was a "Philistine"; merely that the verse gives us evidence of the root-meaning of the name.)
AV-RAM HA IVRI (אברם העברי): this the first time that we have been told explicitly that Av-Ram was an Ivri or "Hebrew"; does the BA'ALEY BRIT imply a confederacy of different tribes, because if it does, and it seems to, then it also infers that Av-Ram was not himself an Emorite; elsewhere we are told he was; unless the confederacy is recent, and with Kena'ani tribes.
Ivri is used here as a title, not by Av-Ram but by others describing Av-Ram. Egyptian and other Middle Eastern records give Habiru, and Apiru, and other variations, appear elsewhere - e.g. the Tel Amarna Tablets, where the Habiri are said to have made war on the Kena'ani towns and peoples. They are generally held to be a middle-class, educated, mercenary lot, who travelled nomadically and rose to prominence wherever they went. This theory is dubious, however (and remains so, three thousand years later, though it is still applied by anti-Semites to their Jewish descendants). Genesis 10:21 and 11:16 both give us EVER as the eponymous founder of the tribe; which is one explanation. Joshua 24:3 has "and I took your father Av-Raham from the other side of the river" (מעבר הנהר), from the root AVAR (עבר) meaning "to cross" or "pass over" (this latter not in the Mosaic sense), and we have seen Yechezke-El's (Ezekiel's) view earlier in this text (and in the note below). So many aetiologies for the name can only imply that the Ivri themselves had no idea why they were called Ivri, and as noted previously it was never used by them to describe themselves.
MAMRE HA EMORI (ממרא האמרי): this the first time we are told that Mamre was a person and not a place; an Emorite (see my note to Genesis 13:18); yet they are involved in an alliance or covenant (BERIT/ברית) with Av-Ram, and not with the five kings; nor were they apparently among the Emorites who were wiped out by the Eylamites in verse 7. But Genesis 35:28 gives Mamre as a place not a person: a section of Kiryat-Arba, later Chevron (Hebron); Genesis 23:18 as Chevron itself.
This is significant because we are later told of the Ivri that "your father was an Emorite" (Ezekiel 16:3); but in this verse he clearly wasn't; "your father" was a man of Charan who entered into a military confederacy with an Emorite.
ACHI (אחי): Again note the unusual use of the genitive.
ESHKOL (אשכל): the name of a valley or wadi near Chevron (Numbers 13:22/4); presumably named because it was a place of cultivation of grapes; ESHKOL means "a cluster" and in modern Ivrit has given ESHKOLIT (אֶשׁכּוֹלִית) for grapefruit.
ANER (ענר): possibly Ne'ir, the hill overlooking Chevron.
BA'ALEY BRIT (בעלי ברית), it sounds like they were the Ba'alim with whom Av-Ram made his covenant! In fact not, because Ba'al means "Lord" or "Master", in the same way that ADON does, and both were then used for the deity because that is the nature of the relationship. But a BA'AL BAYIT is a "proprietor" (ba'al = "master", bayit = "house, therefore "master of the house"), and the word is used in many other contexts, including "husband" and "owner". But what covenant is this; the same one he made with YHVH for ownership of the land, or a human equivalent? We know that he made covenants, in the form of contracts and treaties, with other Kena'anite towns and local leaders, from the covenant with Malki Tsedek later in this chapter.
14:14 VA YISHMA AV-RAM KI NISHBAH ACHIV VA YAREK ET CHANICHAV YELIDEY VEYTO SHEMONAH ASAR U SHELOSH ME'OT VA YIRDOPH AD DAN
וַיִּשְׁמַע אַבְרָם כִּי נִשְׁבָּה אָחִיו וַיָּרֶק אֶת חֲנִיכָיו יְלִידֵי בֵיתוֹ שְׁמֹנָה עָשָׂר וּשְׁלֹשׁ מֵאוֹת וַיִּרְדֹּף עַד דָּן
KJ: And when Abram heard that his brother was taken captive, he armed his trained servants, born in his own house, three hundred and eighteen, and pursued them unto Dan.
BN: And when Av-Ram heard that his kinsman was taken captive, he set out with those of his clansmen who were trained in the use of weapons, three hundred and eighteen men, and pursued them as far as Dan.
VA YISHMA (וישמע): How come Av-Ram was left alone when the Eylamites swept through the land? (Because, as noted previously, the Eylamites never entered Kena'an, so he was unaffected). Which is why he only gets involved when it becomes personal: we are talking about specific tribal rivalries that don't touch other clans. But in that case his position with respect of the Emorites in all this becomes still more difficult to ascertain.
ACHIV(אחיו): Using "brother" in the more general sense of "kinsman" that we will witness throughout the Tanach.
SHEMONAH...ME'OT (שמנה עשר ושלש מאות): Little more than a bandit-gang of Bedou really! Hardly an army! Nimrod was able to muster thousands. Hammurabi likewise. The Egyptians could muster tens of thousands. Is there any significance in the exactness of the number 318? See the note on Eli-Ezer in Genesis 15:2.
AD DAN (עד דן): The extent of the defeat is massive, Mamre being close to the Dead Sea and Dan a good twenty miles north of the Sea of Galilee! But wait: did the battle go north, or did the battle go west, and Dan was still on the Mediterranean coast, not yet driven out (see Judges 18:1 ff and 19:40 ff)? This is much more complex than at first appears, and one of the best examples we have of what makes Bible reading so difficult (and Bible dating, especially for Torah, so complex):
DAN is of course one of the tribes, and therefore, if the Torah is accurate history, cannot have existed in Av-Ram's time, making the text erroneous. But from recent excavations we know that it preceded the Beney Yisra-El confederacy by several hundred years; see the note about brothers immediately above.
After its move, Dan became the northernmost point occupied by the Beney Yisra-El. Originally called La'ish = "Lion" (Judges 18:7 & especially 29) and later renamed Paneas – today Banyas, where all tourists go to kayak on the river Jordan. It was where Yerav-Am (Jeroboam) raised one of his golden calves (1 Kings 12:28/9), and famous for a grotto sacred to Pan and the Nymphs, from which the river Jordan springs. Herod built a temple there for Augustus; it was later known as Caesarea Philippi, a heathen city studiously avoided by Jesus (Matthew 16:13 and Mark 8:27). The mound over the grotto is today called Tel el-Qadi = "Mound of the Judge", "qadi" being Arabic for Dan/דן = "judge", and is a major archaeological dig. "From Dan to Be'er Sheva" was an idiom, exactly equivalent to the English "from John O'Groats to Land's End" to express the optimum geographical range of Yisra-El.
However, in the early years following the Joshuaic conquest, the area of Kena'an given to the tribe by Yehoshua was on the Mediterranean coast, in Sharon, just north of Aza, more or less where Tel Aviv stands today; inland from Jaffa (Joppa in the Christian Bible, Yafo today) as far as the border of Yehudah at Giv-On and Mitspeh); the Pelishtim later drove it out, and only then did it settle in the extreme north. So if Dan wasn't in La'ish until Yehoshua's time (which orthodoxy requires if the Torah is to be taken as literal and accurate), this reference becomes anachronistic; if Dan was already there, then the Yehoshua division needs rethinking. Is it possible that the move north in fact reflected two separate areas of Danites, the southern group moving to join the northern group after its explusion by the Pelishtim?
The tribe is clearly linked to the Greek Dana'ans (this link isn't actually terribly helpful, but irresistible for the warning at the top of the page; a better link is here, whence Celts, Phoenicians and other important groups - also see my essay "The Leprachauns of Palestine"); are we in fact talking about aboriginal inhabitants, and can we see in this a link to Ya'akov’s move from Kena'an to Padan Aram when he fled? Bear in mind that Dan was supposedly a son of Ya'akov; and Dinah his daughter. There is much to be explored further in this.
Hertz's explanation of the complexity is that it is called Dan "in anticipation" of its later name; that in fact it was now Leshem - לֶשֶׁם - (Joshua 19:47), its original name; or La'yish - לַיִשׁ - (Judges 18:29) which it became before Dan. Either way he places it in the extreme north. By means such as these do the orthodox defend their orthodoxy – sadly without success. The error is equivalent to reading a history of America and being told that Columbus got his entry papers at Ellis Island.
14:15 VA YACHALEK ALEYHEM LAILAH HU VA AVADAV VA YAKEM VE YIRDEPHEM AD CHOVAH ASHER MI SMOL LE DAMASEK
וַיֵּחָלֵק עֲלֵיהֶם לַיְלָה הוּא וַעֲבָדָיו וַיַּכֵּם וַיִּרְדְּפֵם עַד חוֹבָה אֲשֶׁר מִשְּׂמֹאל לְדַמָּשֶׂק
KJ: And he divided himself against them, he and his servants, by night, and smote them, and pursued them unto Hobah, which is on the left hand of Damascus.
BN: And he created two fronts from which to attack them by night, he and his servants, and he slaughtered them, and drove them as far as Chovah, which is on the left hand side of Damasek.
The scale of the victory, and the range of its geography, is truly immense. The tactic is similar to that used by Gid'on (Gideon) in Judges 7:16 ff. But it also reposes the Dan question above, because the original Dan was on the Mediterranean coast, miles south-west of the battle, while Damasek (Damascus) is in Assyria, north-east of the battle, and northern Dan would not be far off-route, whereas western Dan would be: so how does this affect the dating of the event, and the dating of the writing down of the event?
VE AVADAV: (ועבדיו): again note the use of this word; here it does not mean "servants" in the sense that we would mean today, and certainly not "slaves" as it is understood to have meant in the Mosheh stories in Mitsrayim: his "followers", perhaps his "serfs", "vassals" or "bondsmen", is more precise. And if he was the god, represented by a sacred king, then "worshippers" would be even more precise.
CHOVAH (חובה): literally "a hiding place", it was situated 50 miles north of Damasek (which tends to suggest that it was indeed the northern Dan, not the one in the Plain of Sharon, that was intended in verse 14). It is referred to in Judith 4:4 and 15:4. Eusebius, in "The Onomasticon", identifies it as Cocaba, the seat of the Ebionites. The Yehudit equivalent of Cocaba is Cochava (כוכבה) with a Kaf (כ) not a Chet (ח), meaning "star", but given as a feminine.
DAMASEK (דמשק): meaning the region not the city; west of Damascus, on the top of the Golan Heights, probably somewhere around what is now Quneitra - and therefore a very short ride from Banyas/La'ish/northern-Dan. Damascus itself was an important political and commercial centre from the very earliest times, mentioned in Egyptian inscriptions of the 16th century BCE.
14:16 VA YASHEV ET KOL HA RECHUSH VE GAM ET LOT ACHIV U RECHUSHO HESHIV VE GAM ET HA NASHIM VE ET HA AM
וַיָּשֶׁב אֵת כָּל הָרְכֻשׁ וְגַם אֶת לוֹט אָחִיו וּרְכֻשׁוֹ הֵשִׁיב וְגַם אֶת הַנָּשִׁים וְאֶת הָעָם
KJ: And he brought back all the goods, and also brought again his brother Lot, and his goods, and the women also, and the people.
BN: And he brought back all the goods, and he also brought back his brother Lot, and his goods, and the women also, and the people.
All of which suggests an enormous group of captives, and the sort of victory that must have made Av-Ram quite popular in the Vale of Sidim. But it also suggests confirms this was brigand-raid for loot and booty, not an invasion to secure land; "War of the Kings" may well then be hyperbolous.
14:17 VA YETS'E MELECH SEDOM LIKRA'TO ACHAREY SHUVO ME HAKOT ET KEDAR-LA-OMER VE ET HA MELACHIM ASHER ITO EL EMEK SHAVEH HU EMEK HA MELECH
וַיֵּצֵא מֶלֶךְ סְדֹם לִקְרָאתוֹ אַחַרֵי שׁוּבוֹ מֵהַכּוֹת אֶת כְּדָרלָעֹמֶר וְאֶת הַמְּלָכִים אֲשֶׁר אִתּוֹ אֶל עֵמֶק שָׁוֵה הוּא עֵמֶק הַמֶּלֶךְ
BN: And the king of Sedom went out to meet him, after his return from the slaughter of Kedar-la-omer and the kings who were with him, at the Vale of Shaveh - that is to say: the King's Vale.
MELECH SEDOM (מלך-סדם): Seeming to confirm, as noted above, that he did not die in the skirmish.
EMEK HA MELECH (עמק המלך): should this read Emek Ha Moloch? Josephus reckoned that such a royal valley stood about a quarter of a mile from Yeru-Shala'im; one such is also mentioned in 2 Samuel 18:18, connected with Av- Shalom (Absalom). If so, then it is the Valley of Hinnom, or properly Gey Hinnom, whence Gehenna as a Christian metaphor for Purgatory, and also known as Tophet, where (2 Chronicles 28:3) King Achaz performed human sacrifices. The identification of the Akeda, and of Mount Mor-Yah with Yeru-Shala'im may be worth noting in this context. Tophet, incidentally, was not specific to Yeru-Shala'im, nor was the name originally Yehudit; equivalent places were found throughout the ancient world - click here for more detail.
Josephus' Yeru-Shala'im suggestion is supported by the events in the verses that follow.
The reference to the King's Vale helps us in dating the writing of this part of the text as Davidic or later - no Yehudit text would give a "that is to say" reference to a king before the time of King Sha'ul. Is the story told as a way of reflecting David's own victories, or like Henry V as a means of giving moral justification to his land-claims: these are almost identical to the Davidic boundaries after all. Or is it again an example of prefiguration and foreshadowing, as pre-Yeru-Shala'im is about to become central to the text?
14:18 U MALKI TSEDEK MELECH SHALEM HOTSI LECHEM VA YAYIN VE HU CHOHEN LE EL ELYON
וּמַלְכִּי צֶדֶק מֶלֶךְ שָׁלֵם הוֹצִיא לֶחֶם וָיָיִן וְהוּא כֹהֵן לְאֵל עֶלְיוֹן
KJ: And Melchizedek king of Salem brought forth bread and wine: and he was the priest of the most high God.
BN: And Malki Tsedek, the king of Shalem, brought out bread and wine; he was the priest of El Elyon.
A hugely significant verse.
The first use of the word Kohen (Cohen), for example, and specifically with a Yeru-Shala'im connotation (the Beney Chet "common source" merits noting again here; the word Khan in Persian, and in various Indian contexts, having the same meaning of "leader", whether in the spiritual sense of a priest or the secular of a prince or king).
The first eucharist-kiddush as well: bread and wine (if it had been merely a dinner-party or a reception for a sheikh we can assume there would, at the very least, have been olives, and some pita with chumus, as well!).
The first reference to El Elyon, the god of proto-Yeru-Shala'im.
The first reference to Shalem, one of the seven hillside towns that will later form the conurbation Yeru-Shala'im.
And of course Malki Tsedek as king in Shalem is also an epithet for Shelomoh (Solomon): "King of Righteousness" or "King of Justice", linked to Shelomoh's proverbial Wisdom. Tsedek also gives us Tsadok, the name of David's first High Priest and the man from whom the entire Sadducaic tradition takes its name (though actually that didn't begin until a later High Priest who was also named Tsadok).
Suffer the mistranslations to come unto us! There is only one reading of this, extending it as far as necessary to elucidate that meaning: "Then Malki Tsedek, king of righteousness, king of Shalem, brought the ritual bread and wine which are the centrepieces of the ceremonies of the cult of Tammuz; for he was himself the priest appointed to perform the sacrifices for El Elyon, the god of the high place which is the hill of Yeru-Shala'im now called Mor-Yah though at that time it was still named for Ornan, or Arnan (אָרְנָן - see 1 Chronicles 21:25), or Araunah, or actually Oren-Yah (ארניה - see 2 Samuel 24:18), which are local variations on the name, which was Ishtar." And if anyone can reduce this to something more succinct without losing the full meaning, please post it in the comment box below.
Robert Graves and Raphael Patai concur with this reading: most satisfying! They also point out that Exodus 25:30 and 29:40, inter alia, establish the rules governing shew-bread, wine-libations and sacrifices; and that Leviticus 27:30 ff and Numbers 28:26 ff give the origins of the tithe laws in the festival of Shavu'ot (Weeks). Hertz, inevitably, prefers to think of bread and wine as mere expressions of friendship and hospitality, which of course they are, but not when given by a priest to a conquering sheikh.
Once again the Davidic link is important; because having completed his conquests, it was precisely in Yeru-Shala'im that David set up his kingdom, whither he brought the Ark, where he established the new cultic centre, and whose High Priest - now called Tsadok - anointed him king. So we are reading propaganda here, not history.
Psalm 110:4 has "you are a priest for ever after the manner of Malki Tsedek", meaning, very importantly for both David and the future Mashiyach, that the kingship is a dual-role also combining the priesthood. The name could very well mean "my king is righteousness", as translated, but much more likely it was a king-name: "Moloch the Just".
The Tel Amarna Tablets (15th century BCE letters to the Egyptian ruler from the vassal priest-king of pre-Yeru-Shala'im, known in the Tablets as Uru-Salim) refer to Adoni Tsedek, who is noted as the king of Yeru-Shala'im in Joshua 10:1; though this may be a deliberate alteration of the name to remove its pagan connection. The last Pharaoh of the 18th dynasty was Amenophis (generally remembered in the greekified form as Amenhotep IV) or Akhenaten, who replaced the Egyptian pantheism with a monotheistic worship of Ra as the sun-disc; he moved his capital from Thebes to Avaris (Tel El-Amarna) in Middle Egypt, but died in 1350 BCE a failure; after him the capital went back to Thebes, Amarna was abandoned, the sun-disc likewise, but his royal archive was preserved and found intact in 1887 - his son was Tutenkhamun, whose tomb was discovered by Howard Carter in Egypt's "Valley of the Kings" in 1922. David Rohl has some interesting conjectures about another tomb found there being Yoseph's, and Akhenaten being Yoseph's Pharaoh; a theory that alas holds much that is interesting but little that is proving.
VE MALKI TSEDEK (ומלכי-צדק): As noted above, Joshua 10:1 ff gives Adoni Tsedek as a king of Yeru-Shala'im. Tsedek is also identified with the planet Jupiter (Yo-Pater in Latin translates into Yehudit as Av-Raham, and into Sanskrit as Brahma); which would make him not simply the High Priest of Shalem but of Jupiter, the Latin equivalent of the god of Shalem. Tsedek later came to mean "righteousness". The Amonites called him Zaduk (or possibly Tsaduk – several English-language books on the subject give this, but as they generally mispronounce a Tsaddi (צ) as a Zayin (ז) - as with Zoar which should be Tso'ar in this story - there is a need for verification from an expert).
Shalem, or possibly Salem, or even Salim, is thought to be an early form of Yeru-Shala'im. I would suggest that Uru-Salim meant "City of Shalem", and that its kings bore the name Shalem as part of their title; evidence for this lies after David's conquest, when two of his sons were given Shalem names: Av-Shalom (Absalom) and Shelomoh (Solomon); we know that Shelomoh was really called Yedid-Yah (2 Samuel 12:24) until his coronation - as was David himself, so even that may have been a king-name - and only took the name Shelomoh at anointing-time; we can therefore deduce that Av-Shalom had another name, and took Av-Shalom (or probably Av-Sala'am or Av-Shalem) when (2 Samuel 15 ff) he had himself anointed king, seized the king's harem, and launched the insurrection that ended in the battle in the Wood of the King's Vale (ah, is that what it was called? I wondered why all these connections, davka, here, now! see verse 17).
EL ELYON: still used today: see the opening verse of the Amidah, and also Psalm 78:35 for its only other Biblical occurrence; although the Ras Shamra tablets show that it was a common name for the deity before Mosheh. The name means "god most high".
A Talmudic tradition makes Melchi-Tsedek (as he gets to be misnomered by this time, and still is in English) a convert by Av-Raham and head of a yeshiva, presumably in Yeru-Shala'im. Talmud has most of the Beney Yisra-Eli patriarchs practicing the Rabbinic form of Judaism – Yitschak (Isaac), for example, establishes the minchah (evening) prayers, etc. It is most amusing, but also important in helping us to see, with palpable and incontravertible evidence, how the immutable and fixed-for-all-time religion of Mosheh has gone through change upon change upon change, so that what we are reading in the Tanach can only be a description of the religion at that particular time, including its need to expurgate the parts that didn't fit, and to retroactively validate the new parts it has added.
14:19 VA YEVARCHEHU VA YOMAR BARUCH AV-RAM LE EL ELYON KONEH SHAMAYIM VA ARETS
וַיְבָרְכֵהוּ וַיֹּאמַר בָּרוּךְ אַבְרָם לְאֵל עֶלְיוֹן קֹנֵה שָׁמַיִם וָאָרֶץ
KJ: And he blessed him, and said, Blessed be Abram of the most high God, possessor of heaven and earth:
BN: And he blessed him, and said, “Blessed be Av-Ram by El Elyon, maker of the heavens and the Earth.
Thus fulfilling the covenant in Genesis 12:2/3 whereby he would be a blessing, and would be blessed by other nations and other gods, as he is here, for it is clear from his neat response in verse 22 that he is not himself a worshipper of El Elyon. But it allows Av-Ram to take over the shrine, which gives David the precedent to do the same (and this becomes the problem today of claiming Yisra-El by right of divine covenant – the origins are false!).
KONEH: Are translators being too narrow when they all, universally, translate KONEH as "maker". In Genesis 1 we saw several verbs, varied according to the nature of the act - creating from chaos or from nothing, fashioning or refashioning the already existing, dividing and separating, etc - but KONEH was never one of them. Nor should it have been, because KONEH is the root that gives the name KAYIN (Cain), and has to do with "obtaining" and "acquiring" - see Genesis 4:1. I strongly suspect that the intention here was to reflect the scale of Av-Ram's stupendous victory in the recent war: he has "obtained" all the land, and all the shrines (not yet Chevron, and probably some others too), in the same way that the gods conquered nothingness, darkness, chaos and the primordial beasts, in order to "obtain" and "acquire" sovereignty over the Cosmos.
14:20 U VARUCH EL ELYON ASHER MIGEN TSAREYCHA BE YADECHA VA YITEN LO MA'ASER MI KOL
וּבָרוּךְ אֵל עֶלְיוֹן אֲשֶׁר מִגֵּן צָרֶיךָ בְּיָדֶךָ וַיִּתֶּן לוֹ מַעֲשֵׂר מִכֹּל
KJ: And blessed be the most high God, which hath delivered thine enemies into thy hand. And he gave him tithes of all.
BN: "And blessed be El Elyon, who has delivered your enemies into your hand." And he paid him all the tribute that was due.
Av-Ram is content for the Shalemites to see their salvation as stemming from El Elyon; but at the same time he is not a proselytiser for YHVH (or for El Shadai).
MA'ASER (מעשר): Some translations render this as a "tithe", others specify 10% - which is the amount of tithe that Ya'akov (Jacob) will later promise Elohim at Beit-El (Genesis 28:22). Deuteronomy 14:23 and 38, and 26:12, as well as Nehemiah 10:39 are the other instances of the word's usage, and while all make clear that a tithe is intended, none specify it by quantity, so it is unclear why some translators would assume the Jacobite. What is also clear is that this is a ceremony of welcoming the conquering sheikh, not an act of confederation, and definitely not a state visit for the purposes of tourism: Av-Ram is now the superpower in the region, and what is being agreed with Malki Tsedek is the tribute to be paid, protection money to the local "warlord".
My own translation is slightly naughty, playing on the two concepts behind the word tribute, but also foreshadowing what will happen in the next verse.
End of fourth fragment
14:21 VA YOMER MELECH SEDOM EL AV-RAM TEN LI HA NEPHESH VE HA RECHUSH KACH LACH
וַיֹּאמֶר מֶלֶךְ סְדֹם אֶל אַבְרָם תֶּן לִי הַנֶּפֶשׁ וְהָרְכֻשׁ קַח לָךְ
KJ: And the king of Sodom said unto Abram, Give me the persons, and take the goods to thyself.
BN: And the king of Sedom said to Av-Ram, "Give me the people, and take the goods for yourself."
MELECH SEDOM: The king of Sedom? But are we not with Malki Tsedek in Shalem? Or was it that, up until this time, the two were part of the same territory, under the same king, with Malki Tsedek as the high priest of Sedom as well?
NEPHESH... RECHUSH: Interesting suggestion. Av-Ram of course has little use for slaves, not being a settled people who can use them in city-toil or field-labour; indeed, being nomadic, they would be a burden. Wealth would have meant much more to him. We assume, as from the Mitsrayim story earlier, that he took his wealth mostly in sheep and cattle. But does it infer that more than the sale of his "wife" may have been involved in that earlier episode? Was he perhaps in Mitsrayim as a mercenary rather than a merchant?
Do not overlook the fact that Lot and his family were among the "people" here, and it was the rescuing of Lot that brought Av-Ram into the war in the first place. Then is this how Lot comes to be living in Sedom when the destruction happens?
14:22 VA YOMER AV-RAM EL MELECH SEDOM HARIYMOTI YADI EL YHVH EL ELYON KONEH SHAMAYIM VA ARETS
וַיֹּאמֶר אַבְרָם אֶל מֶלֶךְ סְדֹם הֲרִימֹתִי יָדִי אֶל יְהוָה אֵל עֶלְיוֹן קֹנֵה שָׁמַיִם וָאָרֶץ
KJ: And Abram said to the king of Sodom, I have lift up mine hand unto the LORD, the most high God, the possessor of heaven and earth,
BN: And Av-Ram said to the king of Sedom, "I have lifted up my hand to YHVH El Elyon, maker of the heavens and the Earth...
If this is really what Av-Ram said, then he is carefully slipping in the YHVH at the beginning in order, not to claim the two as one, nor to suggest his god includes El Elyon, but so as to bow to their god while not blaspheming his own - very clever diplomacy! However, we have to assume that this is the Redactor slipping in the YHVH, rather than Av-Ram, because, as noted several times, Exodus 6:3.
What has not been picked up yet, is the back-and-forth between Shalem and Sedom here, as if the two are somehow one. The original reference to El Elyon was to Malki Tsedek's god, in Shalem; now it appears that Sedom had the same god. What impact does that have on our reading of the cataclysm about to follow? For one thing, Av-Ram is a confederate, or at least an ally, of Sedom, through this ceremony – so he has a moral obligation to come to the aid of the city.
KONEH: Note that this is again the verb used - see my note to verse 19.
14:23 IM MI CHUT VE AD SEROCH NA'AL VE IM EKACH MI KOL ASHER LACH VE LO TOMAR ANI HE'ESHARTI ET AV-RAM
אִם מִחוּט וְעַד שְׂרוֹךְ נַעַל וְאִם אֶקַּח מִכָּל אֲשֶׁר לָךְ וְלֹא תֹאמַר אֲנִי הֶעֱשַׁרְתִּי אֶת אַבְרָם
KJ: That I will not take from a thread even to a shoelatchet, and that I will not take any thing that is thine, lest thou shouldest say, I have made Abram rich:
BN: "[and sworn] that I will not take so much as a thread or a shoe-lace, nor anything that belongs to you, lest you should say: 'I have made Av-Ram rich'...
Just as he has carefully asserted his religious independence, above, so again he resorts to careful diplomatic language (the technical term is "magnanimity in victory"), not needing to assert his military and political predominance, but definitely needing to ensure that he will be treated henceforth as an accepted newcomer rather than an unknown stranger in the land. This reflects the David story, and the manner in which he established himself in Tsi'on after taking the several towns that would come to form Yeru-Shala'im. And again it binds the two. See 2 Samuel 5 and 1 Chronicles 11.
14:24 BIL'ADAI RAK ASHER ACHLU HA NE'ARIM VE CHELEK HA ANASHIM ASHER HALCHU ITI ANER ESHKOL U MAMRE HEM YIK'CHU CHELKAM
בִּלְעָדַי רַק אֲשֶׁר אָכְלוּ הַנְּעָרִים וְחֵלֶק הָאֲנָשִׁים אֲשֶׁר הָלְכוּ אִתִּי עָנֵר אֶשְׁכֹּל וּמַמְרֵא הֵם יִקְחוּ חֶלְקָם
KJ: Save only that which the young men have eaten, and the portion of the men which went with me, Aner, Eshcol, and Mamre; let them take their portion.
BN: "Save only what the young men have eaten, and the share of the men who went with me, Aner, Eshkol and Mamre; let them take their share."
And finally he is magnanimous enough to reward those who were in confederacy with him; after all, he's rich enough to be magnanimous with other people's wealth!
Who really were these three brothers (see the links to the Dictionary of Names: Aner, Eshkol, Mamre)? Any Davidic link? Given that the Terebinths of Mamre were a sacred grove, are we dealing, at least in the original myth, which yet another triad of male gods?
How significant is this relationship to the way Lot will be treated later on?
Samech break; Chapter 14 ends here.
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