The Abraham Story Part 7: A Flood Of Violence

Genesis 12-13 as Replay of Genesis 2-6

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If Genesis 2 was about the Eden blessing, Genesis 3, failure one, Genesis 4 and 6, we kind of already traced through that. And it led up to an unleashing of violence on the land, and God met it with cosmic collapse and the flood. We're clearly walking along that cycle here, Eden blessing, failure in Egypt, the division of the brothers, and now down to Sodom. And Sodom, we keep being told, is like, it's not good, bad stuff going on down there. But God's preparing of refuge, an ark-like refuge for his Noah, right, of this generation with Avram. What do you just know is going to happen next?

This literature is trying to train us in how to discern the will of God in our life's, in life circumstances. 

That there comes a time in every human life and in every human community when the sins of the parents keep accumulating over the generations, and history reaches these crisis moments, and these crisis moments are usually full of untold pain and destruction. But yet, also at the same time, there are moments of courage and faith, and the human story continues out the other side. And every time that cycle happens, it's a chance for yet another round for the images of God to tune in to God's purpose.  - Tim Mackie The Bible Project

And isn't that interesting? It's like, and we're only in chapter 13 for goodness' sakes. I mean this is, so what can you just guess? So what's gonna happen is an outbreak of horrendous violence among nine kings who were, I mean, just death galore in the next paragraph, early parts of Genesis 14. But just to kind of close the bit on this, our land as a refuge. While the kings of this world are murdering and plundering, where's Avram?

Genesis 14:13 CSB

13 One of the survivors came and told Abram the Hebrew, who lived near the oaks belonging to Mamre the Amorite, the brother of Eshcol and the brother of Aner. They were bound by a treaty with Abram.

So we get this whole scene in the next chapter of this terrible war battle scene. And then the camera just shifts to Avram. Do you remember where we left him? Up on the hilltop hanging out by his altar in the tent in the tree.

There's a battle happening down below. And this refugee, a remnant, a remnant from the battle, from the flood of violence, comes up to him and tells Avram. And you know, he was just chilling by the oaks. Oh, you know who was also there with him? A bunch of Canaanites, a bunch of Canaanites were up there. Yeah, and Amorites, this guy Eshcol, his brother Aner.

These were, and the word here is they were members of a covenant with Avram.

And they're just fine. No problems up there.

So while the battle and the flood of human violence is raging down below in the valley of Sodom, you've got God's chosen one, chilling in his safety up in his refuge, and you know who else is with him? A bunch of Canaanites. So, and how are these Canaanites experiencing the blessing of this refuge? 

they are participating in, they're in on the covenant. You got these non-Israelites, and you're just like, I feel like I'm reading the New Testament here. 

He's become a blessing. So he was a curse to Pharaoh. Maybe he learned a thing or two, but now he's making pacts and covenants of peace with Canaanites. And the Canaanites who make peace in covenant with Avram, they get in the ark. Whereas the Canaanites down below who are, you know, building the city of man, oh, they just, they're wiped out in the flood of violence. Isn't this an interesting portrait? 

I think it just has so much payoff, this little scene here in chapter 14. You're just like, what? Why am I being told he's sitting by a tree with some Canaanites that he made a covenant with? Like, what does that matter? But if you're tracking with a melody, this is Noah and his wives and his sons and their wives. Anybody who was with Noah, you were safe. And so this, this becomes the image, those who are associated by covenant with God's chosen one will be saved from the flood.

A Flood of Violence

All right, the flood is upon us.

Avram's failures and foibles and divisions have led to this parting of the ways and Avram to the hills in a refuge-Eden ark. Lot down below in the city of Sodom where there's failure and trouble brewing. 

So if we're mapping onto the flood, and remember, there was another cycle of the melody that went from the flood to Noah and his debacle in his little Eden tent and the brothers, and then that led to the building of Babylon and the scattering of Babylon.

So what if you had a narrative that brought together language and themes from the flood and from Babylon? We would call this Genesis chapter 14.

Three Beats or sections of chapter 14

The first is gonna set up the battle, the second is gonna show Abram's role in the battle, and then the third is the Melchizedek exchange.

anyone want to volunteer to read all these names for me?😊What we are going to do is read through it once no stops then I am am going to read through it again with commentary.

Genesis 14:1–16 NASB95

1 And it came about in the days of Amraphel king of Shinar, Arioch king of Ellasar, Chedorlaomer king of Elam, and Tidal king of Goiim, 2 that they made war with Bera king of Sodom, and with Birsha king of Gomorrah, Shinab king of Admah, and Shemeber king of Zeboiim, and the king of Bela (that is, Zoar). 3 All these came as allies to the valley of Siddim (that is, the Salt Sea). 4 Twelve years they had served Chedorlaomer, but the thirteenth year they rebelled. 5 In the fourteenth year Chedorlaomer and the kings that were with him, came and defeated the Rephaim in Ashteroth-karnaim and the Zuzim in Ham and the Emim in Shaveh-kiriathaim, 6 and the Horites in their Mount Seir, as far as El-paran, which is by the wilderness. 7 Then they turned back and came to En-mishpat (that is, Kadesh), and conquered all the country of the Amalekites, and also the Amorites, who lived in Hazazon-tamar. 8 And the king of Sodom and the king of Gomorrah and the king of Admah and the king of Zeboiim and the king of Bela (that is, Zoar) came out; and they arrayed for battle against them in the valley of Siddim, 9 against Chedorlaomer king of Elam and Tidal king of Goiim and Amraphel king of Shinar and Arioch king of Ellasar—four kings against five. 10 Now the valley of Siddim was full of tar pits; and the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah fled, and they fell into them. But those who survived fled to the hill country. 11 Then they took all the goods of Sodom and Gomorrah and all their food supply, and departed. 12 They also took Lot, Abram’s nephew, and his possessions and departed, for he was living in Sodom. 13 Then a fugitive came and told Abram the Hebrew. Now he was living by the oaks of Mamre the Amorite, brother of Eshcol and brother of Aner, and these were allies with Abram. 14 When Abram heard that his relative had been taken captive, he led out his trained men, born in his house, three hundred and eighteen, and went in pursuit as far as Dan. 15 He divided his forces against them by night, he and his servants, and defeated them, and pursued them as far as Hobah, which is north of Damascus. 16 He brought back all the goods, and also brought back his relative Lot with his possessions, and also the women, and the people.

"So it came about in the days of Amraphel, king of Shinar," Shinar is a plain of Mesopotamia. The last time this word was used is in the narrative of the building of Babylon. The people went east, and they found the plain in Shinar, and they built a city and a tower there. And so it's a very clear linkage back to the place that Terakh and Avram left. Babylon has followed them back, but into the land. 

"in the days of Amraphel, king of Shinar, and Arioch, king of Ellasar, and Chedorlaomer, the king of Elam," Elam is the biblical Hebrew word for Persia,

"and Tidal, king of Goiim," Goiim is the Hebrew word for nations. It's the plural word, nations. 

So we've got Babylon and Persia. I wonder if these are two empires that will play any significant role in the story to come. Babylon and Persia, Ellasar, million debates about Ellasar, and then the nations. So we've got a four-king coalition from Mesopotamia, Babylon, king of Babylon's in the lead.

It's just the nations.

"They made war with five Canaanite kings." And all of their names are supposed to make you laugh. They're all ironic, sarcastic wordplays. 

"They made war with Bera, king of Sodom," his name means In Evil.

"And with Birsha, king of Gomorrah," his name means In Wickedness. 

"And with Shinab, king of Admah," his name means I Hate My Father.

"And with Shemeber, king of Zeboiim," his name means Name of Destruction. 

"And with the king of Bela," which, his name means Devour or Consumed. 

There's 10 parts in this chapter that stand outside the sentence structure, and they're literally just little narrator comments, sometimes they are in parenthesis in your bibles. So, dear reader, this town, Bela, this is Zoar. Now you don't know why that's important yet. You're gonna have to wait till chapter 19, but then you'll know why I'm telling you this right now.

"So all of these," four Mesopotamian kings, five Canaanite kings,

"they join together in the Vale of Siddim. This is the sea of salt." Or the Dead Sea as we call it today. Only it's not dead yetit was like Eden. But it's what will eventually become the Dead Sea of Salt.

So four kings against five kings. Four plus five is nine.

Okay, that might seem perfectly obvious, but gotta wait for it 'cause there's gonna be one more king in this story who's not gonna appear till the last panel, a guy named Melchizedek.

Notice that all of these kings are kings of wickedness, Wickedness, Father Hater, Evil, Devourer. Yeah? So these are all kings of wickedness. 

But that 10th king is the king of Zedek, Melchizedek, Zedek means Righteousness. So you got the wicked kings versus the king of righteousness at the end. The wicked kings, they just kill everybody in sight. The king of righteousness, he makes peace. He brings out bread and wine.

So The nations are doing what the nations do, just slaughtering each other.

Verse 4 - Here's the backstory. "You see, for 12 years, the five Canaanite kings had been slaves of Chedorlaomer. And in the 13th year, they said, 'Enough, we're not paying our taxes.' They rebelled. And so in the 14th year, Chedorlaomer went, and the kings who were with him, and they went on a rampage." But before they actually started the battle with the five kings, they did this side mission. And they just killed a ton of people. 

"First, they struck the Rephaim. You know, the Rephaim who lived down at Asherah of twin peaks." It's really interesting, different English translations, what they do with these place names and these- Sometimes they'll put little footnotes to say like the Hebrew is difficult or what it means. But almost all of these names are symbolic and loaded with meaning here. So Asherah is the name of a Canaanite goddess, and twin peaks, the mountains, mountains. The goddess of the mountains.

So whoever and whatever the Rephaim are, which we'll talk about, they live on some hilltops named after a Canaanite goddess of fertility. And Asherah features later in the story of the Bible, and it's not good stuff. "So they struck the Rephaim. They struck the Zuzim in Ham

They struck the Emim in the plain of the twin cities." The high place of two cities. The low valley, the plain of two cities. Oh, "and they also struck the Horites who live in the mountains of Seir. You know, up by the oak of Paran, which is in the wilderness." you'll learn all about this in the book of Numbers.

So after they went on their killing spree of all those, that crew, well, "then they returned and they went to the spring of judgment. Oh, this is Kadesh," where the Israelites are gonna wander to in the book of Numbers, but tuck that away for later.

And they weren't done. When they went to the spring of judgment, "they struck all the field of the Amalekites, and also those Amorites, who live on the hill of the palm trees."

And what am I supposed to do with all this information? 

Verse 8"So the king of Sodom went out." And you're like, wait, the king of Sodom? Oh, yeah, remember, it was like a big parentheses in the middle there. Now we're going back up to verse 3. Remember, the five kings and the four kings, they went out to meet together. Okay, so we'll go back to that now.

That whole thing was just background, like what happened before the battle. "So the king of Sodom, he went out, and the king of Gomorrah, and the king of Admah, and the king of Zeboiim, and the king of Bela. Yeah, remember, Bela is Zoar," it'll be important in chapter 19. "And so they lined themselves up for war in the Valley of Siddim, against Chedorlaomer, king of Elam, and Tidal, king of Goiim, and Amraphel, king of Shinar, and Arioch, king of Ellasar. Four kings against five." Somebody really, really wants you to count

Yeah.The number of these kings and to count the number of names.

Which is why it's impossible that it's not important that Melchizedek is king number 10, with as much of an important name as all of these other guys.

"Now here's the thing you should know. That Valley of Siddim where the battle that took place, oh, man, it was just full of all of these pits of tar." It's interesting, that's the same stuff that the people of Babylon used to make the bricks and the wall out of. Remember, the people of Babylon say, "You know, we got an idea. Instead of heaping up stones and using cement, let's use bricks and let's use tar for the bricks." All these tar pits down here.

Well, how'd the battle go for the Canaanite kings? Yeah, not well. The moment they got into the battlefield, "they fled, the king of Sodom and the king of Gomorrah especially." And guess what happened when they fled? They just didn't look where they were going and "they fell into these pits of tar." "but there were some that remained over, and they fled up to the mountains."

But the king of Sodom was trapped in a pit and, oh, the word "pit" is "be’erot" in Hebrew, and it's the four letters of the word "window," which, the last time that word was used was in the flood narrative when the windows of the skies open up.

So the ’arubbot are the windows of up high dropping down death-dealing rain, and then the be’erot are the holes in the ground (laughs) that go down into the underworld in the tar and the pits, and that's where the king of Sodom goes. But he crawls out, crawls out, which is a really fitting image. So there's a lot, in the notes, I track it through with lots of other details. This narrative's permeated with flood vocabulary and wordplays, kinda like the way we saw the Eden narrative was in the Egypt story. It's very similar stuff going on here.

Where's Abraham? He's not anywhere. Why do I care about any of this? Okay, so let's just make some observations. 

First of all, this list of kings is repeated twice. Emphasis on their names and how many there are. And they make up these outer sections.

And then in the middle is this side battle that the four kings did, and they just swept through the hill country killing all of these people.

And then they lose, the Canaanites lose the battle. And you get the scene here. 

The kings are being put forward from places that are gonna play really key roles much later in the biblical story, Persia and Babylon. That's totally a thing. This story has been designed with an eye towards things coming much later in the story. 

The list of nine kings is repeated two times, but not identically. The order of the four Mesopotamian kings is inverted so that the king of Shinar is number one in the first list, and the king of Elam is number one in the second list. This seemingly random variation becomes meaningful when the story is mapped out in its literary sequence

The names have been listed in symmetrical pattern, which places the Mesopotamian kings at the outer locations and highlights the giant clans in the center position. Each of these design features seems intentional and communicates something significant.

The inverted Mesopotamian kings: The two kings highlighted are the rulers of Shinar and Elam. Both kingdoms play a significant role in the larger biblical story.

If you look at the two lists of names, you'll notice the five Canaanite kings are listed in the same order, but the four Mesopotamian kings, the names are switched. And if you lay them all out in a sequence, like I've done here in the notes, all of a sudden, you realize this whole thing that we just read has been arranged in an elaborate symmetry of the first two kings mentioned are the last two kings mentioned. The second two kings of Mesopotamia are the second two. Identical, identical. And at the center of the composition are the giant clans. So it's a way, again, of literary design taking you through a sequence and then bringing you back out the sequence and creating a focus on the center. And it's the slaying of the giants become the center focal point.

All of the sons of Noah—Shem, Ham, and Japheth—are involved in this civil war. The victor is from the line of Shem, just as Noah anticipated. That is Avram

The Mesopotamian Kings Versus the Giants

 So we're told about the side mission and the striking of the Rephaim, and the Zuzim, and the Emim, and the Horites, and the Amalekites, and the Amorites. If you get out a concordance, or if you know how to use concordance, it's your best friend, one of your best friends for biblical studies. It's just when you see something and you're like, I bet that's important, and you just look it up. You can do it with big, fat print ones, or digital ones are much quicker to use. And you're just like, hmm, where do these people or where does this place appear?

And pretty quick, you can get a sketch.

These four groups here, the Rephaim, the Zuzim, the Emim, specifically, you're gonna meet later on in the Torah, and they're all giants. They're all giants.

Rephaim in Ashteroth Qarnaim

So you've got Babylon leading the charge in this flood of violent warrior kings. Think violent warriors, the flood, violent kings spreading bloodshed across the land.

And who they're striking is the Rephaim.

The Rephaim were a clan of giants, with a king named Og who ruled in Ashteroth, in the region of Bashan on the east side of the Jordan River.

Deuteronomy 3:8–11 CSB

8 “At that time we took the land from the two Amorite kings across the Jordan, from the Arnon Valley as far as Mount Hermon, 9 which the Sidonians call Sirion, but the Amorites call Senir, 10 all the cities of the plateau, Gilead, and Bashan as far as Salecah and Edrei, cities of Og’s kingdom in Bashan. 11 (Only King Og of Bashan was left of the remnant of the Rephaim. His bed was made of iron. Isn’t it in Rabbah of the Ammonites? It is 13½ feet long and 6 feet wide by a standard measure.)

Joshua 13:12 ESV

12 all the kingdom of Og in Bashan, who reigned in Ashtaroth and in Edrei (he alone was left of the remnant of the Rephaim); these Moses had struck and driven out.

The Greek Septuagint translators of Genesis rendered the Rephaim of Genesis 14:5 with the Greek word gigantas (γιγαντας) = “giants,” the same word they use to translate “Nephilim” in Genesis 6:4.

This story here is telling us a story about a flood of violent Babylonian kings who, or an allied Mesopotamian kings who come through, and they began slaying giants in the hill country.

And lo and behold, Moses and Joshua are gonna meet one, the one remaining.

And when you meet this Og later on in Deuteronomy and Joshua, he was a remnant of the Rephaim. It raises the question of like, well, who are the rest of the Rephaim, and what happened to them? So this narrative is giving a backstory. What happened when the Israelites meet these giants in the land? Where do they come from? And why are there just a few left? Genesis 14 is giving you the backstory.

The Zuzim (םיזוז) in Ham

The Zuzim, also known as the “Zamzummim” (םימזמז) , lived in the region later inhabited by the Ammonites, who were actually part of the Rephaim giant clans.

Deuteronomy 2:19–21 ESV

19 And when you approach the territory of the people of Ammon, do not harass them or contend with them, for I will not give you any of the land of the people of Ammon as a possession, because I have given it to the sons of Lot for a possession.’ 20 (It is also counted as a land of Rephaim. Rephaim formerly lived there—but the Ammonites call them Zamzummim— 21 a people great and many, and tall as the Anakim; but the Lord destroyed them before the Ammonites, and they dispossessed them and settled in their place,

The Zuzim are what Moses calls the Zamzummim, (chuckles) in Deuteronomy 2. And he says, "Oh, yeah, they were a huge, tall people, tall like the Anakim." And the Anakim are also likened to the Emim in Deuteronomy, a people great and tall, like the Anakim. People thought that the Anakim were like the Rephaim. They weren't. They were just all giants.

What's happening is this story, this word, "Rephaim," especially, in the old Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek, called the Septuagint, which was a really important translation, when the Greek translators got to the word "Rephaim," they just straight up used the Greek word "gigantas" to translate it, the giants.

The Emim in Shaveh-Qiryataim

The Emim were also actually part of the Rephaim giant clans.

Deuteronomy 2:10–11 CSB

10 The Emim, a great and numerous people as tall as the Anakim, had previously lived there. 11 They were also regarded as Rephaim, like the Anakim, though the Moabites called them Emim.

All of these tribes are connected to the Anakim and the Nephilim from the time of the flood.

Numbers 13:27–33 ESV

27 And they told him, “We came to the land to which you sent us. It flows with milk and honey, and this is its fruit. 28 However, the people who dwell in the land are strong, and the cities are fortified and very large. And besides, we saw the descendants of Anak there. 29 The Amalekites dwell in the land of the Negeb. The Hittites, the Jebusites, and the Amorites dwell in the hill country. And the Canaanites dwell by the sea, and along the Jordan.” 30 But Caleb quieted the people before Moses and said, “Let us go up at once and occupy it, for we are well able to overcome it.” 31 Then the men who had gone up with him said, “We are not able to go up against the people, for they are stronger than we are.” 32 So they brought to the people of Israel a bad report of the land that they had spied out, saying, “The land, through which we have gone to spy it out, is a land that devours its inhabitants, and all the people that we saw in it are of great height. 33 And there we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak, who come from the Nephilim), and we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them.”

This entire list of the inhabitants of Canaan and the Transjordan provides an accounting for all the regions that the Israelites will later enter in Numbers 20 onward. These regions were filled with earlier inhabitants, clans of giants who were dealt with by God’s providential justice long before Israel entered into the land.

Deuteronomy 2:9–11 CSB

9 The Lord said to me, ‘Show no hostility toward Moab, and do not provoke them to battle, for I will not give you any of their land as a possession, since I have given Ar as a possession to the descendants of Lot.’ ” 10 The Emim, a great and numerous people as tall as the Anakim, had previously lived there. 11 They were also regarded as Rephaim, like the Anakim, though the Moabites called them Emim.

Deuteronomy 2:18–23 NASB95

18 ‘Today you shall cross over Ar, the border of Moab. 19 ‘When you come opposite the sons of Ammon, do not harass them nor provoke them, for I will not give you any of the land of the sons of Ammon as a possession, because I have given it to the sons of Lot as a possession.’ 20 (It is also regarded as the land of the Rephaim, for Rephaim formerly lived in it, but the Ammonites call them Zamzummin, 21 a people as great, numerous, and tall as the Anakim, but the Lord destroyed them before them. And they dispossessed them and settled in their place, 22 just as He did for the sons of Esau, who live in Seir, when He destroyed the Horites from before them; they dispossessed them and settled in their place even to this day. 23 And the Avvim, who lived in villages as far as Gaza, the Caphtorim who came from Caphtor, destroyed them and lived in their place.)

Moses’ speech in Deuteronomy 2 assumes a backstory of God’s judgment on the giant clans on the east side of the Jordan, and Genesis 14 supplies that narrative. The point of Moses’ speech is that just as God providentially gave other lands to the non-chosen descendants and relatives of Avraham (Lot or Esau), so also he will use the Israelites to dispossess the Canaanites. Genesis 14 provides the providential backstory, implying that God used the eastern kings led by Babylon as a divine instrument of judgment on the giant clans of Canaan and Transjordan. However, because of Babylon’s over-assertion in the capturing of Lot, the seed of Avraham, God then delivers the coalition over to Avraham.

This chapter, then, makes Avram the superior to the eastern kings, the Canaanites, and all the giants of the ancient time. It also qualifies Avram to be the true inheritor of these very lands, because he was their deliverer.

This all seems aligned with a strategy that sets the returnees from exile on analogy with Avraham. They too (re)entered “Canaan” (= Persian Yehud) after God had used Babylon to judge the previous inhabitants (the Israelites and Judean kingdoms along with the non-Israelite population), and found themselves called to inherit it according to God’s promise.

So the giants are a part of this melody going all the way back to the rebellion of the sons of God and the daughters of men in Genesis chapter 6. And they see, and they took, and they chose, and that wasn't good. And the Nephilim were in the land in those days. And they were mighty warriors, man-slayers. And they, like Lemek, are filling the ground with blood, and that cry rises up to God, and so on. So the giants, this theme of the giants, the giant clans in the land, is a key part of the melody of the spread of human violence that has gone beyond the boundaries of what's acceptable to God, who's trying to bring order to this thing. 

So giants have a totally, people who are super tall have a totally different set of associations around them in our cultural setting. Cause it's either as, like, athletes, right? People who are just like supercharged humans in our culture are put into these fabricated arenas of war called stadiums, (laughs) and they compete for each other, not to the death, but to defeat. But we've created, in modern sports, this ritualized warfare of cities with our own versions of giants and superhumans. And it's our modern version of what an ancient world was, the gladiators' arena and the fields of war where the superhumans fought and chopped off each other's heads and so on. So we're actually not too different, actually, from the ancient world on this score. It's just we're a little bit different. 

So the the idea of superhuman warriors who spread violence in the land, these were the heroes of Babylon and of Canaanite culture. And in Israel and in the biblical vision, they represent everything that's wrong with the human family. Men of the name who, if we can't get along and share our stuff, I'll chop your head off. And take all your stuff and build my city on top of yours, and that's what's good in my own eyes. 

So the giants come in for a real critical treatment in the Hebrew Bible, and they appear right here, the Nephilim. They're everything that's wrong. And so you just watch, as you trace through the Hebrew Bible very often, when you get to the flood note in the melody where human violence reaches some kind of critical tipping point where God has to intervene and hold some kind, either allow a flood or do something drastic to bring justice, there are very often giants in the mix.

Or something that reminds you of the giants. And so here we are in Genesis 14 with this big, long aside about the death of giants in the land. And it's the flood music that's coming in the melody. 

A Flood of Violence

What's happening in this story is Sodom and its five kings become engulfed in a metaphorical flood.

And the floodwaters represent these kings.

And these kings are heavily armed. They're out for blood. They're out for glory and honor. And these kings, these kings are actually so formidable they even slew the greatest warrior giants that existed in the land that God was gonna give to Abram. So you have to stop to say, okay, so this is like "Clash of the Titans." This is, this is war escalated to, we haven't even seen the likes of this so far in the storyline of the Bible.

And so all of what's happening in the valley is all in contrast to what's happening up on that hill with Avram and his buddies. 

Genesis 14:11–16 NASB95

11 Then they took all the goods of Sodom and Gomorrah and all their food supply, and departed. 12 They also took Lot, Abram’s nephew, and his possessions and departed, for he was living in Sodom. 13 Then a fugitive came and told Abram the Hebrew. Now he was living by the oaks of Mamre the Amorite, brother of Eshcol and brother of Aner, and these were allies with Abram. 14 When Abram heard that his relative had been taken captive, he led out his trained men, born in his house, three hundred and eighteen, and went in pursuit as far as Dan. 15 He divided his forces against them by night, he and his servants, and defeated them, and pursued them as far as Hobah, which is north of Damascus. 16 He brought back all the goods, and also brought back his relative Lot with his possessions, and also the women, and the people.

"So they took all the possessions of Sodom and Gomorrah and their food." They took what was for eating.

The kings, took the forbidden food and they went away. "They also took Lot and his possessions. And you know who Lot was, the son of the brother of Avram.

And they went away. Now, if you don't remember, he was dwelling in Sodom." That's why he was taken captive and, with the food.

And so a refugee. There was a remnant. the fugitive in the above translation. Think of the flood.

The first time that the word "to remain over" or "to be a refuge from," was in the story of the flood when the waters rise and are doing their destructive work in the land. But Noah and those with him in the ark remained as a remnant.

"So a remnant, a refugee, came and reported all this to Avram the Hebrew.

Now he was dwelling, not in Sodom. He was up by those sacred trees, by the oaks of Mamre." Oh, you know who Mamre is? He's the Amorite. He's the brother of this guy named Eshcol, whose name means Grape Cluster. And he's the brother of Aner, whose name means donkey. And here's the thing, they were havin' a great time up there because they had entered into a covenant with Abraham, and they had no clue what was going down. It was only when Abraham heard that his brother had been taken captive.

So that's the scene. The Canaanites down below getting wiped out and defeated. But the Canaanites who are at peace with God's chosen one, they're up there in the ark. They're great.

But here's the thing is that, you know, "I'll bless those who bless you. Those who treat you as cursed and your family, it's not good for them."

"So Avram brought out his trained men, those born of his house. He had 318. And they went after those four Mesopotamian kings. They chased them all the way unto Dan," which is in the far northern, far north boundary.

"And it was night. And he divided himself," like a pincer movement

"So they divided himself by night, he and his servants, and he struck them." Remember, they were striking the giants. So you've got nine kings, five, and the Mesopotamian kings can take out giants, and they could take out Canaanite kings. And here's Avram with this little commando force of 300 home-trained heroes, and he does to them what they did to the giants.

How do you explain that?

"He chased them unto Hobah, which is way north up in Damascus. And he returned all the possessions, all that stuff. He returned Lot, his brother, and their possessions, he returned the women, the people. He got all of it back."

There's a million unanswered questions here. But I mean, this is remarkable.

The whole point is, you're supposed to be blown away that something like this could happen. 

So this is a twist on the ark, isn't it?

It's like while the flood is raging, our new Noah actually gets off the boat, and he's got a life jacket, or, like, scuba gear with 318, and they go swimmin' after, they go swimming after his brother and his family. So this is the new twist here.

He leaves the ark to go become an agent of deliverance. He delivers the people who were taken captive in the flood of violence of these kings, and he defeats them. So if Mesopotamian kings can slaughter giants and if they can defeat Canaanites, and if Avram can defeat Mesopotamian kings, do the narrative logic here.

Who's the real warrior in this scene?

It's Avram. But yet, he's so clearly like, he's not after it for his name. He's not after plunder, as we're gonna see. He's just doing it because he's loyal to his family.

And he loves his Nephew

So when Avram is drawn into battle, it's for a very different kind of motive. And as we're gonna see, God had his back.

Melchizedek the Royal Priest

Bibliography

https://bibleproject.com/classroom/abraham

Middleton, J. Richard. Abraham’s Silence: The Binding of Isaac, the Suffering of Job, and How to Talk Back to God. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic: A Division of Baker Publishing Group, 2021.

Cotter, David W. Genesis. Edited by Jerome T. Walsh, Chris Franke, and David W. Cotter. Berit Olam Studies in Hebrew Narrative and Poetry. Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 2003.

Josephus, Flavius, and William Whiston. The Works of Josephus: Complete and Unabridged. Peabody: Hendrickson, 1987.

Richard N. Longenecker, “The Melchizedek Argument of Hebrews: A Study in the Development and Circumstantial Expression of New Testament Thought,” in Unity and Diversity in New Testament Theology: Essays in Honor of George E. Ladd (ed. Robert Guelich, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978), 161.

https://bible.org/article/melchizedek-covenantal-figure-biblical-theology-eschatological-royal-priesthood#P8_421

Anders Aschim, “Melchizedek and Jesus: 11QMelchizedek and the Epistle to the Hebrews,” in The Jewish Roots of Christological Monotheism: Papers from the St. Andrews Conferences on the Historical Origins of the Worship of Jesus (eds. Carey Newman, James Davila, and Gladys Lewis, JSJSup. 63; Leiden: Brill, 1999), 130.

Paul J. Kobelski, Melchizedek and Melchiresa (CBQMS 10; Washington DC: Catholic Biblical Association of America, 1981), 126-7.

https://bible.ca/manuscripts/Septuagint-LXX-Shem-was-Melchizedek-Masoretic-chronology-Messiah-Jesus-Christ-priesthood.htm