Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Genesis · About this commentary
Melchizedek, and a refused reward
Genesis 14:17-24
17 The king of Sodom went out to meet him after his return from the slaughter of Chedorlaomer and the kings who were with him, at the valley of Shaveh (that is, the King’s Valley). · WEB
Two kings meet Abram on the same road, and what he takes from each decides how the promise will be kept.
Two kings come out to meet Abram, and the chapter's whole point is in the contrast between them.
The first is the king of Sodom, who comes out with a proposal. The second appears without introduction: Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine. He was priest of God Most High. His city, Salem , lay in the hill country on the road Abram was traveling.
Almost everything about him is unexplained. He arrives in three verses and leaves, with no genealogy, no account of his origin, and no successor. What the text does supply is an office, and it is remarkable: a priest of the Most High God, in Canaan, outside Abram's family, generations before Levi exists and centuries before there is a priesthood in Israel. God had worshipers in that country whom this narrative has not mentioned.
His blessing names God twice as God Most High, possessor of heaven and earth — a title that claims everything the four kings had been fighting over — and it distributes credit exactly: blessed be Abram of God Most High, and blessed be God Most High who has delivered your enemies into your hand.
And Abram gives him a tenth of all. The tithe here precedes any law requiring it, is given by the greater figure in the story to the one who blessed him, and is recorded without explanation, as something that evidently needed none.
The rest of Scripture returns to this man twice, and both times because of what the account omits. A psalm addresses a coming king as a priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek Psalms 110:4, and the New Testament builds an argument on the silences — no recorded father, mother or genealogy, no beginning of days or end of life, so that the record itself makes him resemble the Son of God Hebrews 7:3. The argument runs on what Genesis does not say, and that is the honest way to take it: this passage supplies an office and withholds a biography.
Then the king of Sodom, and his offer is generous: Give me the people, and take the goods for yourself. By the custom of the time the goods were Abram's already.
His refusal is absolute and its reason is a single clause: lest you should say, "I have made Abram rich." He will not take a thread or a sandal strap. God has promised to bless him, and he declines to leave any room for a rival account of where the blessing came from.
The force of that lands against chapter twelve. In Egypt Abram acquired sheep, cattle and servants from a king by a deception, and left richer. Here he is offered a fortune honestly earned and will not touch it. And it is exactly at this point, with the reward refused, that God says I am your shield, your exceedingly great reward Genesis 15:1.
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