Глава 14

Then Chedorlaomer (Hodollogomor), the king of Elam, with his three allies came to battle with the king of Sodom and his four allies, put the king of Sodom and his allies to flight, seized all the wealth of Sodom, as well as Lot and his property, and left. Abram then took three hundred and eighteen of his servants and, together with Anera and his allies, chased after the king of Elam, defeated him and returned the captives with their property, as well as Lot, his nephew, with all his property. Since the property of the Sodomites was mixed with the property of the defeated kings, Abram refused the spoils taken from the kings he had defeated. “And Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine: he was priest of the Most High God. And bless Abram, and say: ...blessed be the Most High God, Who hath delivered thy enemies under thy hands. And Abram gave him tithes of everything” (Gen. 14:18–20). This Melchizedek was Shem; in his greatness he was a king, as the ancestor of fourteen tribes, but also a high priest, because by succession he received the priesthood from his father Noah. Shem lived not only until the time of Abram, as the Scripture says, but even before Jacob and Esau, the sons of Abram's son. Rebekah went to ask him, and Shem told her that two nations were in her womb, and the older would serve the younger (Gen. 25:22-23). But Rebekah would not have gone to ask him past her husband, who was so miraculously saved from the slaughter, and past her father-in-law, to whom Divine revelations were so frequent, if she had not known about his greatness from Abram himself and his son. And Abram would not have brought tithes to Melchizedek if he had not known that he was incomparably superior to him. It is impossible to think that Rebekah would have questioned any of the Canaanites or Sodomites, and that Abram would have brought a tithe of the property returned to them. Since the days of Melchizedek's life extended to the times of Jacob and Esau, it is likely that it was said that Shem appeared to them. His father Noah lived in the east, but Shem lived among two generations, that is, among the sons of Ham and his sons, forming, as it were, a barrier between one and the other tribe, for he feared that the descendants of Ham would not lead his sons into idolatry. You might be interested in: