Genesis 14

Lot becomes a POW (vs. 1-12)—This section describes a great big battle by a bunch of little bitty people; I’ll show you how little bitty in just a minute. Until/unless a great power like Assyria or Babylon arose, the city-state was, by far, the most dominant form of political organization; our concept of “nation” was unknown to the ancients, though our English Bibles use that term occasionally for lack of a better one. Nearly all the cities had their own king—democracy was unheard of before the Greeks and they weren’t very good at it, either, frankly. Bottom line here in this section is, big war, little bitty people, Lot gets in the way because he lives in Sodom and the king of that city is one of the losers in the battle. So Lot is captured and Abraham will come to his rescue.

Abraham comes to Lot’s rescue (vs. 13-16)—The reason I said that this is a battle by a bunch of little bitty people—and I meant numerically—is because Abraham only had 318 trained servants, and he divided those forces and apparently recaptured Lot with ease. Now 318 is a lot of servants, but it’s not a very big army. So nobody else had one, either.  It does appear that Abraham had some allies who helped him (v. 24), but even with that the force would have been small compared to later armies

Melchizedek (vs. 17-20)—This man was the king and priest of Salem, or Jeru-salem. He comes out of nowhere, blesses Abraham, the latter gives him a tithe, and then he disappears from the historical record. He will appear later in the Bible as a type of Christ. Psalm 110:4 reads, “The LORD has sworn and will not relent, ‘You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.’" This is a Messianic promise, of course. What does it mean? Substantially it means that Jesus will be king AND priest, something no Jew could be. This gets a little complicated for a short summary, but I encourage the reader to study Hebrews chapters 5, 6, and 7 where Melchizedek is mentioned again as a type of Christ. The basic argument the Hebrew writer makes is, if perfection could be found in the Levitical priesthood of the Old Testament, then why did the Old Testament itself (Ps. 110:4) predict another, eternal priesthood, one after the order of Melchizedek (the new priest would be king, too). Thus, God never intended for the Law of Moses and its priesthood to be the final means of redemption. Plus, the Hebrew writer emphasizes that Abraham paid tithes to Melchizedek, indicating the preeminence of the latter. Well, since Abraham recognized Melchizedek’s superiority, and Levi was “was still in the loins of his father [Abraham] when Melchizedek met him” (Hebrews 7:10), then Melchizedek’s priesthood is superior to Levi’s. And since Christ is a priest after the order of Melchizedek, the Christian “priesthood” is superior to the Judaic. That’s it in a nutshell. The writer of Hebrews obviously explains it better than I can. It’s a brilliant argument, but then that whole book (Hebrews) is one of the most logically and exceptionally argued pieces of literature in existence.

The king of Sodom shows his appreciation to Abraham (vs. 21-24)—Well, at least we can say one good thing about Sodom. This particular king, Bera, was willing to share the spoils with the man (Abraham) who helped bring his captured people back. In fact, “share” is not really the right word: “Now the king of Sodom said to Abram, ‘Give me the persons, and take the goods for yourself,’” (v. 21). He was going to give Abraham everything. But Abraham declined. That’s not what he went into battle for and he didn’t want to end up in the king of Sodom’s debt. Abraham didn’t need the spoils, and so he let their owners keep them. A noble deed.