Patriarchal Palestine

by A. H. Sayce

Here, then, as late as the fifteenth century before our era we have a king of Jerusalem who owes his royal dignity to his god. He is, in fact, a priest as well as a king. His throne has not descended to him by inheritance; so far as his kingly office is concerned, he is like Melchizedek, without father and without mother. Between Ebed-Tob and Melchizedek there is more than analogy; there is a striking and unexpected resemblance. The description given of him by Ebed-Tob explains what has puzzled us so long in the person of Melchizedek.

The origin of the name of Jerusalem also is now cleared up. It was no invention of the age of David; on the contrary, it goes back to the period of Babylonian intercourse with Canaan. It is written in the cuneiform documents Uru-Salim, "the city of Salim," the god of peace. One of the lexical tablets from the library of Nineveh has long ago informed us that in one of the languages known to the Babylonians uru was the equivalent of the Babylonian alu, "a city," and we now know that this language was that of Canaan. It would even seem that the word had originally been brought from Babylonia itself in the days when Babylonian writing and culture first penetrated to the West. In the Sumerian or pre-Semitic language of Chaldæa eri signified a "city," and eri in the pronunciation of the Semites became uru. Hence it was that Uru or Ur, the birthplace of Abraham, received its name at a time when it was the ruling city of Babylonia, and though the Semitic Babylonians themselves never adopted the word in common life it made its way to Canaan. The rise of the "city" in the west was part of that Babylonian civilization which was carried to the shores of the Mediterranean, and so the word which denoted it was borrowed from the old language of Chaldæa, like the word for "palace," hêkâl, the Sumerian ê-gal, or "Great House." It is noteworthy that Harran, the resting-place of Abraham on his way from Ur to Palestine, the half-way house, as it were, between East and West, also derived its name from a Sumerian word which signified "the high-road." Harran and Ur were two of the gifts which passed to Canaan from the speakers of the primaeval language of Chaldæa.

We can now understand why Melchizedek should have been called the "king of Salem." His capital could be described either as Jeru-salem or as the city of Salem. And that it was often referred to as Salem simply is shown by the Egyptian monuments. One of the cities of Southern Palestine, the capture of which is represented by Ramses II. on the walls of the Ramesseum at Thebes, is Shalam or Salem, and "the district of Salem" is mentioned between "the country of Hadashah" (Josh. xv. 37) and "the district of the Dead Sea" and "the Jordan," in the list of the places which Ramses III. at Medînet Habu describes himself as having conquered in the same part of the world.

It may be that Isaiah is playing upon the old name of Jerusalem when he gives the Messiah the title of "Prince of Peace." But in any case the fact that Salim, the god of peace, was the patron deity of Jerusalem, lends a special significance to Melchizedek's treatment of Abram. The patriarch had returned in peace from an expedition in which he had overthrown the invaders of Canaan; he had restored peace to the country of the priest-king, and had driven away its enemies. The offering of bread and wine on the part of Melchizedek was a sign of freedom from the enemy and of gratitude to the deliverer, while the tithes paid by Abram were equally a token that the land was again at peace. The name of Salim, the god of peace, was under one form or another widely spread in the Semitic world. Salamanu, or Solomon, was the king of Moab in the time of Tiglath-pileser III.; the name of Shalmaneser of Assyria is written Sulman-asarid, "the god Sulman is chief," in the cuneiform inscriptions; and one of the Tel el-Amarna letters was sent by Ebed-Sullim, "the servant of Sullim," who was governor of Hazor. In one of the Assyrian cities (Dimmen-Silim, "the foundation-stone of peace") worship was paid to the god "Sulman the fish." Nor must we forget that "Salma was the father of Beth-lehem" (1 Chron. ii. 51).

In the time of the Israelitish conquest the king of Jerusalem was Adoni-zedek (Josh. x. 1). The name is similar to that of Melchi-zedek, though the exact interpretation of it is a matter of doubt. It points, however, to a special use of the word zedek, "righteousness," and it is therefore interesting to find the word actually employed in one of the letters of Ebed-Tob. He there says of the Pharaoh: "Behold, the king is righteous (zaduq) towards me." What makes the occurrence of the word the more striking is that it was utterly unknown to the Babylonians. The root zadaq, "to be righteous," did not exist in the Assyrian language.

There is yet another point in the history of the meeting between Abram and Melchizedek which must not be passed over. When the patriarch returned after smiting the invading army he was met outside Jerusalem not only by Melchizedek, but also by the new king of Sodom. It was, therefore, in the mountains and in the shadow of the sanctuary of the Most High God that the newly-appointed prince was to be found, rather than in the vale of Siddim. Does not this show that the king of Jerusalem already exercised that sovereignty over the surrounding district that Ebed-Tob did in the century before the Exodus? As we have seen, Ebed-Tob describes himself as repairing the roads in that very "Kikar," or "plain," in which Sodom and Gomorrha stood. It would seem then that the priest-king of the great fortress in the mountains was already acknowledged as the dominant Canaanitish ruler, and that the neighbouring princes had to pay him homage when they first received the crown. This would be an additional reason for the tithes given to him by Abram.

Long after the defeat of Chedor-laomer and his allies, if we are to accept the traditional belief, Abraham was again destined to visit Jerusalem. But he had ceased to be "Abram the Hebrew," the confederate of the Amorite chieftains in the plain of Mamre, and had become Abraham the father of the promised seed. Isaac had been born to him, and he was called upon to sacrifice his first-born son.

The place of sacrifice was upon one of the mountains in the land of Moriah. There at the last moment the hand of the father was stayed, and a ram was substituted for the human victim. "And Abraham called the name of that place Yahveh-yireh; as it is said to this day, In the mount of the Lord it shall be seen." According to the Hebrew text of the Chronicles (2 Chron. iii. 1), this mount of the Lord where Abraham's sacrifice was offered was the temple-mount at Jerusalem. The proverb quoted in Genesis seems to indicate the same fact. Moreover, the distance of the mountain from Beer-sheba—three days' journey—would be also the distance of Jerusalem from Abraham's starting-place.