PORTRAIT AND WRITING OF AMRAPHEL, KING OF SHINAR, IN ABRAHAM'S TIME
Many letters and books belonging to the reign of 'Amraphel[[1]] king of Shinar' (Genesis xiv. 1) have lately been found. He was one of the wisest heathen kings who ever lived, and the writings of his times are very interesting, because they bring us quite back to the days of Abraham.
Amraphel kept written records describing the splendid temples he built, and a great embankment which he made to keep the river Tigris from flooding his people's cornfields; but the wisest thing he did was to collect and write out a long list of all the laws by which he governed the land of Shinar. Thus he worked in very much the same kind of way for Shinar that our own King Alfred did, thousands of years later, for England.
This list of laws was found in 1901. They are engraved on a great block of black marble, and are so numerous that they would fill pages of our Bible.
They are wise and just as far as they go. There is a great deal about buying and selling in them, and the lawful way of conducting different kinds of business; but they are wholly different from those wonderful Commandments which God gave to the Children of Israel three hundred years later.
For Shinar's laws were the heathen laws of a heathen king; in them there is no word of God; no word even of the heathen gods in which Amraphel believed.
'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God ... and thy neighbour as thyself.' (Luke x. 27.) In these words Jesus Christ gives to us the true meaning of the Commandments which Moses wrote down in our Bible.
Again, until quite lately many people were certain that there could never have been a king like Melchizedek, the king of Salem, who came and blessed Abraham, and of whom we read in Genesis xiv. and also in Hebrews vii.
But among the letters found in the Foreign Office of the king of Egypt, is one from the king of Salem. Not from Melchizedek, but from another king of Salem, who describes himself in these words: 'I was set in my place neither by father nor mother, but by the Mighty King'—meaning 'by God.' Read what is said about Melchizedek in Hebrews vii. These words show us that all the kings of Salem believed that they owed everything to God. This is why Abraham honoured Melchizedek so highly.