Bible Commentaries

CHAPTER 14 The First Recorded War and Lot’s Deliverance

1. The battle of the confederacy (Genesis 14:1-10)

2. Sodom and Gomorrah spoiled (Genesis 14:11-13)

3. Abram’s rescue (Genesis 14:14-16)

4. Sodom’s king to meet Abram (Genesis 14:17)

5. Melchizedek (Genesis 14:18-20)

6. The king’s offer and Abram’s answer (Genesis 14:21-24)

The record of the first war is here foreshadowing the last great warfare still to come. Amraphel, King of Shinar, has been historically located by excavated tablets in 1901. The code of Amraphel (Khammurabi) was discovered in Susa. It dates back to 2139 B.C. Some 800 years the laws of Amraphel governed the people of Central Asia. The discovery of this code was a severe blow to higher criticism which claimed that writing before Moses was unknown. What interests us most is Melchizedek. He is mentioned as a type of Christ in Psalm 110 and Hebrews 7. This chapter in Hebrews must be read with Genesis 14.

Melchizedek was a human being. We do not believe that he was a supernatural being manifested in the form of man. He was king of peace and king of righteousness and priest as well, uniting the office of priest and king and prophet in himself. The way he is introduced in this first book, where genealogies abound, without descent, having in this sense neither beginning of days nor end of life (Hebrews 7:3), makes him a very strong type of Christ, the Son of God.

Like Melchizedek, Christ unites in His person kingship and priesthood. However, though Christ is a priest after the order of Melchizedek, He does not yet fully exercise His Melchizedek priesthood. As priest after the order of Melchizedek He must have His own throne, for which he is still waiting on the throne of His Father.

Therefore when He comes again He will be the Priest upon His throne and crowned with many crowns (Zechariah 6:12-14)

The sinister temptation of Sodom’s king was rejected by Abram because Melchizedek had made known the name of God in a new way, “The most high God.” Abram uses this new title and adds “Jehovah” to “the most high God.”

Dispensationally it shows the future events after the conflict, the time of wars by confederacies of nations, in which the seed of Abraham will be so much concerned, when the enemies of God and of Israel will be overcome, and the King of Peace, the King of Righteousness, the great Priest, the Lord Jesus Christ, will appear to bless His earthly people. Then Israel will acknowledge Him as Abram did Melchizedek. “The Most High God,” is one of God’s millennial names.