Discovery BoxGenesis 14:17-19
Context14:17 After Abram 1 returned from defeating Kedorlaomer and the kings who were with him, the king of Sodom went out to meet Abram 2 in the Valley of Shaveh (known as the King’s Valley). 3 14:18 Melchizedek king of Salem 4 brought out bread and wine. (Now he was the priest of the Most High God.) 5 14:19 He blessed Abram, saying,
“Blessed be Abram by 6 the Most High God,
[14:17] 1 tn Heb “he”; the referent (Abram) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
[14:17] 2 tn Heb “him”; the referent (Abram) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
[14:17] 3 sn The King’s Valley is possibly a reference to what came to be known later as the Kidron Valley.
[14:18] 4 sn Salem is traditionally identified as the Jebusite stronghold of old Jerusalem. Accordingly, there has been much speculation about its king. Though some have identified him with the preincarnate Christ or with Noah’s son Shem, it is far more likely that Melchizedek was a Canaanite royal priest whom God used to renew the promise of the blessing to Abram, perhaps because Abram considered Melchizedek his spiritual superior. But Melchizedek remains an enigma. In a book filled with genealogical records he appears on the scene without a genealogy and then disappears from the narrative. In Psalm 110 the
[14:18] 5 tn The parenthetical disjunctive clause significantly identifies Melchizedek as a priest as well as a king.
[14:19] 6 tn The preposition לְ (lamed) introduces the agent after the passive participle.
[14:19] 7 tn Some translate “possessor of heaven and earth” (cf. NASB). But cognate evidence from Ugaritic indicates that there were two homonymic roots ָקנָה (qanah), one meaning “to create” (as in Gen 4:1) and the other “to obtain, to acquire, to possess.” While “possessor” would fit here, “creator” is the more likely due to the collocation with “heaven and earth.”
[14:19] 8 tn The terms translated “heaven” and “earth” are both objective genitives after the participle in construct.
