Who Is This High Priest, Melchizadek, Whom Abraham Venerates and Tithes To?

     If you read Genesis, you find that Abraham was a human being highly favored by God in many ways though his life was absolutely not without trials and difficulties.  For one example, from Genesis 14, do you know how some people say family can seem a little ungrateful sometimes or cause you some difficulties, but they are family none the less?  Abraham - meaning Father of a Multitude (still called by his original name Abram - meaning Exalted Father) had a nephew named Lot (Veiled or Hidden) who had traveled with him from early days, and Lot was a shepherd also.  Lot had his own flocks and family and herdsmen.  As they traveled, both of them being blessed abundantly by God, their herds became large and their herdsmen began to quarrel with each other...over pasture and water presumably.  (the Book of Jasher, for what it's worth, says that Lot's herdsmen were allowing their animals to go right into the grain and crop fields of the Canaanites, making the Canaanite farmers very angry at both Lot and Abraham, though Abraham didn't allow his herdsmen to do this.  And Jasher says that though Abraham told Lot to quit doing that and stirring up the anger of the people whose land they wandered in, Lot didn't.)  Whatever the true source of the friction, it got so bad that the Bible relates that Abraham finally had to talk with Lot and say that they needed to separate.  Abraham said that if Lot would choose one direction to travel and migrate, then Abraham would choose the other.  Abraham was older and more prominent, but he let Lot choose. 

     Lot assented and chose a fertile, well-watered area (at that time, apparently) down near the Dead Sea near Sodom and Gomorrah.  So Abraham, for his grazing lands, chose the area where the Oaks of Mamre grew up on the higher lands above the Dead Sea as his base of operations.  Per the Book of Jasher, Mamre was an 'Amorite' acquaintance of Abraham and a man Abraham got along with.  He also had good relations with Amer and Eshkol, who were Mamre's sons, it says in Jasher.   Amorites seem not to have been a pleasing people in the eyes of God, at least later on, but for whatever reason these guys pleased Abraham enough that he wanted to form good relations.  Perhaps he needed some local allies.  Lot and Abraham separated, and led less intertwined lives then.  But they still apparently cared about each other.  Abraham's wife Sarah was Lot's sister, after all, and they didn't live but a couple of days travel at most from each other.  So they kept tabs on each other to some unspecified extent.  They probably still socialized some, but it doesn't really say in the Bible.

   There came a time not many years later when there was a mighty battle of opposing allied kings in the area of Sodom.  On one side there were the  armies of five different kings from Sodom's vicinity (Bera, king of Sodom, Birsha, king of Gomorrah, Shinah, king of Admah, Shemeber, king of Zeboyim, and the king of Zoar/Bela.)  They faced off against the armies of four different kings (Kederlaomer of Elam, Arioch, king of Ellasar, Amraphel of Shinar, and Tidal king of Goyiim) because the kingdoms in the area of Sodom in the Dead Sea Valley referred to in the Bible as the Valley of Siddim had decided to quit paying tribute to an overlord king named Chederlaomer, king of Elam.  For 12 years they had apparently paid tribute to Kederlaomer (Chederlaomer), but then on the 13th year they grew resentful of paying and rebelled. 

   Chederlaomer recruited (Nimrod?) to help him in his campaign, according to the Book of Jasher. (Nimrod was possibly being called Amraphel at that point in his life, in the Bible's account, though the Bible never specifically identifies Amraphel and Nimrod as being the same person.  But several other ancient writings do.  The Book of Jasher, whatever weight it should be afforded I do not know, says that the name Amraphel means something like 'by his hand it fell', referring to the tower of Babel and how Nimrod had mucked everything up badly by doing all that he had done to anger God when he began having his people build the tower which was meant, of all foolish things, to reach up to heaven and allow them to make war upon heaven so mankind wouldn't have to obey God any longer, and to pay God back for the death of their ancestors during the Great Flood.  And, upon God dividing the languages, the tower had not only been left incomplete, but had been ravaged by God-sent natural occurrences such that nothing so much was left of it.  Lightning was able to cause the bitumin that it was coated with to catch fire, per Jasher, and it had also sunk far downward into the soil for some reason, etc.  Nimrod had lost a lot of his people's confidence by dint of this massive debacle and there had been a great number of his former tower workers killed by God-sent calamities at the very time of the language change according to some ancient writings though not mentioned in the Bible, , tens of thousands of men Jasher says, and then sometime after the tower's destruction Chederlaomer had apparently warred with Nimrod's damaged and vulnerable kingdom and prevailed, subjugating it, and making Nimrod a vassal ruler to the kingdom of Elam for at least some period of time.  So, according to the Book of Jasher, Nimrod was in a much reduced status and trying (hoping) to rebuild his kingdom at this time, and was having to play second fiddle to Chederlaomer.) 

     So Chederlaomer and these three ally kings with their armies joined up to go straighten out these rebellious Sodom-area kingdoms that had quit paying their tribute.  But this four king army didn't travel straight to Sodom, according to both the Book of Jasher and the Bible.  They had a pretty full war campaign agenda, and they attacked and defeated various other rebel or enemy or vulnerable kingdoms and nations and enemies before they eventually moved towards Sodom.  I suppose they had formed a pretty large army and wanted to get the most bang for their buck.  They first traveled to and attacked and defeated a fair number of the peoples that the Bible, in various places throughout its text, identifies as races of 'giants', so maybe that tells us something about how some of the giants began to disappear from the annals of history.  Before going to Sodom the four kings warred upon the Rephaites (giants), the Zuzites (same as Zamzummin?  The Bible identifies Zamzummin as giants) as well as the Amorites (giants, "tall as the cedars" per Amos 2:9 in the Bible), the Amalekites (might or might not have been giants), the Emites/Emims (giants from Shaveh Kiriatham, the 'plain of the double meeting' or 'twin cities', land eventually belonging to the Israelite tribe of Reuben) as well as Horites, who apparently have been historically referred to as giants and cave dwellers by some ancient peoples such as the Moabites, but other ancients don't mention that characteristic about Horites being giants.  So they fought and defeated a lot of the people groups referred to as giants in ancient texts including the Bible.  Did they come close to wiping some of the giant peoples out?  Or did they just fight and subjugate them?  Is Jasher even reliable about these details?  Who knows for sure?  But the very reliable Holy Bible identifies some of those nations as giants in some of its pages.  And again, the Bible speaks of their the warring of these four kings against these giants just before going to fight the five kings. 

     They finally arrived at Sodom to do battle, and the five kings sallied forth to engage the the four.  Long story short, the five kings of the Sodom area lost the battle.  Many soldiers of the five kings army sank into the lime pits of the area as they tried to run away from the battle field.  The city of Sodom was sacked as was the city of Gomorrah, and all of the loot from these cities was taken.  Lot and his family were taken prisoner along with other locals and borne off, presumably towards the East, by the victorious four armies.

     Abraham was informed about this disastrous occurrence, called on God, and acted swiftly.  He gathered his servants, and with 318 trained men from his household and his Amorite acquaintances and de facto allies, Eshkol, Amer, and Mamre, he headed off to intercept the victorious kings and rescue Lot and his family.  Near the location of what would become the city of Dan one day, in the night time, Abraham divided his small force into three groups of men and attacked, and somehow, unbelievably, Abraham and his 318 men won the victory and reclaimed not just Lot and his family, but all of the belongings of Lot and Sodom, etc., that the four king army had acquired.  God had granted Abraham a huge and highly improbable victory.  Coming back, Abraham saw a high priest of God named Melchizadek coming out to meet him and a grateful and worshipful Abraham paid to Melchizadek a tithe of 1/10th of all he had taken from the army of Chederloamer.  And then Abraham traveled on and returned all the rest of the stock animals and slaves and treasure from the four kings various battles with the giants, if they were still carrying that with them, to the rightful owners, excepting he took as payment the food his tired men had eaten, and accepted a fair share of the treasure and herds for his allies Amer, Eshkol, and Mamre, who had accompanied him.  Abraham kept nothing for himself, saying that he didn't want the kings of Sodom to one day be able to claim that they had made Abraham rich.  It was God who had given Abraham all that he had, in Abraham's opinion, and he didn't want others claiming it was them.  He gave the glory to God.  That was Abraham's way, and Abraham had a difficult life at times, but he was very greatly blessed by God, especially with respect to his posterity. 

     So who is this Melchizadek?  The Bible never specifically names him anything else but Melchizadek.  But other ancient writings speak of him.  Should they be accorded much weight?  I don't know!  But the book of Jasher names him as Melchizadek and lets you know that he is also the same person we know as Shem, the Son of Noah.  Melchizadek means "My king is Sedek" or "My king is righteousness."  Melchizadek is also mentioned as the 'king of Salem.'  That is fairly universally agreed to mean that Melchizadek was also king of Jerusalem, although Salem does mean 'peace'.  And if Shem was the same as Melchizadek, that could make pretty good sense:  Abraham had, according to the Book of Jasher, lived with both Noah and Shem for over 30 years in his youth, when he was on the hide-out from Nimrod.  Jasher says that on the night of Abraham's birth there had been wild displays in the night sky that a mighty king was to be born that night, one who would defeat four mighty kings and rule, according to the signs.  Nimrod, reigning then and there where Abraham/Abram was born, had been told and declared that the baby must die.   But Abraham's father, an inner circle, long time court buddy and a favorite of Nimrod, had deceitfully taken the innocent newborn baby of one of his own servant women and sent it to Nimrod, claiming that this child was his newborn son Abram.  Nimrod had slain that innocent child, expected Abram's father, his court buddy, to understand that he had to do what he had to do, and then Nimrod had forgotten the matter, per Jasher.  And Abram had been hustled off to the cave of Noah, and Noah's also quite old son Shem, to grow up in safety far from Nimrod.  And Noah and Shem had taught Abram all about the history and rules and requirements and worship of our true Creator for several decades, per Jasher, as Abram grew up to mature manhood.  Noah would have been close to 900 years old and Shem about 400 years old when Abram arrived to live with them.  Noah was about 500 years old when Shem was born, along with Ham and Japheth, about 100 years before the great flood, at any rate.  

     And then, per Jasher, Abram had returned to the house of his father.  And Nimrod eventually discovered the trick played on him.  An angry Nimrod had Abram and his brother Nahor, who had come to sort of believe in Noah's God through Abram's efforts but not with great certainty like Abram, thrown into a large fiery furnace.  Abram's brother Nahor was burnt up.  But Abram kept walking around back there in the flames of the furnace unhurt, per Jasher, until he was eventually told to come out.  He was unharmed, his clothing unburnt, as later happened with Daniel the prophet's three friends about 1500 years later under Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar.  A frightened Nimrod let Abram go.  And Abram did indeed go on to destroy the armies of 4 great kings many years later, including Nimrod's, in the aftermath of this ancient battle of four kings against five kings, when Abram rescued Lot.   

     And perhaps, but perhaps not, the High Priest of God that he tithed to, this king of Salem who came out to meet him as he returned victorious from battling four kings and rescuing his nephew Lot, was his old friend and mentor and teacher, a son of Noah himself, a forefather of the Hebrews, an ancestor of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, eventually an ancestor of King David and Solomon, the source of the name Semite, an ancestor of Joseph the earthly father (the actual father it was thought by the uninformed) of Jesus of Nazareth, a friend of Abram for more than 30 years as he grew up, a High Priest of God named Shem.  Perhaps.  There are Rabbinical sources that are mentioned as affirming that Melchizadek is Shem.  I also saw it noted ion Wikipedia that the Jewish Babylonian Talmud said that Melchizedek was a nick-name of sorts for Shem.  But the very reliable Jewish historian named Josephus, who lived about 2,000 years ago, does not call him Shem.  Wikipedia mentions this on its article about Melchizedek, saying this concerning what Josephus had to say about Melchizedek:  "Josephus refers to Melchizedek as a "Canaanite chief" in War of the Jews, but as a priest in Antiquities of the Jews." :

2 So Abram, when he had saved the captive Sodomites, who had been taken by the Assyrians, and Lot also, his kinsman, returned home in peace. Now the King of Sodom met him at a certain place, which they called The King’s dale, where Melchisedeck, King of the city Salem, received him. That name signifies, The righteous King: and such he was without dispute; insomuch that, on this account, he was made the Priest of God. However, they afterward called Salem Jerusalem. Now this Melchisedec supplied Abram’s army in an hospitable manner, and gave them provisions in abundance: and as they were feasting, he began to praise him, and to bless God for subduing his enemies under him. And when Abram gave him the tenth part of his prey, he accepted of the gift.

End quote.  Antiquities of the Jews 1.10.2

     As a side note, Abraham would go to sacrifice Isaac his son many years later, on Mount Moriah which is at Jerusalem (2 or 3 miles away at most by windy road.)  If this Melchizedek was still King of Jerusalem then Abraham was traveling to a place where he was probably well known and received.  Maybe even a friend to the king, since he had once tithed to him.  Just speculating.

     There is a book, a writing, called 2 (Slavonic) Enoch.  Dubiously, it claims that Melchizedek was the son of Noah's brother Ner, a High Priest, born before the flood.  That Ner's wife was old but she got miraculously pregnant without sleeping with a man before the flood while Ner was off serving for a long period at a temple because he was an important priest.  He had not touched her for a long long time, so when she showed up pregnant to talk to him he was shocked and dismayed because it couldn't be his.  In shame she died right then and there, but the baby was born from her body.  Then it aged at super speed.  Then just before the flood God sent an angel to take the rapidly aging child up to heaven for the duration of the flood.  Then after the flood the child or perhaps young man by then was brought down to Earth so that there would be a priest.  So this book says that Melchizedek was the son of Noah's brother, who did not survive the flood.  But it claims that God wanted a continuation of the holy priestly line to exist on Earth after the Great Deluge.  Offered without endorsement! 

     The Bible, which many of us believe is the true word of God, allows that Jesus can be referred to as a priest in the order of Melchizedek.   The Bible speaks respectfully of Jesus, the true Son of God and mankind's only authorized Savior, and would not feature a slur or a slander against Him.  Yet it does say that Jesus is a priest in the order of Melchizedek.  I have heard Christians speak who have surmised that Melchizedek was an appearance of Jesus on Earth prior to His birth by Mary.  I do not happen to believe that to be true, personally, but perhaps it could be.  But by any measure, Melchizedek is an enigmatic figure, a genuine High Priest, seen by Abraham as a very holy personage that one would rightfully offer tithes to when showing your gratitude to the One True God, and by inference, Melchizedek was a priest of not just any God, but the one true God who created all things.  And Melchizedek was referred to in other trusted Bible books as a figure of very great stature. 

     Melchizedek, mentioned only a few times in a few places in the Bible, is one of scriptures most mysterious figures.  The Book of Jasher, drawn from here in this article several times, is respected by some and disparaged by some, and so...do your own research about whether to give much credence to anything it says.  But...it follows the general story line of Genesis in the Bible, but adds very interesting detail indeed.  Again, the trouble is whether to give much or any credence to it, and if so, based on what?  So, we stick with the Bible.