Abraham as You Have Never Seen Him Before

I may be wrong in some of my assumptions here. I am imagining that I am writing to someone who grew up going to Sunday School, and has heard a lot of the Bible stories. So I am assuming that everybody knows about Abraham’s call to leave his country to go live in the land God was going to give him, how that he obeyed and went, and took with him his nephew Lot. And I’m guessing (and this is a less sure guess) that everybody knows about Abraham, after he got to Canaan, having to put some space between himself and Lot, and so he gave Lot the choice of the land, though he had the right to simply tell Lot where he was to go. I remember hearing that story as a child and as an adult teaching it to children in Sunday School. But if you don’t happen to know that story, please read it in Genesis 13 before you read this story. If you don’t, you’re leaving out a chapter in Abraham’s story, and you wouldn’t know why Lot was where he was.

Actually, Lot should never have been where he was. When he moved away from Abraham, he was supposed to be going to the pasturelands near Sodom. He was the proud owner of an incredibly large flock of sheep, and they needed the space. But somehow or other, Lot found himself living within the city of Sodom itself. I don’t know what happened to all those sheep.

But the city of Sodom was having troubles of its own. Bera, king of Sodom, had gotten tired of having to answer to another king, Kedorlaomer of Elam, and decided, along with four other kings who were also subject to Kedorlaomer, to start a rebellion. Of course, Kedorlaomer didn’t take too kindly to that and set out with three of his allies to put Bera and his buddies back where they belonged. On his way, he had a battle with some giants, and beat them. Okay, the Bible doesn’t say giants, and for me to say it makes the story less believable, but they were Rephaites, Zuzites, Emites, and Horites. And some of those people, according to the commentaries I consulted, were considered to be giants. I have heard of people today afflicted with a type of giantism. It seems to be something that makes a human body grow bigger than normal, but it doesn’t seem to be conducive to long life or health. I think these were people who had this genetic syndrome, and Kedorlaomer and four other kings went to battle against them and won.

This should have been a warning to Bera and the other rebel kings, but be that as it may, they still met Kedorlaomer and his allies in battle in a valley called Siddim, a valley that was full of tar pits. The tar pits tripped up the combatants and Kedorlaomer and friends grabbed up everything they could find in the cities they had just conquered and went on their way. Now, in those days, “everything they could find” didn’t just mean all the stuff, but the people, too—the civilians. Kedorlaomer and three other kings took a whole bunch of people captive. And one of that bunch was Lot.

Somebody got away and ran to tell Abram (as he was then called, having not been renamed Abraham by God yet) the bad news. And Abram was not at all pleased with Kedorlaomer. And suddenly, Abram the peaceful shepherd who only wanted to obey God became Abram the general. Nobody was going to take his nephew captive without hearing from him about it! Somehow he had 318 men among his servants who were already trained as soldiers, and Abram led these 318, along with three of his friends, into battle with these four already twice victorious kings.

And he did it. He not only got Lot out of captivity, but all the other captives, too, as well as all their stuff. The grateful king of Sodom came out to meet him, and so did somebody else, another king, named Melchizedek, king of Salem (later called Jerusalem.) Melchizedek wasn’t one of Bera’s allies who had gone to battle with him. He was a priest to God, and he served bread and wine to the others. Abram gave him a tithe—ten percent—of everything he had taken. Many years later, the writer of the book of Hebrews tells us that Melchizedek was none other than Jesus Himself, the second person of the Trinity, even though Jesus had not yet been born. He already existed, because He is God, and he received the tithe from Abram for his victory.
Bera (or his successor, since Bera had been conquered in the tar pits of Siddim) had a request for Abram. “You can keep all the stuff, but please let the people come home.”

Abram told Bera they could keep most of their stuff, too. He said he’d promised God he wouldn’t take it. Bera and his people couldn’t have all of the plunder, however. Abram had already given ten percent of it to Melchizedek. And he promised his three friends they could have a share in it. But the rest went back to Sodom. Abram told Bera he didn’t want him saying that he’d made Abram rich.

Abram could have thought that Lot shouldn’t have been where he could be taken captive in the first place. He could have thought that he was a shepherd, not a warrior, and that he could do nothing. And after he did do something, he could have taken the payment the king of Sodom offered him. He didn’t.

Another thing that struck me as I was writing this story with my Bible open to get all the details right: Melchizedek, who the writer of Hebrews says was Christ Himself, served bread and wine to both Abram and the king of Sodom. Sodom was later to be destroyed for its wickedness, but on this day, Christ made himself a servant. It made me think of other times Jesus served bread. I thought of Him feeding the crowds, and of Him at the last supper, serving the disciples. Bera king of Sodom receiving the bread and wine from Melchizedek’s hand made me think of Judas, whose feet Jesus washed before serving him at the Last Supper, though Jesus knew what Judas was planning. And that made me think of just how amazingly gracious our Savior is.