Abraham in Ramat Raḥel: The Historical and Political Background of the Melchizedek-Episode in Genesis 14:18–20

This article reexamines the Melchizedek episode in Genesis 14:18–20 by situating it within the redactional history of Genesis 14 and the geopolitical realities of the Persian period. Through literary analysis, the authors demonstrate that Genesis 14 is a composite text consisting of an early war narrative, a later “Abraham redaction,” and a final Melchizedek redaction. They argue that the Melchizedek episode represents the latest stratum of the chapter and was deliberately inserted to relocate Abraham’s encounter with the king of Sodom to the “Valley of the King,” which they identify with the area below Ramat Raḥel. Drawing on biblical, Qumran, and extrabiblical sources, the study proposes that the Valley of the King corresponds to the vicinity of Beth-hakkerem, widely identified with Ramat Raḥel, the major Assyrian and Persian administrative center south of Jerusalem.

Against this archaeological and historical backdrop, the authors interpret the Melchizedek episode as a politically charged theological statement. By placing Abraham’s meeting with the king-priest of Shalem between Jerusalem and the imperial center of Ramat Raḥel, the narrative symbolically contrasts local Judean authority with Persian imperial power. The figure of Melchizedek serves to assert Jerusalem’s primacy as both political and cultic center, while the identification of his deity as “El Elyon, creator of heaven and earth” polemically counters Persian imperial theology centered on Ahuramazda. The episode thus functions as an anti-imperial intervention within the Abraham narrative, presenting YHWH, and not the Persian god, as the supreme cosmic deity and source of military success. In this reading, the Melchizedek episode articulates a subtle but forceful claim for Jerusalemite religious and political autonomy under Persian rule.