And Melchizedek king of Salem brought forth bread and wine: and he was the priest of the most high God.
All Commentaries on Genesis 14:18 Go To Genesis 14
Ephrem The Syrian
AD 373
This Melchizedek is Shem, who became a king due to his greatness; he was the head of fourteen nations. In addition, “he was a priest.” He received this from Noah, his father, through the rights of succession. Shem lived not only to the time of Abraham, as Scripture says, but even to [the time of] Jacob and Esau, the grandsons of Abraham. It was to him that Rebekah went to ask and was told, “Two nations are in your womb, and the older shall be a servant to the younger.” Rebekah would not have bypassed her husband, who had been delivered at the high place, or her fatherinlaw, to whom revelations of the divinity came continually, and gone straight to ask Melchizedek unless she had learned of his greatness from Abraham or Abraham’s son.
