When Abraham was still with the two kings, the king of Sodom asked if he wanted to keep the spoils and possessions, but Abram turned down the offer.

There’s a lot of controversy around the legendary man Melchizedek. He was a king and priest. Yet Psalms and Hebrew say more about him. Is he someone more, or did he just have an interesting story backdrop potentially like that from 2 Enoch:

https://youtu.be/sj3IIxpnPlY?si=mAH0c3R3pUdV1_7h

Here’s a map of Abram’s route and that of the kings through Chapter 14:

http://ad2004.com/Biblecodes/matimages2/Mmap.jpg

In this episode, Abraham chases the four Kings from the far east up north east and takes back his nephew Lot, the hostages and the possessions that were raided.

It’s also helpful to know that he invaded during the night so it was innocence a clever, sneak attack.

In this episode, we cover the 4 vs. 5 alliance. The four kings from the near east dominated the Keena Knight tribes in the Valley and rated and pirated their belongings, including even taking hostages, one of them, including Lot.

In this episode, we cover how the king of Elam, and the other three kings in his alliance conquered and destroyed much of the southern Canaan tribes around the dead Sea valley.

In this passage of scripture that we cover, it introduces some world power alliances of that day. It’s also the first mention of war and I call it the actual First World War (at least mentioned in the Bible). We cover the Akkadian Alliance and the Dead Sea Valley Alliance, as I like to generally term them. The Elamite, Akkadian, Assyrian Empires at the time were the dominating threats of their day and the King of Elam already had the Eastern Canaanites in the Dead Sea Valley Region under his subjugation.

In this episode, we recap Abrams Journey to the point where he comes back from Egypt and settled in the area between Bethel and Ai with his nephew lot. However, they become so wealthy and possessions. There’s not enough land and resources for the both of them so they split off and go their separate ways. God also expands on the promise that he gave to Abraham!

This episode, my friend Michael Mueller joins as we discuss Abrams life and journey down south to Egypt while there was a famine. Unfortunately, Abraham and Sarah, both end up being deceptive to the Egyptians and nearly are separated from each other. However, God steps in makes the pharaoh who took his wife violently sick. Abram and Sarah I end up getting kicked out of Egypt, but not before gaining many possessions and servants. God doesn’t comment on their behavior, but it seems clear that it was not a good thing.

Abrams Journey finally begins. We cover God, speaking to him and telling him to leave his family’s home and set off to a place that God would show him. It contains the first round of blessings and promises that God gives him. Abraham listens, seemingly immediately and travels out to Canaan.

The BEMA Podcast hits on the early life of Abram in a simple and concise way: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-bema-podcast/id1148115183?i=1000377965809

One aspect that was not mentioned is the scripture references that come later in Joshua 24:2 about Abram’s father Terah. It explicitly says that “They served other gods”.

In Acts 7:2–4 out, the apostle Stephen shared about how God called Abraham out of his father’s land while he was still in Ur.

So if we understand, the story fully it’s clear that Abram’s childhood home in Ur was filled with the idolatry of his father‘s home. It’s also clear when putting together the scripture from Acts that God called him before he even left his father‘s home country, God had called him. Did he have somewhat of an influence on his father, beginning the move and leaving. Nonetheless, he didn’t break off on his own immediately if this is the case. It is clear that even if he had another calling back when he was in Ur, God for the first time in Genesis at least in the story urged him while he was in Haran after his father passed away.