Bible Study, Part 14
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| Creation of Light (אוֹר) By Gustave Doré |
Genesis, Chapter 14 |
Sunday – September 27, 2026
Eh well, I am ahead of my time I see, for I am supposedly writing this on the Sunday, but this is also not true. I may publish this well ahead of time, and in this case, yes I am writing most of this about two days ahead of the date in the title, but this is my working process and for now I believe that it is important for me to keep up this current pace, of being two days ahead, as it provides me with a certain amount of relaxation, and besides, it does take a while to research and write these posts, especially posts that belong to this series, the "Bible Study series". But I do still enjoy writing these posts, but as I have alluded to in many of my previous posts: I am undergoing a change in my personal life at the moment, and there may come a time when I will simply find the need to take a break from this particular study, because these things happen, and besides, there is no timeframe for this series; it will finish in due time or it will never finnish, because I refuse to be guided by ambition, for this was never about ambition in the first place.*
This will be the 14th part of this series, covering Chapter 14 of Genesis (בְּרֵאשִׁית), and as I always must declare at the beginning of these posts: you should read every single previous part of this series before you read this part, as this part is one link in a chain, and this chain would be quite useless without every link, and this is the best approach to scripture in the first place; although, it is not necessarily the case that scripture always has to be read in chronological order, but thus far it is my intention to approach the Bible in chronological order, but this may change in the future, depending on the situation, as I have no rule regarding the future order of the Bible, for this rule only applies to the already mentioned parts of the Bible. I should keep referring to the Bible as the Bible, but it is still a good practice to delineate the Old Testament from the New Testament. Again, if you decide to read this part without having read all the previous parts, then so be it, but you will be on your own, and any misapprehensions will be fully on you. Since this is the 14th part of this series, I will not link to each previous part here, but I will link to the first part of this series and the last part of this series here: part 1 and part 2.
As I have stated in each previous part of this series and as I alluded to above, I do not generally keep any hard rules when it comes to this series, but I do keep some rules, mostly for practical or doctrinal purposes. For one, I will, as usual, refer to God and the Lord as Yahweh (יהוה), which means that I will substitute each passage that I quote in this series with Yahweh, and this will be indicated by the usage of two brackets, [Yahweh]. I do this because the Old Testament—the Tanakh (תָּנָ״ךְ), and more specifically the Torah (תּוֹרָה)—represents a covenant between Yahweh and the Jewish people (The Hebrews).† I will refer to God as God whenever I should cover the New Testament, and the issue here is not that I refuse to refer to the Creator with the title of God or the Lord, but rather I do this in order to adhere to doctrinal fidelity; again, I do not intend to argue about this here.
I will sometimes also engage in other kinds of substitutions whenever I should quote passages from the Bible, and for the most part this would concern such things as me simply leaving out some passage in my quotation, and whenever this happens, I will indicate this by three dots inside two brackets, [...]. Again, I mostly do this when there is less important information being considered, and information that does tend to occupy a lot of space without providing useful information for the purposes of this study. This does not mean that the information that leave out is of no importance, rather such information is of little use in this particular application, and I am sure that some of the information that I may end up leaving out is important elsewhere, but then again, I am in charge of this study, and you are free to go somewhere else if you do not like it.
I will also rely on a specific and certain publication of the Bible, namely and as usual, the Catholic New Revised Standard (NRSV-CE), not because this publication is "better" from a doctrinal point of view, but because this version is written in modern English and because it has fewer mutations of the ideological and political kind,‡ although such mutations do still exists, read "Surviving the Test of Time", such as the defiance in using certain neologisms such as "humankind" instead of "mankind", and on occasion I might substitute such political mutations, if it becomes necessary, and I will also indicate this by the usage of two brackets, [].
Yet again, before we can proceed with the study at hand: if you have complaints about anything that I have written and asserted, then you are free to post them in the comment section below this post. I have received a few complaints so far on the official email attached to this page (etherealinsight@protonmail.com), but my policy is to only handle complaints in the comment section, as I have largely reserved other channels of communication for discussions of a more private nature, such as readers sending forward letters containing privileged information, etc. What this means is that I am unlikely to respond to an email complaint as I simply do not have time to handle them, nor do I have time to connect each complaint to each relevant post; simply using the comment section is the best and most straightforward option. This is not a hard rule, but it is a recommendation if you actually want me to respond; I also call on you to refrain from using offensive words in your comments. I should also mention again, that it is my intention of creating a separate page that will take care of all of the possible confusions and other important information to be considered in this study; that page is still not finished, and when it is finished I will simply link each post to that page in order that can skip having to reiterate all of this information in each of these posts, as I mentioned above.
✠ Lot’s Captivity and Rescue ✠
Genesis 14:1 – 12:
In the days of King Amraphel of Shinar, King Arioch of Ellasar, King Chedorlaomer of Elam, and King Tidal of Goiim, these kings made war with King Bera of Sodom, King Birsha of Gomorrah, King Shinab of Admah, King Shemeber of Zeboiim, and the king of Bela (that is, Zoar). All these joined forces in the Valley of Siddim (that is, the Dead Sea). Twelve years they had served Chedorlaomer, but in the thirteenth year they rebelled. In the fourteenth year Chedorlaomer and the kings who were with him came and subdued the Rephaim in Ashteroth-karnaim, the Zuzim in Ham, the Emim in Shaveh-kiriathaim, and the Horites in the hill country of Seir as far as El-paran on the edge of the wilderness; then they turned back and came to En-mishpat (that is, Kadesh), and subdued all the country of the Amalekites, and also the Amorites who lived in Hazazon-tamar. Then the king of Sodom, the king of Gomorrah, the king of Admah, the king of Zeboiim, and the king of Bela (that is, Zoar) went out, and they joined battle in the Valley of Siddim with King Chedorlaomer of Elam, King Tidal of Goiim, King Amraphel of Shinar, and King Arioch of Ellasar, four kings against five. Now the Valley of Siddim was full of bitumen pits; and as the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah fled, some fell into them, and the rest fled to the hill country. So the enemy took all the goods of Sodom and Gomorrah, and all their provisions, and went their way; they also took Lot, the son of Abram’s brother, who lived in Sodom, and his goods, and departed.
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| Capture of Lot (לוֹט) and his family |
This particular account invites us to learn more about the times of Abram (אַבְרָם), later Abraham (אַבְרָהָם), and in particular what happened in the lead up to the narrative about Sodom (סְדוֹם) and Gomorrah (עמורה), a point that I keep returning to. Something that will become more apparent throughout this study will also be the Amalekites (עֲמָלֵקִים) and the Amorites (אֱמֹרִיִּים), who represented groups, tribes really, of people who were particularly profuse in their defiance of Yahweh, which justified their later divine destruction, but more on this later.
What we should consider here and now is the fact that Abram's nephew Lot (לוֹט) was taken into captivity by the armies of foreign invaders, and to that extent allow me to again make a larger point: these armies consisted of highly trained and experienced men, true warriors, whatever your legitimate objections to their actions may be, and this can hardly be said about the so-called warriors fighting modern wars, but again I must digress in order not to carry this study too far afield.
Genesis 14:13 – 17:
Then one who had escaped came and told Abram the Hebrew, who was living by the oaks of Mamre the Amorite, brother of Eshcol and of Aner; these were allies of Abram. When Abram heard that his nephew had been taken captive, he led forth his trained men, born in his house, three hundred eighteen of them, and went in pursuit as far as Dan. He divided his forces against them by night, he and his servants, and routed them and pursued them to Hobah, north of Damascus. Then he brought back all the goods, and also brought back his nephew Lot with his goods, and the women and the people.
This is an example of how a righteous, a necessary, and a sacred war was fought in ancient times, although I should add that this war was perhaps not yet sacred to the conscience of Abram, but the overall point still stands: these were actually righteous wars that had and end in sight, something that you can hardly say about modern warfare. Abram's force fought these bandits, these savage beasts, and he smashed their heads against the ground after he struck them in the head with rocks and spears, and won a righteous victory, a victory to be remembered in history. I should also note that Damascus is mentioned in this passage of the Bible, and this is quite significant, because as it happens, Damascus is considered by some to be the oldest continually inhabited city in the world, but again I must digress.
On the point of Abram and his force striking down the bandits, we must understand this as well from a perspective of divine vengeance and divine cleansing, for Abram cleansed the land of evil and of demonic possessions, and as Yahweh is about to do with the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah later in Genesis, a form of consecration, violent though it was. If we consider Abram and his contemporaries to be quite normal, use this reference point to gather your own standing in history; hopefully you will come to realize that you are a profoundly deviated person living in a profoundly deviated world. This is not to suggest that violence and raw anger are good things in and of themselves, but today people have a very strange view of these things, where they appear to consider violence to be quite evil if it is enacted on person-to-person basis, whereas many of these same people also appear to have no issues with violence from afar, the more abstract the better, read "Mechanical Procedures".
✚ Abram Blessed by Melchizedek ✚
Genesis 14:18 – 24:
After his return from the defeat of Chedorlaomer and the kings who were with him, the king of Sodom went out to meet him at the Valley of Shaveh (that is, the King’s Valley). And King Melchizedek of Salem brought out bread and wine; he was priest of [Yahweh] Most High. He blessed him and said, 'Blessed be Abram by [Yahweh] Most High, maker of heaven and earth; and blessed be [Yahweh] Most High, who has delivered your enemies into your hand!'
And Abram gave him one-tenth of everything. Then the king of Sodom said to Abram, 'Give me the persons, but take the goods for yourself.' But Abram said to the king of Sodom, 'I have sworn to [Yahweh], [the] Most High, maker of heaven and earth, that I would not take a thread or a sandal-thong or anything that is yours, so that you might not say, ‘I have made Abram rich.’ I will take nothing but what the young men have eaten, and the share of the men who went with me—Aner, Eshcol, and Mamre. Let them take their share.'
Prodigious Abram was greeted by Melchizedek (מלכי־צדק), King of Salem (שָׁלֵם) and Priest of El Elyon (אֵל עֶלְיוֹן), Melchizedek is perhaps one of the most enduring mysteries of the Bible, as certain scholars would point to this moment between him and Abram as being some kind of turning point in the historiography of Hebrew theology: meaning that certain scholars believe this to be the conception of monotheism, something that I strictly reject and something that most scholars appear to reject as well, as the point of this meeting, if there ever was one beyond this mere account, represented a revival of something quite monotheistic, a kind of consecration, as I mentioned above, reminding us of the great tradition, read "My Views on the Unity of the Source".‖
Now, the fact that Melchizedek was a priest of God, of Yahweh, is significant and in dispute, and I refuse to elaborate further on that point here, except that I will say that if we assume that Melchizedek was a follower of the God of Abram, Yahweh, then we may carry with us a certain certainty that his blessing was real and probably of the preordained order, but this we may never know, which is why King Melchizedek should continue to remain a theological mystery. But in terms of temporal power, we me be prudent in noting that he, the King of Salem and the Priest of El Elyon, conscripted in one person, one figurehead, a royal priest, someone who was clearly transfigured and capable of receiving divine instruction, and from this point of view, one could make the argument that Melchizedek represented a kind of unity within, before the strife and the schism of politics, before the priesthood and the knighthood was made to come apart, read "The Primordial Body". Now, I should perhaps add that Adam (אָדָם) and Eve (חַוָּה)—read "Genesis, Chapter 4; and Genesis, Chapter 5"—implicitly represented the first unity before the schism and the crack in the wall, before the perils of corporeal knowledge, and the first royals with the qualification of being capable of receiving divine instruction, really at the summit of spiritual realization, the first Monday before the shadow of deceit.
You have reached the end of this part of the Bible, or rather my examination of the Bible. For more on this series, follow the label "Bible Study series". If you are interested in me, read my "About me" page and my "Who Am I?" post.
Reginald Drax (AKA, M. C. Dutt) – September 27, 2026.
Footnote(s)
* For more on this, I direct you to my posts: "Dreaming" and "Self-Improvement", as those posts actually deal quite extensively with the reason for this blog.
† This is a point that I almost always seem destined to keep returning to in this study. If you wish to find out more, then I direct you to my posts: "Yahweh Elohim" and "Proof of the Name of Yahweh", as they explore this topic in greater detail and in greater resolution.
‡ For more on these "ideological and political mutations", I direct you to my post dealing with Protestantism, "The Problem with Protestantism". Another notable post is "The Hypocrisy of the Pious". These posts deal with this subject in greater detail, although they may not directly address it.
§ This point is also disputed, and it is commonplace among certain radical individuals to claim that the Bible is not a detailed account of history, and beyond these individuals, it is also the case that certain scholars support the position that the Bible may not be understood in a strictly chronological order, but these possible objections cannot be resolved within the purview of this post. Besides, time does not matter more than the narrative, and details are not merely functions of time; details, if anything, are functions of the narrative.
‖ This moment in history is no doubt important, but it seems to me that some people get hung up on the concept of some kind of "One God Doctrine", a concept that could open to door to something quite absolutist and even totalitarian.
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