Salim, the god of peace, was under one form or another widely spread in
the Semitic world. Salamanu, or Solomon, was the king of Moab in the
time of Tiglath-pileser III.; the name of Shalmaneser of Assyria is
written Sulman-asarid, "the god Sulman is chief," in the cuneiform
inscriptions; and one of the Tel el-Amarna letters was sent by
Ebed-Sullim, "the servant of Sullim," who was governor of Hazor. In one
of the Assyrian cities (Dimmen-Silim, "the foundation-stone of peace")
worship was paid to the god "Sulman the fish." Nor must we forget that
"Salma was the father of Beth-lehem" (1 Chron. ii. 51).

In the time of the Israelitish conquest the king of Jerusalem was
Adoni-zedek (Josh. x. 1). The name is similar to that of Melchi-zedek,
though the exact interpretation of it is a matter of doubt. It points,
however, to a special use of the word _zedek_, "righteousness," and it
is therefore interesting to find the word actually employed in one of
the letters of Ebed-Tob. He there says of the Pharaoh: "Behold, the king
is righteous (_zaduq_) towards me." What makes the occurrence of the
word the more striking is that it was utterly unknown to the
Babylonians. The root _zadaq_, "to be righteous," did not exist in the
Assyrian language.

There is yet another point in the history of the meeting between Abram
and Melchizedek which must not be passed over. When the patriarch
returned after smiting the invading army he was met outside Jerusalem
not only by Melchizedek, but also by the new king of Sodom. It was,
therefore, in the mountains and in the shadow of the sanctuary of the
Most High God that the newly-appointed prince was to be found, rather
than in the vale of Siddim. Does not this show that the king of
Jerusalem already exercised that sovereignty over the surrounding
district that Ebed-Tob did in the century before the Exodus? As we have