(2) 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 father-in-law, 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.
(3) Abraham would not have given him a
tenth of everything unless he knew that Melchizedek was infinitely greater than
himself. Would Rebekah have asked one of the Canaanites or one of the
Sodomites? Would Abraham have given a tenth of his possessions to any one of
these? One ought not to even entertain such ideas.
(4) Because of the length of
Melchizedek’s life extended to the time of Jacob and Esau, it has been stated,
with much probability, that he was Shem. His father Noah was dwelling in the
east and Melchizedek was dwelling between two tribes, that is, between the sons
of Ham and his own sons. Melchizedek was like a partition between the two, for
he was afraid that the sons of Ham would turn his own sons to idolatry. (Ephrem
the Syrian, Commentary on Genesis Section XI.2-4, in St. Ephrem the Syrian:
Selected Prose Works [trans. Edward G. Matthews, Jr. [The Fathers of the
Church 91; Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University Press of America, 1994], 151)
