And blessed be the most high God
Let his name be praised, and thanks be given to him for all
mercies temporal and spiritual, since all flow from him, and
particularly for the mercies Abram and others through him were
now made partakers of; for whoever were the instruments, God was
the efficient cause, and to him all the glory was to be given:
which hath delivered thine enemies into thine
hand;
the four kings, who are called Abram's enemies, because the
enemies of God and of true religion, and because they had been
injurious to a relation of his; and especially they may be so
called, if their intention was, as, say the Jewish writers
F17 to slay him, beginning first with
Lot: and those four kings, according to them, signify the four
monarchies, the Babylonian, Persian, Grecian, and Roman
F18 who in their turns distressed his
posterity, but in the latter day shall fall into their hands, as
those did into Abram's, and fall by them: and he gave him
tithes of all;
not Melchizedek to Abram, but Abram to Melchizedek, as appears
from ( Hebrews
7:4 ) ; and these tithes were given not out of the goods that
were recovered, for they were restored to the proprietors of
them, but out of the spoils that were taken from the enemy, as is
evident from the same place referred to; and these were given
both as a return for the respect shown him by Melchizedek, and by
way of thankfulness to God for the victory, whose priest he was;
otherwise, as a king, he stood in no need of such a present; nor
was it for his maintenance as a priest, or what Abram was obliged
unto, but was a voluntary action, and not out of his own
substance, but out of the spoils of the enemy, and to testify his
gratitude to God: this was imitated by the Heathens in later
times; so the Tarentines, having got a victory over the
Peucetians, sent the tenth (of the spoil) to Delphos {s}: the
Jews F20 say Abraham was the first in the
world that began to offer tithes; but they are mistaken, when
they say in the same place, that he took all the tithes of Sodom
and Gomorrah, and of Lot his brother's son, and gave them to Shem
the son of Noah. Eupolemus F21 makes mention of this
interview between Abram and Melchizedek by name; he says, Abram
was hospitably entertained in the holy city Argarizin, which is
by interpretation the mountain of the most High (but seems to be
the Mount Gerizzim) and that he received gifts from Melchizedek,
the priest of God, who reigned there.