Abraham ... "On How to Deal with Loot."

If you were indeed making a movie about the rescue of Lot, there would be a whole bunch of action and old fashioned fighting. BAM! POW! WHAM! Abraham pursued the kings who had nabbed nephew Lot with three hundred and eighteen fighting men. Such a specific number...always an evocative question when the Bible, so big on symbolic numbers, names a particular figure.

I've got no clue on this one. 318. Any guesses?

But still, big action scene. Three hundred and eighteen caped crusaders, fighting four kings and their fighting dudes, winning the battle and freeing Lot. And Lot's stuff. And apparently, other people's stuff as well.

Two things then happen at the end of chapter 14...two things that probably wouldn't make good action movie, but that I find very significant.

First, the king of Salem, a dude named Melchizedek, demonstrates that he is priest as well as king. He blesses Abraham, and he breaks out the bread and wine in the earliest recorded celebration of communion. Before you chide me for calling it communion yea these thousand and more years before Jesus invents the tradition, remember that Melchizedek gets an honorable mention in the New Testament in Hebrews 7, where Christ is described as a priest in the order of Melchizedek. Mel's name even means "king of righteousness" and Salem means "peace" or "wholeness."

So perhaps he is a symbolic figure.

But the interesting piece to me comes when Abraham offers Mel a tithe...one tenth of, well, "everything." Mel gives Abraham a blessing, and Abraham offers him a tenth of his loot.

It would appear that it is Abe's own personal loot he is tithing, because Abraham flat refuses a share in the loot from the adventure. The king of Sodom, another king entirely, offers Abraham a share of the loot they've captured--and Abraham refuses. He accepts reimbursement for expenses incurred and nothing more.

The Bible is a wacky book, no doubt, but this is one of the wackier spots. What kind of person takes a pass on perfectly good loot? A nutcase who is already trying to GIVE AWAY one tenth of what he's got?

For Abraham, there are things more important than continuing to accumulate. He's already successful. After all, the 318 action figures were from his own household. But he knows when to tithe to a righteous priest, and he knows that accepting loot is sometimes too pricey in relational cost.

What do we do when the loot is fresh before us? Do we know when to walk away?