History of the Old Covenant. By J. H. Kurtz [pp. 451-486]

Kurtz on the Old Covenant.
humiliation in-human form, and by one sect of ancient heretics
for the Holy Ghost. He was, however, a pious Canaanitish
prince. The Salem, of which he was king, was a real place,
and not merely a significant title, and that not identical with a
supposed Shalem near to Shechem, (Gen. xxxiii. 18) nor with
Salim on the banks of the Jordan, (John iii. 23) but with Jerusalem; as is proved by the testimony of Onkelos and 6f Josephus, by the identity of the names ("peace" and" possession of
peace"), by Ps. lxxvi. 2, where incontestably Salem means Jerusalem, by the hereditary name of the king (Melchizedek, king
of righteousness, identical with Adonizedec, lord of righteousness, Josh. x. 3), by its vicinity to the king's dale (Gen. xiv. 17)
the spot where Absalom afterwards reared his pillar (2 Sam.
xviii. 18), now known as the valley of Jehoshaphat, and by its
lying directly upon the route from Damascus, whither Abram
pursued the flying kings, to Hebron where he had fixed his
residence. At this point, where the roads to Sodom and to
Hebron diverge, the king of Sodom comes up the valley of the
Kidron to greet the victor, while Melchizedek descends from
his royal citadel to bless him. The last surviving flower of the
Noachic covenant thus gives its sanction and its blessing to the
representative of the covenant that was destined to succeed them.
Thus far the record speaks of promises given to Abram;
now a covenant is made (xv. 18,) and ratified on the part of
God by the passage between the sundered parts of a sacrifice,
of a symbol of the divine presence akin to that which appeared
afterwards to Moses in the burning bush, or to the people in
the pillar of fire and cloud, or in the tabernacle in the glory
above the mercy-seat. For ten years Abram had been waiting
in vain for his expected offspring, until he was almost ready to
conclude that the steward of his house was destined to inherit
his promises and his hopes. But his faith is reassured by the
express declaration that a child of his own body should be his
heir. In all that had thus far passed, no mention had been
made of Sarah, and in her impatience she concludes that she
can be the mother only by adoption of the promised seed, and
hopes to find in the child of Hagar what she sought. The
event soon shows the vanity of all expedients of man's devising
to hasten unseasonably the fulfilment of what God had promised.
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