Shaveh

שוה


Genesis 14:5 gives Shaveh-Kiryatayim (שוה-קריתים) meaning the Dale of Kiryatayim in Beney Re'u-Ven territory.

Genesis 14:17 refers to Shaveh alone and calls it Emek Ha Melech (עמק המלך), "The King’s Dale", situated north of Yeru-Shala'im. Are the two intended as the same place, one giving the full name and the other its abbreviated form? The answer is probably yes, and that the parenthesis, claiming that Shaveh "is the King's Dale", is erroneous.

Why? Because if it were correct it would be anachronistic. The phrasing makes reference to Shaveh first, and then implies an assumption that readers/listeners will not know what or where Shaveh was, unless they are aided by the statement that "it is the King's Dale" (for a modern analogy, if I wanted to point out where Elizabethan Tyburn was, I might tell you that it is now Marble Arch - and anyone who ever visited London in the last hundred years would know exactly where I meant). What date then does this make the readers/listeners; and thence what date the writing, or re-writing? And which king? Clearly not Malki-Tsedek, contemporary of Av-Raham, who is mentioned in the same verse and is the subject of the visit to Shaveh. More likely David, for the following reasons:

In 2 Samuel 18:18 we are told that Av-Shalom (Absalom) was buried at Emek Ha Melech, "the King's Dale", that indeed Av-Shalom had set up a pillar there "because he had no son to bear his name", and gave it his own name, "Av-Shalom's Pillar". It was here that Yo'av took him, after cutting him down from the tree where he accidentally hanged himself by the hair, "and threw him into a great pit in the wood, and laid a very great heap of stones upon him, and all Yisra-El fled, every one to his tent" (2 Samuel 18:17).

Now what, pray, is really going on? The pit and stones describe a cairn, the burial mounds of the ancient megalithic people. The pillar suggests a menhir. Indeed, the word used here is MATSEVET (מצבת) which in 2 Kings 3:2; 10:26; 18:4; and 23:14, as well as Micah 5:12 and Hosea 10:1 are clearly statues of Ba'al, generally of wood, though Isaiah 6:13 also has one carved out of a tree like a South American totem pole. 

Was Av-Shalom then a Ba'al-worshipper? Apparently so. Yet Av-Shalom post-dates the megalithic tomb-builders and menhir-worshippers by centuries. So why the Av-Shalom link? Because Av-Shalom is the dynastic title of the priest-king of the sun-god. And recall: Av-Shalom was famous, like Shimshon (Samson), for his long hair - a sun-hero symbol. He even died by his hair, hanging from it from a tree in the sacred wood - oh yes, sacred: the wood of Ephrayim (2 Samuel 18:6) by name, and the tree, inevitably, an oak. Shaveh is not simply the burial-place of Av-Shalom, it is the sacred wood of the sun-god - we are absolutely in the realm of Frazer's Diana Nemorensis; for Av-Shalom, who dared to challenge the sacred-king and try to steal his throne, was hung from "The Golden Bough".

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