Genesis 14:2 names him as the king of the Tsevo'im (צביים), one of the protagonists in the War of the Kings.
Gesenius reckons the name comes from Shameh-Ever (שמה-עבר) = "soaring on high".
Tsevo'im (צביים) appears to derive from Tseva (צבא), = "host", a term used in the Tanach to mean both "an army" and the "constellations of the Heavens", as in Adonai Tseva'ot (אדני צבאות), "the Lord of the Hosts of the Heavens". The epithet Melech Tsevo'im (מלך צביים) could thus mean either "commander of the troops", which would be logical in this context, but could also be his kingly designation, denoting which deity he served.
This presupposes that צביים does indeed come from צבא. Other possibilities include:
Tsav (צב) = "a lizard", though the double-plural (יים) mitigates against this.
Tsavah (צבא) = to "wish" or "will" or "desire".
Tsaveh (צבה) = "swelling" (Numbers 5:21).
There is also Tsevo'im (צבאים) = "a gazelle" or "hyena"; though Yirme-Yahu (Jeremiah) spells Tsevo'im (צבעים) with an Ayin - ע - (Jeremiah 12:9), as do both 1 Samuel 13:18 and Nehemiah 11:34, and regard Tsevo'im as the name of a valley and a town in the tribe of Bin-Yamin.
The text simply makes Tsevo'im the town which Shem-Ever ruled, and counts it among the five Cities of the Plain destroyed shortly afterwards. However, as Drummond has argued with great plausibility, that entire myth may well be cosmological and not historical: the five cities being the five planets, the Dead Sea the heavens, and the purpose of the myth to explain an important astrological transition. Given that Tsevo'im is used to mean "hosts of the heavens" as well as "army", can we find further evidence to back Drummond from the names of the other kings and their cities? The answer is yes...
And if Drummond is correct, what then of Shem-Ever. "Soaring on high" – Gesenius' explanation - now acquires a clear meaning. The root Avar (אבר) gives the verb Abir in the intensive (Pi'el) form, from which Genesis 49:24 and Isaiah 1:24 take Abir Ya'akov and Avir Yisra-El = "the mighty one of Ya'akov" and "the mighty one of Yisra-El". "The mighty one" is patently an epithet for the deity. But which deity, since we have shown that Ya'akov was the Dionysian head of a constellatory cult (a kind of Adonai Tseva'ot - Lord of Hosts, himself), with his twelve tribal sons representing one of the constellations each?
Psalm 22:13 has Abirey Bashan (אַבִּירֵי בָשָׁן) = "the bulls of Bashan", a phrase which enables us to date that Psalm to before 2200 BCE, making it thereby one of the very oldest in the canon. It may also be that Avi-Ram (אבירם), which is found in Numbers 16:1, 16:12 and 26:9 as well as 1 Kings 16:34 may in fact be, not just an alternate spelling of Av-Raham, but also rooted in Abir, granting us still further proof, if any more is needed, that Av-Ram/Av-Raham was originally the Yisra-Eli Taurus, equally sun-god and bull-god, chief deity of the Emorim (Amorites) who invaded Kena'an in around 1800 BCE, but whose cult was later "supplanted" by the goat-cult of Dionysian Ya'akov.
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