We have always known that Salem of Gen.14, where Abraham met Melchi‑zedek, the priest-king of the Most High God, was Jerusalem. Some commentators tried to establish that it was Salim of John 3.23, on the west bank of the Jordan, but that is discredited. That was a village and there is no evidence that it even existed in archaic times. Other considerations, such as statements in the Tel‑el‑Amarna tablets, indicated that Melchi‑zedek ruled a sizeable territory with Salem as its capital. The reference in Psa.76.2, "in Salem is his tabernacle", is to Jerusalem in the days of David.

In the ancient tablets mentioned above, the name is Uru‑Salim, evidently the name given at its founding. Uru is the Sumerian word for "city" and Salim for "peace", (hence the modern Hebrew word ‑ Shalom). Prior to the 23rd century B.C., Canaan and Syria were in the sphere of Sumerian influence; language and writing was either Sumerian (of Ham) or Akkadian (of Shem). The celebrated Sargon of Agade, the first military conqueror of history, had extended his empire from the Persian Gulf to Syria and Canaan and it was by him and his successors that the city-state of Ebla was overthrown, so that Jerusalem must have been founded well before the 24th century, possibly four centuries or more before Abraham left Ur of the Chaldees.

Who built it? The line of Priest-kings claiming to hold office by decree of the Most High God spanned at least seven hundred years, from Melchizedek (king of Righteousness) in Abraham's time to Adoni‑zedek (Lord of Righteousness) and his successor Abdi‑Khiba (Father gives life) in the time of Joshua. Abdi‑Khiba in his letters to Pharaoh Amen‑Hotep III insists that he was king of Jerusalem not by permission of the Pharaoh, like the other rulers around him, but by decree of the "Mighty King" (i.e. God; the same expression in Psa.48.2).    What rulers were these, and what people did they rule, who at a time when all, except Abraham, from Egypt through Canaan, Syria, Babylon, Sumer and Elam, embraced idolatry and renounced their original worship of the Most High God? Is it possible that Jerusalem was founded by some descendants of Noah other than of the line through Abraham who had never renounced their worship of the God of Heaven? If such was the case, then the date could be as far back as the 26th century when Canaan was being settled by Canaanites and Aramites.

So they could have come into the land, barely inhabited. To the south lay Egypt, to the north the commercialized lands of the Canaanites, (Syria today), to the east the highly civilized and busy lands of Sumer and Akkad, all idol worshippers. Here was a quiet, relatively empty land as yet undefiled by idolatry; here the elevated mountain mass—afterwards Mount Zion and Mount Moriah, where they could build their capital city and worship God after the dictates of their own hearts. How appropriate to call their new abode the city of peace!

What people were they, if in fact it was like this? When Abraham entered the land he found Jerusalem and the surrounding territory peopled by Jebusites, a Canaanite people descended from Ham. An alternative name for the city at that time was Jebus, that of the ancestor of the tribe. This name was still in use six hundred years later when Joshua invaded the land. Since Gen. 10.15 gives Sidon and Heth as the two sons of Canaan, Jebus and his eight fellow tribal leaders must have been in the third or fourth generation from Ham and might well have been involved in the dispersion from Babel. During later centuries the tribes of Canaanites and those from Aram, a son of Shem, lived side by side in Canaan and must have intermarried so that the Jebusites of Abraham's day could well have been a mixed Hamitic‑Semitic people. That would explain why they were ruled by priest-kings having Semitic names and lend colour to the supposition that, like their rulers, they still worshipped the Most High God, unlike the rest of the tribes of Canaan. A point which tends to confirm this is that the Jebusites were great fighters, a definite Semitic trait but not Hamitic. Israel never succeeded in driving them out of the city, even in the days of David, and they were ultimately absorbed into the Jewish people.

So it could have been that Abraham, departing from the idolatry of his native land, found himself in one where God was still worshipped, and lived the rest of his life in the vicinity of a city which, although he knew it not, was destined to become "the joy of the whole earth, the city of the Great King" (Psa. 48.2).