What do you think Abram did when he heard this news? Instantly he called for his three hundred and eighteen men whom he had trained to be soldiers, and told them to get ready for the march. There were three chieftains in that part of the country named Mamre, Eschol, and Aner, with whom Abram was friendly, and when he sent word to them that he was going to rescue his nephew and the other people taken by the kings of the East, they joined him, and the party started north. They had to travel more than a hundred miles before they overtook the enemy. Then they waited until night, when Abram divided his company in such a way as to make an attack at one time from different places. The soldiers were sleeping, thinking themselves perfectly safe, and when the attack came they were panic-stricken and fled, and Abram pursued them as far as Hobah, a village near Damascus. Then he led his soldiers, his nephew Lot, Lot’s family, and all the other people of Sodom and Gomorrah with their possessions back toward home. As Abram passed near Salem, in the mountains west of Sodom, Melchizedek, who was both priest and king in that city, brought food and drink for the soldiers and for the people who had been rescued, and he blessed Abram saying, “Blessed be Abram of God Most High, possessor of heaven and earth: and blessed be God Most High, who hath delivered thine enemies into thy hand.” And to him, as the priest of the most high God, Abram gave a tenth of all that he had taken in the battle. Then the king of Sodom came to meet Abram. It was considered the right thing for anyone who gained a victory in battle to keep for himself all the goods that he took and the people also for slaves, to keep or sell as he wished. The king of Sodom said to Abram, “Let me have the people that you have rescued, but keep the goods for yourself,” but Abram answered, “I have vowed to the Most High God that I will not take so much as a thread or a shoe lace of all these things, nor anything else that belongs to you, because if I do, you may say that you made me rich. Let there be nothing for me. Let all that is taken from your possessions be what my soldiers have eaten and the portion that rightfully belongs to my allies, these three men who went with me.”