Genesis 14 is a war chapter—four kings against five, a battle in the Valley of Siddim, Lot taken captive, Abraham riding to the rescue. The Hebrew text is spare and military. But the ancient Aramaic translators of Targum Jonathan turned it into something extraordinary, weaving in giants, secret identities, and a character who survived the Flood itself.
The Targum's most spectacular addition concerns Og, who appears in the Hebrew only as a footnote king of Bashan. Here he becomes a survivor of the deluge—a giant who "had ridden protected upon the top of the ark, and sustained with food by Noah." But the Targum immediately clarifies: Og was not spared for any righteousness. He survived so "the inhabitants of the world might see the power of the Lord" and remember that giants once rebelled and perished. Og was a living museum exhibit of divine judgment.
The kings themselves get decoded. Amraphel "is Nimrod," the same tyrant who threw Abraham into the furnace. Ariok is named because he was arik—"tall among the giants." Each king's name becomes an etymology revealing character: Bera means "whose deeds were evil," Birsha means "whose deeds were with the wicked," Shinab "had hated his father," and Shemebar "had corrupted himself with fornication." The Targum reads every proper noun as a moral judgment.
When Abraham's servants refused to fight, the Targum says he chose a single man: Eliezer the son of Nimrod, "who was equal in strength to all the three hundred and eighteen." The Hebrew Bible's army of 318 trained men becomes one superhuman warrior. And Og, who brought Abraham the news about Lot's capture, arrived "upon the eve of the day of the Pascha" and found Abraham "making the unleavened cakes." The translators placed the first war of liberation on Passover eve—centuries before the Exodus.
Most dramatically, the mysterious Melchizedek—"king of Salem" in Genesis (Genesis 14:18)—is identified as "Shem bar Noah, the king of Yerushalem." Noah's son Shem was still alive, still a priest, ruling Jerusalem and blessing Abraham with bread and wine. The Targum collapsed the genealogy: the world before the Flood and the world of the patriarchs were connected by one living man.