According to the

Book of Joshua The Book of Joshua is the sixth book in the Hebrew Bible and the Old Testament, and is the first book of the Deuteronomistic history, the story of Israel from the conquest of Canaan to the Babylonian captivity, Babylonian exile. It tells of the ...

, Adonizedek ( ''ʾĂḏōnī-ṣeḏeq'', also transliterated Adoni-zedec) was king of

Jerusalem Jerusalem is a city in the Southern Levant, on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is one of the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest cities in the world, and ...

at the time of the

Israelite Israelites were a Hebrew language, Hebrew-speaking ethnoreligious group, consisting of tribes that lived in Canaan during the Iron Age. Modern scholarship describes the Israelites as emerging from indigenous Canaanites, Canaanite populations ...

invasion of

Canaan CanaanThe current scholarly edition of the Septuagint, Greek Old Testament spells the word without any accents, cf. Septuaginta : id est Vetus Testamentum graece iuxta LXX interprets. 2. ed. / recogn. et emendavit Robert Hanhart. Stuttgart : D ...

. According to Cheyne and Black, the name originally meant "Ṣedeḳ is lord", but this would likely have been read later as meaning "lord of righteousness" or "my lord is righteous".W. Robertson Smith and George F. Moore (1899), "Adoni-zedec" in Cheyne and Black, eds. ''Encyclopaedia Biblica.'

/ref> Adonizedek led a coalition of five of the neighboring Amorite rulers ( Hoham, king of

Hebron Hebron (; , or ; , ) is a Palestinian city in the southern West Bank, south of Jerusalem. Hebron is capital of the Hebron Governorate, the largest Governorates of Palestine, governorate in the West Bank. With a population of 201,063 in ...

; Piram, king of Jarmuth; Japhia, king of Lachish; and

Debir A Biblical word, debir or dvir () may refer to: Names * Debir King of Eglon, a Canaanite king of Eglon, slain by Joshua (). Aided by miracles, Joshua's army routed the Canaanite military, forcing Debir and the other kings to seek refuge in a cav ...

, king of Eglon) in resisting the invasion, but the allies were defeated at Gibeon, and suffered at Beth-horon, not only from their pursuers, but also from a great hail storm. The five allied kings took refuge in a cave at Makkedah and were imprisoned there until after the battle, when

Joshua Joshua ( ), also known as Yehoshua ( ''Yəhōšuaʿ'', Tiberian Hebrew, Tiberian: ''Yŏhōšuaʿ,'' Literal translation, lit. 'Yahweh is salvation'), Jehoshua, or Josue, functioned as Moses' assistant in the books of Book of Exodus, Exodus and ...

commanded that they be brought before him; whereupon they were brought out, humiliated, and put to death. According to the

Midrash ''Midrash'' (;"midrash"
. ''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary''. ; or ''midrashot' ...

, the name Adoni-zedek is translated as "Master of Zedek"—that is, "of Jerusalem", the city of righteousness. Genesis 14:18-20 records that, some 600 years prior to Adoni-zedek, there was another ruler of Jerusalem named Melchi-zedek. It may be possible that ''Zedek'' was a dynastic name/title for the rulers of Jerusalem before David. M. G. Easton, in the 1894 '' Easton's Bible Dictionary'', identifies Adonizedek with a king of Jerusalem called ` Abdi-Heba ("servant of Heba"), who around 1350 BC wrote several letters to the

Pharaoh Pharaoh (, ; Egyptian language, Egyptian: ''wikt:pr ꜥꜣ, pr ꜥꜣ''; Meroitic language, Meroitic: 𐦲𐦤𐦧, ; Biblical Hebrew: ''Parʿō'') was the title of the monarch of ancient Egypt from the First Dynasty of Egypt, First Dynasty ( ...

Egypt Egypt ( , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country spanning the Northeast Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to northe ...

. Six of his letters to the king of Egypt are included in the Amarna letters, and he is mentioned in a seventh.EA 280 (Amarna letter number 280)

Popular culture

Adonizedek was portrayed by actor Mário Frias (once

Jair Bolsonaro Jair Messias Bolsonaro (; born 21 March 1955) is a Brazilian politician and former military officer who served as the 38th president of Brazil from 2019 to 2023. He previously served as a member of Brazil's Chamber of Deputies (Brazil), Chamb ...

's Secretary of Culture) in the Brazilian soap opera '' A Terra Prometida''. In it, Adonizedek is portrayed as an arrogant king later revealed to be sadistic; further, he keeps the skeletons of his mother and his wife, and talks to them.

References

* * {{Eastons, Adoni-zedec Monarchs in the Hebrew Bible Ancient history of Jerusalem Executed monarchs Jebusites Book of Joshua people 14th-century BC monarchs