King's Dale

The King's Dale is a valley named twice in scripture, with the two passages separated by centuries. Genesis identifies it as the valley of Shaveh, where the king of Sodom met Abram after the defeat of the eastern kings. The same place reappears in the David narratives as the site where Absalom set up his own monument. UPDV renders the location as "King's Valley" in the Genesis passage and "king's dale" in the Samuel passage.

The Valley of Shaveh

After Abram's pursuit and rescue of Lot, the king of Sodom comes out to meet him at this valley: "And the king of Sodom went out to meet him, after his return from the slaughter of Chedorlaomer and the kings who were with him, at the valley of Shaveh (the same is the King's Valley)" (Gen 14:17). The parenthetical equation is the link — the valley of Shaveh is the same place later called the King's Valley, the site of the meeting that immediately precedes Melchizedek's appearance in the chapter.

Absalom's Monument

Generations later the same dale appears as the place Absalom chose for his own pillar: "Now Absalom in his lifetime had taken and reared up for himself the pillar, which is in the king's dale; for he said, I have no son to keep my name in remembrance: and he called the pillar after his own name; and it is called Absalom's monument, to this day" (2 Sam 18:18). Absalom's reasoning is given in the verse — without a son to carry his name forward, he raises the pillar in this dale to preserve it. The dale that had earlier hosted the kings' meeting becomes, here, a place of self-memorialization.