Shaveh

Shaveh is the name of two places in the UPDV: a valley near Salem that doubles as the King's Valley, and the compound place-name Shaveh-kiriathaim associated with the Emim in the campaign of Chedorlaomer.

The Valley of Shaveh, the King's Valley

After Abram's rout of the eastern kings, the king of Sodom comes out to meet him in 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)" (Ge 14:17). The parenthetical equation fixes Shaveh and the King's Valley as one and the same site.

Absalom's Pillar in the King's Dale

The same locality reappears under the variant rendering "the king's dale" as the setting for Absalom's monument: "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" (2Sa 18:18). The pillar stands as a self-erected memorial, set in the same valley first met in Genesis.

Shaveh-kiriathaim

A separate compound name, Shaveh-kiriathaim, marks one of the stages of Chedorlaomer's eastern campaign: "And in the fourteenth year came Chedorlaomer, and the kings who were with him, and struck the Rephaim in Ashteroth-karnaim, and the Zuzim in Ham, and the Emim in Shaveh-kiriathaim," (Ge 14:5). It is named as the place where the Emim were struck — a site distinct from the valley of Shaveh near Salem and located in the territory east of the Jordan associated with the pre-Israelite peoples of the region.