SALEM (Heb. Šálêm, Septuagint Σαλῆμ). — A Canaanite city of which Melchizedek was king (Gen. 14:18; Hebr. 7:1–2), and which corresponds to Jerusalem, as the parallelism with “Zion” in Ps. 75 (76), 3 shows. Its relationship with the name Jerusalem, Akkad. Urusalim, Uruslim(mu), is unclear: S. may be an abbreviation, with an allusion to the name of a hypothetical deity S., Salim.
According to the Vulgate, the Septuagint, and the Syriac version of Gen. 33:18, Jacob, returning from Mesopotamia, came to S., “the city of the Shechemites.” But, according to the Hebrew, the meaning is that from that journey “Jacob arrived safe and sound (šálêm) in the city of Shechem.”
According to the Greek of Indt. 4:4 (omitted in the Vulgate), a valley in Samaria was called S.; some scholars identified it with a present-day locality named Salim, east of Nabulus (Shechem). Giovanni Rinaldi