Salem: an ancient city, almost certainly an early name for Jerusalem, where Melchizedek ruled as king and where a psalm later places God's dwelling alongside Zion
Salem appears twice in the Bible, and both times it names a city. In Genesis 14:18, Melchizedek, described as king of Salem and priest of God Most High, brings out bread and wine to meet Abram after his victory over the kings who had captured Lot. In Psalm 76:2, a hymn about God's power over the nations places God's dwelling "in Salem" and then, in the very next line, "in Zion," setting the two names side by side as if they name the same place.
The spelling matches the ordinary Hebrew word for "whole, complete" (שָׁלֵם) letter for letter, and it sits one letter short of the noun for "peace." That resemblance is almost certainly not where the name began. The same city was already called by a form of this name centuries before Israel existed: Egyptian execration texts and the fourteenth century Amarna letters call it Urushalim, "the foundation of Shalim," honoring a West Semitic god of dusk known from Ugarit, where he appears as the twin of the god of dawn. Once Israelite writers used the name, its resemblance to "whole" and "peace" invited a new hearing, one the letter to the Hebrews makes explicit by translating "king of Salem" as "king of peace" (Hebrews 7:2).
Scholars who have studied the question closely conclude that Salem is simply an older name for Jerusalem. The clearest evidence sits inside the Bible itself: Psalm 76 names Salem and Zion together, the way Hebrew poetry regularly pairs two names for one place. The evidence outside the Bible points the same way, since the same city already carried a Shalim-based name in Egyptian and Canaanite records long before David ever captured it and made it his capital.
Because both occurrences point to the same city, and nothing in the text divides them into separate ideas, this word is treated as one straightforward name: it identifies a real place rather than teaching a concept.