“You are a priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek.” Hebrews 7:17

The verse above is talking about Jesus and comparing Him to Melchizedek, but who is Melchizedek and why is the author of Hebrews comparing Jesus to a relatively unknown Biblical figure?

This is one of the great mysteries of the Bible to me, one of those things when I read it for the first time I wanted to know more. Melchizedek has a very small role in Genesis 14:18-20, only three verses, and yet he appears again in Psalm 110:4, and these two passages are cited by the author of Hebrews in chapter seven in a significant manner.

So while the Old Testament is relatively silent on this man he must have been an important figure. So let’s dive into this to see if we can shed more light on these Bible passages and what they mean.

Who was Melchizedek

First, let’s look at Genesis 14:18-20:

¹⁸ And Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine. (He was priest of God Most High.)

¹⁹ And he blessed him and said,

“Blessed be Abram by God Most High,
    Possessor of heaven and earth;
²⁰ and blessed be God Most High,
    who has delivered your enemies into your hand!” (ESV)

And now we’ll take a look at Psalm 110:

110 The LORD says to my Lord:
    “Sit at my right hand,
until I make your enemies your footstool.”

² The LORD sends forth from Zion
    your mighty scepter.
    Rule in the midst of your enemies!
³ Your people will offer themselves freely
    on the day of your power,
    in holy garments;
from the womb of the morning,
    the dew of your youth will be yours.
⁴ The LORD has sworn
    and will not change his mind,
“You are a priest forever
    after the order of Melchizedek.”

⁵ The Lord is at your right hand;
    he will shatter kings on the day of his wrath.
⁶ He will execute judgment among the nations,
    filling them with corpses;
he will shatter chiefs
    over the wide earth.
⁷ He will drink from the brook by the way;
    therefore he will lift up his head. (ESV)

Psalm 110 is a Messianic Psalm; “The LORD says to my Lord” is interpreted as God the Father talking to Jesus the Son and here we see Jesus sitting at the right hand of the Father. In verse two he is given a scepter and made king, and by the end of the Psalm we see him as judge.

What does all of this tell us about Melchizedek? We know from Genesis that he was the King of Salem and we know that he was a priest of God Most High. That right there is our first clue, he was a king and a priest of God. This predated Israel as a nation, but in Israel these two offices were held by separate people. Think about what happened when Saul tried to perform the priestly duties before war.¹

We also see from Psalm 110 that Jesus is being compared to him as an everlasting priest and this is where everything gets confusing to most of us. How can Melchizedek be a priest forever? Nothing before this in the Bible even hints at this.

My first thought was that Melchizedek was either a Theophany or a Christophany, a preincarnate visitation of either God the Father or of Jesus, this would certainly explain how he could be a priest forever. However, the occurrences of such events in the Old Testament are usually of short duration, Jacob wrestling with God² for instance, whereas if Melchizedek was a king he would have been on earth for a longer period of time. Still, I cannot rule out this possibility.

This is where Hebrew begins to put some more of the details together.

We learn from Hebrews 7:2 that his name means king of righteousness, and Salem translates to peace. Those are two terms closely associated with Jesus.

Hebrews 7:3 also tells us that Melchizedek was without parents, and he had no genealogy so he was without beginning of days and end of life, and that he remains a priest forever. So, because he has no genealogy, there is no record of his birth or death, there is no record of his parents. At least figuratively speaking he is a priest forever because there is no record of his death. The question becomes did he never have a genealogy or did he have a genealogy which was lost to history? Did he really have no parents or is there just no record of his parents? These questions are why I can’t let go of the possibility of Melchizedek being a Theophany or Christophany.

There are several genealogies in Genesis and many throughout the Bible. Genealogies were very important in the ancient world, they were used to prove and secure birthrights. At Mt. Sinai God commanded the Israeli priests to come from the line of Aaron, but Melchizedek did not come from the line of Aaron³ because, as mentioned above, he was before the line of Aaron. He came from the Order of Melchizedek.

Comparing Jesus to Melchizedek

Now I think we can finally start to put this together.

Both Melchizedek and Jesus were righteous and peaceful. Melchizedek probably figuratively, and possibly literally, had no beginning and no end. While Jesus had a beginning and an end during his time on this earth, in Heaven he had no beginning and he will have no end.

Melchizedek held the offices of both king and priest, and now Jesus is our king and our High Priest. The writer of Hebrews is making the point through the example of Melchizedek that both offices can be, and had been, held by the same person.

And lastly Melchizedek was a priest who did not come from the line of Aaron because he predated the line of Aaron. Jesus as our High Priest is also not from the line of Aaron because he also predated the line of Aaron. This is why the author of Hebrews says Jesus came from the Order of Melchizedek. Again, the author of Hebrews is trying to show his audience that Jesus is not disqualified from being our High Priest simply because he was not from the line of Aaron.

¹⁵ This becomes even more evident when another priest arises in the likeness of Melchizedek, ¹⁶ who has become a priest, not on the basis of a legal requirement concerning bodily descent, but by the power of an indestructible life.

Conclusion

The author is showing a precedent here to convince those who would try to disqualify Jesus based on all we have discussed above. The idea of one man being king and priest, and not coming from the line of Aaron would have been a foreign idea to the people of Israel at the time, the author of Hebrews is trying to show that not only is it possible but that it had already occurred in the past.

Although I am not willing to discard the possibility that Melchizedek was a Christophany based on the non-existent genealogy, I believe what we end up with is Melchizedek being a “prefiguring” or a “type” of Christ, with type being defined as “a person or thing in the Old Testament that foreshadows a person or thing in the New Testament.”

There is one last supporting factor to Melchizedek prefiguring Christ. When he met Abram he brought both bread and wine, the two elements of the Lord’s Supper…

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1. 1 Samuel 13:8-14 ↩︎
2. Genesis 32:22-32 ↩︎
3. Hebrews 7:6 ↩︎