Melchizedek

“The LORD has sworn and will not change his mind, ‘You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.’”

— Psalm 110:4 (ESV)

Melchizedek is the king of Salem and “priest of God Most High” who blesses Abraham after his rescue of Lot, and receives a tenth of the spoil from him (Gen. 14:18-20). His name means “king of righteousness,” and Salem, later Jerusalem, means “peace.”¹ Scripture gives no record of his ancestry, birth, or death, and the epistle to the Hebrews treats that silence as God’s own design: it reads Melchizedek as a historical type of Christ’s own priesthood, a priestly office that, unlike the Levitical line, has no predecessor, no successor, and no end (Ps. 110:4; Heb. 5:6, 10; 6:20; 7:1-17).²

Biblical Basis

The encounter in Genesis 14

After Abraham defeats the coalition of kings who had carried off his nephew Lot, Melchizedek comes out to meet him, brings out bread and wine, and blesses him: “Blessed be Abram by God Most High, Possessor of heaven and earth; and blessed be God Most High, who has delivered your enemies into your hand!” (Gen. 14:19-20, ESV). Abraham responds by giving him a tenth of everything. Melchizedek’s name, “king of righteousness,” stands in deliberate contrast to the king of Sodom, against whom Abraham had just fought.¹ The author of Hebrews draws out the significance of the exchange: “It is beyond dispute that the inferior is blessed by the superior” (Heb. 7:7, ESV), so that in receiving Melchizedek’s blessing and paying him tithes, Abraham, and through him the whole Levitical priesthood still “in the loins” of their ancestor, acknowledges a priesthood higher than their own.²

An eternal priesthood after Melchizedek’s order

Centuries later, Psalm 110 addresses a coming king with a divine oath: “You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek” (Ps. 110:4, ESV). Hebrews identifies Jesus as that priest (Heb. 5:6, 10; 6:20), and spends most of its seventh chapter explaining why a priesthood “after the order of Melchizedek” surpasses the priesthood of Aaron. The Levitical priesthood needed constant renewal because death kept its priests from continuing in office; Christ, because “he continues forever, … holds his priesthood permanently” (Heb. 7:23-24, ESV). The Levitical priesthood was established by law alone; Christ’s was established by God’s own oath (Heb. 7:20-21).³ Because Melchizedek’s priesthood, unlike Aaron’s, was never restricted to one family line or one nation, it could typify a priesthood with no such limits.²

Historical Development

The identity of Melchizedek

Because Genesis gives no account of Melchizedek’s parentage and Hebrews calls him “without father, without mother, without genealogy” (Heb. 7:3), interpreters have long asked who he actually was. Jewish tradition generally identified him with Shem, the son of Noah, who was still alive in Abraham’s day and whose piety made him a plausible priest-king. John Gill judged this identification impossible on the text’s own terms: Shem’s father, birth, and death were all a matter of recorded genealogy, which is exactly what Hebrews says Melchizedek lacked.⁴ Other proposals current among “those that have borne the Christian name,” in Gill’s phrase, held Melchizedek to have been an angel, or a specially created and sinless man, or the Holy Spirit himself; Gill dismissed these as “fanciful, and without any foundation.”⁴

A more serious proposal, one Gill called “more probable at first sight,” identifies Melchizedek with the Son of God himself in a pre-incarnate appearance, connecting the encounter to Jesus’s own words, “Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day” (John 8:56, ESV). Gill rejected this reading too: Hebrews describes Melchizedek as “made like the Son of God” (Heb. 7:3), a comparison that requires two distinct persons rather than one and the same. Gill concluded instead that Melchizedek was “some Canaanitish king, famous for his extraordinary piety, princely dignity, and divine priesthood; whose genealogy and descent were purposely concealed that he might be a fit type of Christ.”⁴

Elijah Barrows reached the same conclusion by a related argument: a theophany is ruled out because the text cannot call the Son of God “made like unto the Son of God,” and an angel is ruled out because angels do not share human nature and so cannot typify a Christ who “had to be made like his brothers in every respect” (Heb. 2:14-18, ESV; cf. 4:15; 5:1-2). On this reading, the “without father, without mother, without genealogy” language describes what the inspired record leaves out, not Melchizedek’s actual origins: a priest whose ancestry “is not mentioned, because his priesthood was not restricted, like that of the Levitical priests, to any particular line of descent.”⁵ Matthew Barrett, writing more than a century later, arrives at the same reading independently: “It is doubtful the author means Melchizedek never died or had physical parents. Rather, the author is making the simple observation that in the Genesis narrative Melchizedek just appears suddenly without any explanation and then disappears from the story without any warning.”¹ Gill, Barrows, and Barrett read the passage the same way despite writing centuries apart: Melchizedek was an ordinary human king-priest, not a theophany or an angel, and his missing genealogy is a feature of the narrative rather than a claim about his birth.

Opposing Views

The Roman Catholic sacrifice of the Mass

Roman Catholic apologists have long pointed to Melchizedek’s bringing out of bread and wine (Gen. 14:18) as an Old Testament foreshadowing of the Mass as a repeated, propitiatory sacrifice: if Christ is a priest “after the order of Melchizedek,” and Melchizedek offered bread and wine in sacrifice, then Christ likewise offers himself under the forms of bread and wine at every Mass.⁶ William Perkins answered this argument point by point. The comparison Hebrews 7 actually draws between Melchizedek and Christ concerns Melchizedek’s person rather than any act of sacrifice: both are king and priest; both are, by name and title, a prince of peace and righteousness; both are said to be “without father” or “without mother”; Melchizedek, being greater than Abraham, blessed him, just as Christ blesses and justifies all who share Abraham’s faith. None of these points of resemblance touch the bread and wine at all. Perkins further noted that Melchizedek’s purpose in bringing them out was simply “to refresh Abraham and his servants,” worn out from the battle, not to offer a sacrifice.⁶

John Calvin reached the same conclusion independently, decades later, in his own case against the Mass: “Melchizedek gave bread and wine to Abraham and his companions, that he might refresh them when worn out with the march and the battle. What has this to do with sacrifice?” Calvin pressed the silence of Hebrews itself as evidence: the author, who “goes into the minutest details” of Melchizedek’s typology, never once mentions the bread and wine, which would be a striking omission if that detail actually anticipated the church’s central sacrifice.⁷ Both Reformed writers locate Melchizedek’s typological significance in his priestly person and office, as Hebrews 7 itself does, rather than in any single transaction described in Genesis 14.

Doctrinal Significance

Because Christ’s priesthood, unlike Aaron’s, rests on God’s own oath and does not end in death, Hebrews argues it can accomplish what the Levitical priesthood never could: “he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them” (Heb. 7:25, ESV).¹ Benedict Pictet drew out the fuller contrast between the two priesthoods: the Levitical priests were sinful men who had to offer for their own sins as well as the people’s; Christ, “holy and undefiled,” needed to offer only for others. They were many, since death prevented any one of them from continuing; he is one, needing no substitute. Their priesthood, being “according to the law of a carnal commandment,” was repeated and imperfect; his, resting on God’s oath and “the power of an endless life” (Heb. 7:16), fully and permanently expiates sin.³

Objections and Responses

Doesn’t calling the Son “without father, without mother” count against his being eternally begotten of the Father? Opponents of the Son’s eternal generation, from the ancient Arians to the later Socinians, have pressed Hebrews 7:3 as proof that Scripture itself denies the Son any real father-son relation to God. Petrus van Mastricht answered that the verse describes Melchizedek typologically and Christ by what it emphasizes, not by a denial of his sonship: Christ is “without father” with respect to his human nature, which had no human father, and “without mother,” or without recorded genealogy, with respect to his divine nature, which has no origin at all. Mastricht traced this same objection back through the Arian controversy to his own century’s Socinians, and answered both by distinguishing the ordinary generation the objection assumes from the Son’s own eternal generation, “which by no means” carries the same difficulties.⁸ William Perkins had stated the same two-natures reading over a century earlier, more briefly: Christ had “no father, as he was man; no mother, as he was God.”⁹

Related Doctrines

References

Matthew Barrett, None Greater: The Undomesticated Attributes of God (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2019), chap. 8, “Is God in Time? Timeless Eternity.” ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴
Elijah Porter Barrows, Companion to the Bible (New York: American Tract Society, 1867), 582. ↩ ↩² ↩³
Benedict Pictet, Christian Theology, trans. Frederick Reyroux (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1845), 277. ↩ ↩²
John Gill, A Body of Doctrinal Divinity; or, A System of Evangelical Truths, Deduced from the Sacred Scriptures, 2 vols. (London: Printed for the Author, and Sold by George Keith, 1769), book V, chap. 10, “Of the Priestly Office of Christ.” ↩ ↩² ↩³
Barrows, Companion to the Bible, 584. ↩
William Perkins, A Reformed Catholike (Cambridge: John Legat, 1598), 215. ↩ ↩²
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1845-1846), book 4, chap. 18, sec. 2, 608. ↩
Petrus van Mastricht, Theoretical-Practical Theology, vol. 2, Faith in the Triune God, ed. Joel R. Beeke, trans. Todd M. Rester (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2019), 598. ↩
Perkins, A Reformed Catholike, 216. ↩