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Bible Dictionaries
Melchizedek
Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible
or MELCHIZEDEK. Described as king of Salem and priest of God Most High ( ‘El ‘Elyôn ), who met Abraham on his return from the slaughter of Chedorlaomer and his allies, refreshed him and his servants with bread and wine, blessed him, and received from him a tenth of the spoil he had taken ( Genesis 14:18-20 ). Salem has been variously identified: (1) with the Shalem of Genesis 33:18 (AV [Note: Authorized Version.] and RVm [Note: Revised Version margin.] ), a place a little to the E. of Mt. Gerizim and not far from Shechem; (2) with the Salim of John 3:23 in the Jordan Valley S. of Scythopolis; and (3) with Jerusalem , which is called Salem in Psalms 76:2 . The last identification is much the most probable; for though it is implied in Joshua 15:8; Joshua 15:63 , Judges 19:10 that Jerusalem was called Jebus so long as it was inhabited by the Jebusites ( i.e . up to the time of David), the name Jerusalem really goes back to the 14th cent. b.c., since it appears in the Tell el-Amarna tablets as Uru-salim . This view has the support of Josephus ( Ant . I. x. 2), and further obtains some slight confirmation from the resemblance of the name of Melchizedek to that of Adonizedek, who was king of Jerusalem in the time of Joshua ( Joshua 10:3 ), the element zedek in each name being probably that of a Canaanite deity.
The historical character of the narrative in which Melchizedek is mentioned has been questioned on the ground of certain improbabilities which it contains; but though the events related have received no corroboration from other sources, the names of two of the kings who fought against Abraham, viz. Amraphel and Arioch, have with some plausibility been identified with those of Hammurabi and Eriaku, contemporary kings of Babylon and Larsa about b.c. 2200; so that, if the identification is correct, it confirms the setting of the story, though not its incidents. For the name and personality of Melchizedek no independent confirmatory evidence has yet been obtained.
In Psalms 110:4 , to the ideal king of Jewish hopes, the Messiah, there is promised an endless priesthood ‘after the order of Melchizedek.’ This ascription of priestly functions to a sovereign who was expected to be of the house of David and the tribe of Judah is evidently meant as an exceptional distinction, and implies that the writer lived at a time when priests in Israel were taken exclusively from the tribe of Levi, as was the case after the promulgation of the Deuteronomic law (probably in the 7th cent.). At an earlier date persons belonging to other tribes than that of Levi were sometimes priests: David’s sons ( 2 Samuel 8:18 ); and Ira the Jairite ( 2 Samuel 20:26 ), who belonged to Manasseh ( Numbers 32:41 ); but the author of Psalms 110:1-7 , in seeking a type for the combination in the same person of both the regal and priestly offices, had to go outside the limits of Israel, and found what he wanted in the priest-king of Salem, who was all the more adapted for the purpose by reason of the deference paid to him by so illustrious a personage as Abraham.
The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, identifying Jesus with the Messiah, and asserting His high priesthood, cites the words of Psalms 110:1-7 , and declares that He was named of God a high priest after the order of Melchizedek’ ( Hebrews 5:10 ). He then proceeds to show the superiority of Christ’s priesthood over that of the Jewish priests, the descendants of Aaron, and seeks to illustrate it by the superiority of Melchizedek over Abraham, as he gathers it from Genesis 14:1-24 . He explains Melchizedek’s name to mean ‘king of righteousness,’ and his title of ‘king of Salem’ to mean ‘king of peace’; and then, arguing from the silence of the record respecting his parentage, birth, and death, describes him as ‘without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but made like unto the Son of God,’ and affirms him to have been greater than Abraham, since he blessed him (‘for without any dispute the less is blessed of the better’) and received from him (and through him from his unborn descendants the Levitical priests) a tithe of his spoils ( Hebrews 7:1-16 ). In this passage much of the writer’s argument is fanciful, the narrative in Genesis being handled after a Rabbinic fashion, and the parallel drawn between our Lord and Melchizedek being largely based on the mere omission, in the OT record, of certain particulars about the latter, which, for the historian’s purpose, were obviously irrelevant. At the same time it may perhaps be said that, as contrasted with the Levitical priests who succeeded to their priestly offices by reason of their descent, an ancient priest-king is really typical of our Lord, inasmuch as it is likely that, in a primitive age, such a one would owe his position to his natural endowments and force of character. It was in virtue of His personality that our Lord made, and makes, His appeal to the world; and to the authoritativeness of His attitude in regard to the current teaching of the Jewish religious teachers of His day ( Matthew 5:21-48 , Mark 7:1-28 ) a distant analogy is, in fact, afforded by the superior position which in Genesis seems to be ascribed to Melchizedek in respect of Abraham, the ancestor of the Jewish race. See also art. Priest (in NT).
G. W. Wade.
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Hastings, James. Entry for 'Melchizedek'. Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hdb/m/melchizedek.html. 1909.
