There’s a man in the Bible with no recorded father, no recorded mother, and no family tree. He shows up for about ten verses, says almost nothing, and disappears for a thousand years. When the Bible brings him back up, it makes a rather large deal about this man and says Jesus is his fulfillment.
His name is Melchizedek. Let’s study about this person in the Bible who honestly raises more questions than he answers.
How does a man with zero known connection to Abraham, centuries before there was a priesthood under Moses, get to function as a legitimate priest of God Most High? Nobody ordained him that we know of. He didn’t have the Law of God as we know it. He just appears, already serving God as a priest and king and starts blessing people.
In today’s world, when we meet someone (for better or for worse), we quickly ask what they do for a living. In the ancient world, we would have asked who their father was. In that culture, your family line told people everything: your trade, your land rights, your access to worship, and your standing in the community. To some of us, it may seem that the Old Testament is obsessed with genealogies. Many of us have had the experience of arriving at 1 Chronicles in our daily Bible reading only to sit through nine chapters of nothing but names. To this culture, genealogy was not boring trivia, but identity. So picture the shock of meeting a man who holds both kingship and priesthood with absolutely no family line to back it up.
Here’s where he shows up: Genesis 14, where the focus is on Abram, the man who will eventually be known as Abraham. Abram’s nephew Lot has been taken captive in a regional war. Abram assembles over three hundred trained men, chases down the captors, and rescues Lot along with a number of other people and a pile of plunder. On his way back, the king of Sodom comes out to meet him. But before that conversation can even get going, the text interrupts itself:
Then Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine; he was the priest of God Most High. And he blessed him and said: “Blessed be Abram of God Most High, Possessor of heaven and earth; And blessed be God Most High, Who has delivered your enemies into your hand.” And he gave him a tithe of all.
Genesis 14:18–20
Abram, the man God called out to start a nation, receives a blessing from this priest-king and hands over a tenth of everything he recovered. Then he turns to the king of Sodom and refuses his offer of riches outright. He would rather be blessed by Melchizedek and poor than be enriched by Sodom, an earthly nation.
The text here says that Melchizedek is king of Salem. Salem is almost certainly the area that later becomes Jerusalem. Before Israel exists as a nation, before the conquest of Canaan, before the Law of Moses, there is already a man functioning as a priest of the true God in the city that would become the holiest city in history.
Where did he get that kingship and priesthood? Scripture does not say. He is not a descendant of Abraham. He is not part of the covenant story Genesis is telling. The author of Hebrews later points out that he reigned:
Without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life.
Hebrews 7:3
He is an outsider to everything we have been told God is doing, and yet here he is, a legitimate priest of God Most High.
Does that unsettle you, at least a little? It means God was active outside the line of what we have in the Bible. It means there were people, places, and priesthoods that mattered to Him that never made it fully onto the pages we hold in our hands.
If that is true, it raises a bigger question: If God was at work outside of what got recorded, how much don’t we know? The apostle John actually admits this directly at the end of his gospel account. Speaking of Jesus’ earthly ministry, he writes:
And there are also many other things that Jesus did, which if they were written one by one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.
John 21:25
Even the works Jesus Himself did during His earthly ministry were not all recorded. If that is true of the Son of God’s own ministry of about three years, how much truer is it of everything God has done across human history? Other folks, like the Magi who followed the star to Bethlehem, Job, and Jethro the priest of Midian, also seemingly had extra-textual revelation.
Melchizedek is proof that the Bible was never meant to be a complete record of everything God has ever done in the world. But please don’t see that as some kind of weak spot for the reliability of Scripture. Paul tells Timothy what Scripture is actually for:
From childhood you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.
2 Timothy 3:15–17
The Bible does not claim to contain everything God has ever done. It claims to contain everything we need in order to be saved and equipped for a godly life. Those are two very different claims, and confusing them is why we sometimes feel unsettled discussing people like Melchizedek. Instead, though, Melchizedek should remind us that there is more to God’s work on earth than what has been written. But what has been written is enough for us, and we are not to go beyond it.
Alright, let’s go back to Melchizedek and Abram. Fast forward about a thousand years. Melchizedek has not been mentioned since those three verses in Genesis 14. Then King David, writing by inspiration, says this:
The LORD has sworn and will not relent, “You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.”
Psalm 110:4
Consider how strange that line would have sounded to David’s original readers. To them, every priest was supposed to come from the tribe of Levi. David is describing someone who is operating under an entirely different order than the one God had set up through the Law of Moses: the order of Melchizedek.
We’ll come back to that. For a moment, however, let’s consider a theory you may have run into. Some people believe Melchizedek was not just a type of Christ. They believe he was Christ Himself, pre-incarnate. It is a popular idea, and on the surface, it is not hard to see why. He is a priest-king with no genealogy. He blesses Abraham. He is described in language that sounds almost divine. The New Testament, in the book of Hebrews, literally says Jesus fulfills Melchizedek.
But the author of Hebrews is not trying to tell us that Melchizedek is Jesus. He writes that Melchizedek was made like the Son of God (Hebrews 7:3). A few verses later, he adds that in the likeness of Melchizedek, there arises another priest, meaning Jesus (Hebrews 7:15). Notice the wording: Melchizedek was made like the Son of God, not that he was the Son of God. That is the language of pattern and fulfillment, not identity. Melchizedek was a preview whom God placed in history. Thousands of years later, the author of Hebrews set out to write a letter proving that Jesus is better than angels, Jesus is better than Moses, Jesus’ covenant is greater than the covenant God made with Israel, and Jesus’ royalty and His priesthood are better than Melchizedek’s.
The author of Hebrews spends an entire chapter explaining that Jesus’ priesthood does not come from Levi. It comes from God directly, the same way Melchizedek’s did. And because Jesus—unlike every Levitical priest before Him—never dies, His priesthood never needs to be passed down or replaced:
But He, because He continues forever, has an unchangeable priesthood. Therefore He is also able to save to the uttermost those who come to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them.
Hebrews 7:24–25
The Israelites did not just read the Messianic Psalms. They studied them and they memorized them so thoroughly that quoting one line could call an entire Psalm to mind. Jesus and His apostles both did this.
On the cross, Jesus cried out, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Matthew 27:46). If you do not know the Old Testament, you scratch your head and wonder what Jesus meant. But if you know your Psalms, you know that is the opening line of Psalm 22, a psalm that goes on to describe a righteous sufferer who is mocked and surrounded by enemies, and who still declares that God has not turned away from Him. Quoting the first verse brought the whole psalm to mind for anyone listening who knew their Bible.
On the day of Pentecost after the resurrection of Jesus, Peter stood up in front of a crowd of Jews who knew their Psalms by heart, and he quoted the opening line of Psalm 110:
For David did not ascend into the heavens, but he says himself: “The LORD said to my Lord, ‘Sit at My right hand, till I make Your enemies Your footstool.’”
Acts 2:34–35
He did not need to quote the rest. The moment Peter said that line, every person listening would have had the entire psalm running through their mind, including the part about a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek. Having primed his audience with that psalm, Peter concludes with this heavy blow:
Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ.
Acts 2:36
The Priest-King-Messiah they had been waiting for a thousand years had already come, already lived among them, and they had crucified Him.
Go back to Genesis 14 for a second. Melchizedek (the greater man) gave a blessing to Abram (the lesser man). Before Abram tithed, what did Melchizedek give Abram? Bread and wine (v. 18).
The priest-king according to the order of Melchizedek still offers His people bread and wine. If you’re a Christian, you understand that Jesus set up Communion for us to partake every first day of the week. Every time you partake of the Lord’s Supper, you are receiving the same gesture Abram received in Genesis 14, except now it is not a foreshadowing. 1 Corinthians 10:16–17 says:
The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? For we, though many, are one bread and one body; for we all partake of that one bread.
(If you’d like to study Communion more, check out the studies linked at the end.)
Why should Melchizedek matter to you? If you are truly in Christ, this changes how you understand His authority over you. Jesus does not lead the church the way the Levitical priests led Israel: limited, temporary, and replaced every generation. He leads as a Priest who never retires and a King who never abdicates. Paul put it this way:
For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time.
1 Timothy 2:5–6
The author of Hebrews was trying to explain all of this to his audience. You can almost hear his frustration when he said:
Of whom we have much to say, and hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God; and you have come to need milk and not solid food.
Hebrews 5:11–12
Think of all we have studied about Jesus as He fulfills the role of Melchizedek:
- He is a king.
- He is a priest.
- He did not receive his kingship or priesthood from his lineage.
- He is greater than those He serves.
- He still offered His own bread and wine to the lesser person.
Because the audience of the book of Hebrews did not mature in their faith, the author hesitated to even write about Melchizedek. Please keep growing in your faith so you too don’t miss out on such beautiful truths.
If you are truly in Christ, all of this means that you have already made the choice Abram made at the end of Genesis 14. You looked at the riches the world offers and the blessings Christ offers, and you chose the blessings (cf. Hebrews 11:24–26). The king of Sodom offered Abram riches, to which Abram basically responded, “No thanks. I’m good. I don’t want people thinking the world is where I get my blessings. God is good.” Then, Abram turned and accepted blessings from Melchizedek.
Like Abram, let the Priest-King bless you instead of letting the world enrich you.
Another blessing a lot of people miss out on because of their ignorance is the blessings of Communion. How often should we take it? Who is authorized to take it? Does it forgive my sins? If you’d like to study those questions, check out these studies.