Hebrews 7:1

B. FULL UNFOLDING OF THE HIGH PRIESTHOOD, Hebrews 7:1 to Hebrews 10:18.

I. IT IS NOT LOCAL AND TRANSIENT, LIKE THE AARONIC, BUT UNIVERSAL AND PERPETUAL, LIKE THE MELCHIZEDEKIAN, Hebrews 7:1-28.

1. For Connecting with Hebrews 5:10, after the intervening digression. See last note above. About this Melchizedek more puerile speculation has been written, extending from Hierax to Alford, than has been expended upon any human character in Scripture. Whenever we see an essay headed, “Who was Melchizedek?” we promptly direct our attention elsewhere. By successive speculators in different ages he has been conjectured to be the Holy Spirit; one of the δυναμεις , or powers of God; the Logos; an angel; an ante-mundane man, created, not out of matter, but spirit; Enoch descended from heaven; Shem, Job, a great Unknown. Our opinion is, that Melchizedek was nobody but himself; himself as simply narrated in Genesis 14:18-20; in which narrative both David, in Psalms 110:0, and our author after him, find every point they specify in making him a king-priest, typical of the king-priesthood of Christ. Yet it is not in the person of Melchizedek alone, but in the grouping, also, of circumstances around and in his person, that the inspired imagination of the psalmist finds the shadowing points. Melchizedek, in Genesis, suddenly appears upon the historic stage, without antecedents or consequents. He is a king-priest not of Judaism, but of Gentilism universally. He appears an unlineal priest, without father, mother, or pedigree. He is preceded and succeeded by an everlasting silence, so as to present neither beginning nor end of life. And he is, as an historic picture, forever there divinely suspended, the very image of a perpetual king-priest. It is thus not in his actual unknown reality, but in the Scripture presentation, that the group of shadowings appears. It is by optical truth only, not by corporeal facts, that he becomes a picture, and with his surroundings a visible tableau, into which the psalmist first reads the conception of an adumbration of the eternal priesthood of the Messiah; and all our author does is to develop the particulars which are in mass presupposed by the psalmist.

King of Salem The celebrated Jewish traveller, Joseph Wolfe, “no mean authority on such a subject,” is quoted by Mr. Grove, in Smith’s Biblical Dictionary, as expressing the belief that Salem, signifying peace, is here not the name of a place but a part of Melchizedek’s title. Mr. Wolfe had as a friend a sheik in the kingdom of Khiva, whose name was Abder-Rahman, signifying “Slave of the merciful God.” He is also called Shahe-Adaalat, “King of Righteousness,” the same as the Hebrew Melchizedek. “And when he makes peace between the kings he bears the title, ‘Shahe-Soolkh,’ king of peace, in Hebrew, Melek-Salem.” But the best ancient Jewish authorities, the Targums and Josephus, agree that Salem here is an ancient name of Jerusalem. There are other Salems mentioned as competitors for this honour, but their claims are very slender. Wordsworth endeavours to identify Salem with Shechem, which was, indeed, a most memorable spot in patriarchal times, but he only shows a Salem near Shechem, yet not Shechem itself. Abraham was, at the time of meeting Melchizedek, returning from the region of Damascus to his home at Mamre, or Hebron, and would pass in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem. In Psalms 76:2, “In Salem also is his tabernacle, and his dwelling place in Zion,” unquestionably gives the name of Salem to Jerusalem. This same Jerusalem, where dwelt the Hebrews to whom this epistle was addressed, was the dwelling-place of the type of our great High Priest, as afterward the chosen “dwelling-place” of Jehovah. Our Hebrews are on the spot, and can look back through the Antitype to his primeval type, the primitive “King of righteousness” and “peace.” Wordsworth, indeed, objects that Jerusalem, being the special locality of the Hebrew theocracy, was not the proper place for a universal representative priest; but that is forgetting that Jerusalem was then not Hebrew but Gentile. As king of Salem, Melchizedek was, doubtless, an Amorite prince, and a descendant of Ham. Abraham was a lonely Shemite, who had but lately come into the country, a brother, yet a foreigner; a brave sheik with a goodly band of followers, and a predicted progenitor of a great people; but as yet he was entirely inferior to a settled king in the land, like Melchizedek.

Priest of the most high God A dignitary of high rank; both king and priest, worshipping the true God with acceptable rites before the apostasy of Ham had, in this region, established idolatry.

Blessed him The Shemite immigrant rejoiced in the benediction of the Amorite pontiff. He had well earned the benediction by his heroic expulsion of the invaders out of Palestine.

Priest… God In a tribe not yet apostate.

Most high Says Philo, “The Logos, who is shadowed forth by Melchizedek, is ‘Priest of the Most High;’ not as though there were other gods not most high, for God is as the One in heaven above, and in the earth beneath, and there is none besides him.”