Melchizedek - Light on an ancient story

The identity of Melchizedek, King of Salem (Gen. 14. 18‑24), has been for a long time a subject of casual speculation and the very brevity of Scriptural allusion to this person has afforded opportunity for more than one flight of fancy. Some Christian writers identified him with the Son of God who spent a period of time upon earth in the form of human flesh many centuries before He was born of Mary. This was because of the statement in Hebrews 7. 3 that he was "without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days nor end of life,". Jewish tradition, a little more rationally, declared that he was Shem the son of Noah. Some Early Fathers and later commentators tried to establish a case for the mysterious priest-king to whom Abraham paid tithes after the defeat of Chedorlaomer, being Enoch returned to earth after his death.

All these speculations have been dissolved by research, which in recent years has so illuminated the Old Testament that the mystery has been stripped from the personality of this man, so wonderfully honoured in being made a type of that everlasting priesthood which is characteristic of our Lord's Millennial glory. Were it not for this inspired usage of the little scrap of history recorded in Genesis 14, Melchizedek would have been as unknown to Christians as is another occupant of the same exalted office half a millennium afterwards. How many can recall, without recourse to Bible or Concordance, what the Scripture has to say about Adoni-zedek, King of Jerusalem? Yet there is more said about this latter king than Melchizedek himself. (Joshua 10)

The story opens at the time when the armies of the east invaded Canaan, taking Lot among their prisoners. Abraham followed and defeated them and returned in triumph from Northern Canaan along the Jordan valley on his way back to Hebron. He came, says the narrative, to Salem. The full ancient native name was Uru-Salim, the city of peace. That name transliterated into English gives us the familiar Jerusalem. No one knows just how old is the Holy City of our faith but it was already in existence when recorded history began.

"And Melchizedek, King of Salem, brought out bread and wine; he was the priest of the Most High. And he blessed him and said, 'Blessed be Abram by God Most High, maker of heaven and earth, And blessed be God Most High who has delivered your enemies into your hand.' And Abraham gave him a tenth of everything" (Gen.14. 18‑20 RSV). That is all that the Scriptures tell us about this mystic person, yet how full of detail is the brief statement! It is worthy of note that this verse is the first place in the Bible where the word 'priest' is mentioned. In all the history of the days before Abraham there is no mention of a priest. Here is presented a kingly priest, a priest upon his throne. Note also that Abraham acknowledged the authority of this man, superior to himself, for he rendered him tithes of his spoils of war. Thirdly, although not of the chosen family which had been called out of Ur of the Chaldees to become a great nation, the people of God, this man nevertheless acknowledged the same God as did Abraham. This is the more noteworthy when, upon reflection, it is realised that Melchizedek reigned as king over a land which was about to be promised to Abraham himself, and the kingship of Melchizedek must inevitably come to an end one day.

Abraham, having rendered his obeisance and his tithes, went on his way to his home at Hebron, and thereafter Melchizedek disappears from history except for one reference in Psalm 110.4: "The Lord hath sworn and will not repent: Thou art a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek!" This text speaks not of a suffering Christ; not of the Man of Sorrows, acquainted with grief, led as a lamb to the slaughter (Isaiah. 53.7). This hundred and tenth Psalm speaks of a victorious King, a triumphant Priest, one ruling in the midst of His enemies, and bringing all into subjection to His sway that He might become one who dispenses Divine favour. He is a Royal Priest having all power both to rule men and heal them, and so accomplish all God's good purposes for them. That is why the Psalmist's mind went back to a royal priesthood which existed centuries before that of Aaron, one which did not serve with "offering and burnt offerings and offerings for sin" (Heb.10. 8), picturing only sacrifice and reconciliation. This was a priesthood that dispensed bread and wine and ruled in kingly majesty that symbolized blessing to men when reconciliation was complete. That is why the Psalmist, with rare inspiration, declared in rapturous words: You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek!" How appropriate the name! "Melchi" - a king. "Zedek", righteousness. A king of righteousness, ruling over the City of Peace, an apt picture of our King and His earthly Kingdom! Until quite recent years nothing whatever was known about this mysterious Royal Priesthood of Abraham's day, apart from the scanty references in the Scriptures. Christian teachers believed that Abraham lived an alien in a totally strange and idolatrous heathen land. That the worship of God could exist anywhere apart from Abraham and the chosen seed was hardly suspected, much less believed, and the incident of Chedorlaomer and Melchizedek was regarded by many as a fable, having no basis of fact in genuine history.

Today all that is changed. Discoveries made during the last century have definitely established that in the times of Abraham, Jacob and Joshua there was a system of belief and worship in Canaan that acknowledged and served the "Most High God". This system was corrupted with crudities of belief with which Abraham and his children were never encumbered, but nevertheless constituting an intelligent worship of One God as distinct from the idolatrous superstitions of the peoples around. It seems reasonable to believe that others beside Abram had some understanding of the primitive faith of Noah and Shem. While Abram was a child in Ur of the Chaldees, there must have been other men in other lands, sprung from the common stock, who carried with them some tolerably clear knowledge of the God of Shem, of Noah, of Enoch, and the faith of past times. Abraham was selected to advance the true knowledge of God in orderly development through that nation which should spring from his loins. However, when he came into Canaan he found already a holy city, a priesthood, and a worship which he would readily recognize as being in honour of God Most High, and to the High Priest of that faith he made due acknowledgment.

From the day of Abraham a veil is drawn across the Holy City and its affairs and Jerusalem is mentioned no more until, many centuries later when Joshua led the hosts of Israel across Jordan into the Promised Land. As the warriors swarmed up the roads from Jericho they found a king in Jerusalem. "It came to pass when Adoni-zedek, King of Jerusalem, heard how Joshua had taken Ai, and had utterly destroyed it…" (Joshua 10. 1), that he sent the other kings of Southern Canaan a summons to combine for united defence. Here was a man of evident authority among the petty kings of Canaan. His name, reminiscent of his illustrious predecessor was Adoni-zedek, 'Lord of righteousness'. He comes on the stage only to disappear as quickly, for after the historic encounter related at length in Joshua 10 he was captured with his confederates and put to death.

From the Bible alone there would be little beyond the similarity of name to justify the thought that here in the days of Joshua the priest-kings were still ruling and exercising the duties of their exalted office. The voice of the monuments has in these days made itself heard, and shown that in the days of Joshua, as in those of Abraham, the Most High God was still worshipped in Jerusalem. In 1929 a notable discovery was made at Ras Shamra, on the seacoast of Syria. A large number of inscribed tablets came to light, proving, by various evidences, to have been written about the time of the Exodus, and throwing an entirely new light upon the religious beliefs and ceremonials of Canaan at that time. A vast amount of information has been obtained from these tablets, all tending to show that whilst the Children of Israel were marching through the wilderness of Sinai on the way to the land of promise, the worship of the "Most High God" was widely prevalent in Canaan. It had a distinctive ceremonial, one that contained many features reminiscent of the later ritual. Side by side with that gross idolatry and worship of many gods against which Moses warned Israel, there existed also a form of worship that approached very near to that of the Israelites. It may well be that Melchizedek and Adoni-zedek were but two representatives of a long line of priestly kings who reigned in Jerusalem and kept the faith of the Most High alive through all those years.

These "Ras Shamra tablets" also illumined and explained another archeological enigma. In 1877 a peasant woman at Tel-el-Amarna in Egypt had stumbled upon one of the most important discoveries of the nineteenth century. She had found a large number of tablets that were later discovered to be the "Foreign Office" correspondence of the Egyptian government during the time when Joshua and the hosts of Israel were invading Canaan and subduing the Canaanites. These tablets, which were not completely and accurately deciphered until 1915, reveal that during the period of the Exodus, Canaan was a land in nominal subjection to Egypt, each of its towns having a local ruler or an Egyptian governor, whose jurisdiction extended to the country around him, these governors rendering their allegiance to the Pharaoh of Egypt. In short, Canaan was an Egyptian province. Now among all these letters from the various petty kings of Canaan there are many written by one Abdi Khiba, King of Jerusalem. He constantly claims that he holds his position not by permission of the Egyptian power, like the other kings about him, but by decree of the Most High. From these letters and from the frequent mention of his name in documents written by other Canaanite dignitaries, it is known that Abdi-Khiba ruled Jerusalem in his own right in much the same fashion as did Melchizedek centuries previously. This king's constant lament to the Egyptian Pharaoh is that the "Khabiri" were threatening his city and country and that unless help soon came, the invaders would overrun the land. Who these "Khabiri" were was long a matter of mystery but in recent years it has been generally agreed that they were the invading Israelites under Joshua, in process of subduing the land. Abdi-Khiba's letters break off abruptly, still pleading for the help that never came, and the sequel to the story is recorded in another of the Tel-el-Amarna tablets. In a dispatch from one Suyardata, an Egyptian official, sent to Canaan to report upon the political condition of the province, reported the news of the capture of Abdi-Khiba and the fall of his city at the hands of the "Khabiri", the Israelites.

There seems little doubt that Abdi-Khiba was the last of the Melchizedek line of priest-kings. There is a possibility that Adoni-zedek was the same individual mentioned in the tablets as Abdi-Khiba. However, it is more likely that when Adoni-zedek was slain by Joshua, Abdi-Khiba succeeded him as priest-king of Jerusalem, ruling whilst the Israelites were actually engaged in conquering the land and being finally captured by them and slain as recorded in the Tel-el Amarna letters.

So ended the Melchizedek priesthood, a line of royal priests reigning in Jerusalem for an unknown period before the time of Abraham to the time of Joshua. Canaan and Syria had been populated from the "land of Shinar" many centuries before Abraham entered it. Abraham was descended from Shem through his son Arphaxad but Shem had other sons also and there are evidences that many of the people of Canaan were their descendants. Several centuries before Abraham, the only God known to the Sumerians and Akkadians, from whom Abraham came, was the Most High God of Heaven. Some of these immigrants would have brought that knowledge and worship with them and preserved it in the midst of a land rapidly being given over to idolatry. A little later on Abraham found Abimelech, king of Gerar, worshipping the Most High, and likewise Pharaoh of Egypt when at last Abraham went there. The story of Melchizedek is therefore perfectly credible. For more than half a millennium the faith and worship of God Most High was kept alive in a land where Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in succession were strangers and pilgrims and then in the fulness of time the developing plan of God demanded a new revelation of His Will. A hardy and virile people, sons of the desert, came in with the enthusiasm and confidence engendered by their Covenant with God, and before them the old primitive Canaanite worship waxed old and vanished away.

Quite evidently the fall of Jerusalem recorded by Suyardata was not followed up by the Israelites, for in Joshua 18. 28, the city is mentioned by a new name, 'Jebusi' the city of the Jebusites. The old proud name, 'the city of peace' had vanished with the fall of its priest-kings, and not until the time of David, four centuries later, was its name restored. 1 Chron.11. 4-7 tells of the final capture of the city and of David making it his capital, restoring to it the original name by which it has been known ever since. There is an appropriateness in this, for David was a prototype of that greater Melchizedek who shall come in glory and power, and sit upon a greater throne than that of David, to rule as King and Priest in the New Jerusalem.

"…Without father or mother or genealogy, and has neither beginning of days nor end of life, but resembling the Son of God he continues a priest for ever" says the writer to the Hebrews (Heb. 7. 3). These are the words that have mystified so many. How could this man, Melchizedek, be without parents, having no beginning nor ending, unless he be identified with God himself? The careful student will perceive, however, that the whole reference in Hebrews to this personage is symbolic or typical. The writer is calling to mind one little episode related in Genesis 14, and views it as an isolated picture upon which he can build his type. Melchizedek steps on to the stage, and steps off. Whatever went before or whatever came after, we are in ignorance. However, while he stood there in the King's Dale, his holy city of Salem in the background, Abraham and his followers before him rendering willing tribute, he ministered bread and wine and raised his hands in blessing. Thus he typified One who in the power of an endless life, abiding a priest continually, is abundantly able to save those who come unto God by him. Abraham and his followers pictured all mankind, bowing the knee in glad and willing submission to their new king. The King's Dale surely foreshadows Paradise restored, the glorified earth where the willing and obedient shall rejoice in the glory of God's grace. Salem in the background pictures the New Jerusalem in its descent from heaven to earth and that venerable figure bearing bread and wine, clad in garments betokening at once royal glory and priestly dignity, the Lord Jesus Christ. He is not a High Priest after the order of Aaron; that is all in the past, but a Royal Priest whose priesthood shall never end. "They truly," says the same writer again, speaking now of the Aaronic priests, "were many priests, because they were not suffered to continue by reason of death." The priesthood of Aaron was a dying priesthood, and it could picture only sacrifice and suffering, things that one day must pass away for ever. They could never rightfully picture the everlasting glory of Christ. "But he holds his priesthood permanently because he continues for ever." The glory of this wonderful type will be fully revealed when Christ, the Prophet, Priest and King, accompanied by His glorified Church, comes forth to meet mankind, bearing bread and wine. In those beautiful surroundings of the King's Dale, He gives them His blessing, the blessing of the Most High God.