I’ve been reading and journalling through Hebrews the past few weeks, and when I came upon Melchizadek in Hebrews 5, I decided to look into him a bit more deeply. To summarise Melchizadek’s appearance in Genesis 14:

A bunch of kingdoms were at war. Abram’s nephew Lot was living in Sodom (of ‘having drunken randy louts’ fame), and was kidnapped with all his possessions  when the city was conquered. Abram heard, got his mates together and rescued him. Melchizedek then came out (along with the King of Sodom), and blessed Abram. His blessing was fairly generic: “Blessed be Abram by God Most High, Creator of heaven and earth. And blessed be God Most High, who delivered your enemies into your hand.”

Here, I don’t really feel that Melchizadek was important enough at all to deserve the focus he gets in Hebrews. So, I went to the direct quote, in Psalm 110.

The LORD says to my lord: “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.”

The LORD will extend your mighty scepter from Zion, saying, “Rule in the midst of your enemies.”

Your troops will be willing on your day of battle. Arrayed in holy splendor, your young men will come to you like dew from the morning’s womb.

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

The Lord is at your right hand; he will crush kings on the day of his wrath. He will judge the nations, heaping up the dead and crushing the rulers of the whole earth. He will drink from a brook along the way, and so he will lift up his head.

Here, again, I was mystfied by Melchizadek’s appearance. Why was he there? What’s worse, I don’t have commentaries on Genesis or Psalms here to refer to, so I’m going to have to figure this out myself. What I think is clear, however, is that neither Psalm 110 nor Hebrews 5 (and probably subsequent sections of Hebrews) are relying only on Genesis 14 for their inspiration. That must come from elsewhere.

So was there some kind of tradition regarding Melchizedek, similar to the extrabiblical tradition regarding an Angel being the intermediary to the law, mentioned earlier in Hebrews 1 and 2? Best way to find out is to explore early Jewish and Christian texts:

• In ‘Dead Seas Scroll’ 11Q13, Melchizedek is a heavenly figure, said to bring freedom from the debt of sins and atonement to the sons of light. He defeats Satan and his evil spirits, but he will carry out the vengeance of God’s judgements, and will free the sons of light from the hand of Satan and his spirits. Melchizedek even gets referred to with God’s names (el, and elohim).
• In 2 Enoch, Melchizedek is a heavenly figure who is taken to heaven to be High Priest forever. 2 Enoch is a 2nd Temple period text.
• Nedarim 32B of the Babylonian Talmud  interprets Genesis’ blessing as being a priesthood given to Abram. The word of Melchizedek made Abram a priest.
• This Nag Hammadi scroll even goes so far as to say Melchizedek is Jesus Christ.

I don’t have access to any of the many great post-temple Midrash that I am told are devoted to Melchizedek. Josephus and Philo speak of Melchizedek as well, at least in his Torah incarnations: According to them, his name means ‘King of Righteousness’, and he’s the king of Salem, which is traditionally a name for Jerusalem, but also means ‘peace’: The king of peace. Hebrews mentions this later on in c.7:2.

But, just those are very interesting: The amount of surviving literature (albeit not all dating in the same period) suggests that there was a Melchizedek tradition of some sort in Jewish and Christian circles in the early Christian centuries. And these traditions may well have fed into the author of Hebrew’s choice to use Melchizedek as a model for Christ’s role: That is, a heavenly figure who is also a man, one taken into heaven (a la 2 Enoch); one that brings freedom and atonement, and defeats evil spirits, bringing freedom from them (a la 11Q13); a high priest that gave priesthood to the people of God (a la Nedarim 32B). What’s more, a character who is both King of Righteousness and Prince (’king’) of Peace. The gnostic Melchizedek text  even goes so far as to say Melchizedek is Jesus Christ. There is a heck of a lot of extrabiblical tradition that Hebrews seems to draw from.

As for Psalm 110; well, I think Nedarim 32B explains the process in the Jewish psyche that put that phrase into Psalm 110. Especially considering how it seems to portray the relationship between King and God, the blessing of Melchizadek to Abram as an inference of priesthood makes perfect sense.

My conclusion: There is most definitely something going on outside of the biblical text that contributed to the use of Psalm 110 as prophetic regarding to Christ.