Hebrews 7:1-10
Melchizedek’s Priesthood Like Christ’s
1 For this Melchizedek, king of Salem, priest of the Most High God, met Abraham as he returned from the slaughter of the kings and blessed him,
2 and Abraham gave him a tenth of all [the spoil]. He is, first of all, by the translation of his name, king of righteousness, and then he is also king of Salem, which means king of peace.
3 Without [(a)any record of] father or mother, nor ancestral line, without [any record of] beginning of days (birth) nor ending of life (death), but having been made like the Son of God, he remains a priest without interruption and without successor.
4 Now pause and consider how great this man was to whom Abraham, the patriarch, gave a tenth of the spoils.
5 It is true that those descendants of Levi who are charged with the priestly office are commanded in the Law to collect tithes from the people—which means, from their kinsmen—though these have descended from Abraham.
6 But this person [Melchizedek] who is not from their Levitical ancestry received tithes from Abraham and blessed him who possessed the promises [of God].
7 Yet it is beyond all dispute that the lesser person is always blessed by the greater one.
8 Furthermore, here [in the Levitical priesthood] tithes are received by men who are subject to death; but in that case [concerning Melchizedek], they are received by one of whom it is testified that he (b)lives on [perpetually].
9 A person might even say that Levi [the father of the priestly tribe] himself, who received tithes, paid tithes through Abraham [the father of all Israel and of all who believe],
10 for Levi was still in the loins (unborn) of his forefather [Abraham] when Melchizedek met him (Abraham).
Footnotes:
a.
Hebrews 7:3: Some believe that Melchizedek was an ordinary man blessed and appointed by God as a special priest, who serves as a Christlike figure in his priestly and kingly functions because his order was a priesthood without end. Others take the description literally to mean that Melchizedek was not a human, but an angel (v 8). If this is so, then Christ, as the Son of God, would be the “High Priest” of the order in which Melchizedek served as priest in the sense that angels are spiritual beings who have a pretemporal, but not eternal origin. Another view suggests that Melchizedek was perhaps a pre-incarnate appearance of Jesus in human form. Those who maintain that Melchizedek was an ordinary human being would say the writer is speaking symbolically concerning his ancestry; hence the insertion of “any record of” in the text of v 3 since his death is not recorded in Scripture.
b.
Hebrews 7:8: See note v 3.