Hebrews 7:3 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Hebrews 7:3

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‘Without father, without mother.’ Literally? No, not literally. It means that his lineage, his forebears and his descendants, are not mentioned in the Bible. It should not be understood to mean that Melchizedek had no earthly father or mother. Of course he would have had. He was a human being; he was a human priest; he isn’t God. Because he has no father and mother, some exegetes have suggested that he is a kind of the theophany of the Holy Spirit, but there's no such thing in the Bible. No, he appears in the Bible without father and mother. In the record no father and mother are assigned, and no descendants. The Scripture presents him in a way that corresponds exactly to the one he prefigured. So as far as the record, the voice of Scripture, is concerned, he is seen as one who is just there: a very appropriate figure or picture of the coming eternal priest, who was God, the eternal Son incarnate and who would live for ever. He appears on the pages of Scripture with little explanation and functions as a mysterious priest, raising in the mind of the reader many questions about his origin which are deliberately not answered.‘Made like unto the Son of God’ – not the Son of God, but resembling him in those ways. Someone would come, who would be everlasting. ‘He abideth a priest continually.’ Melchizedek isn’t alive at the time of the New Testament. He has long since mysteriously died, in his own age presumably. But, there being no record of his death, and no record of his successors, as far as the record of Scripture was concerned, he appears and he has no end. So he resembles – in that sense, in picture language – Christ, the eternal Son of God, of whom he is a symbol.Why doesn't Melchisedec appear in any Levitical record? Of course he doesn't. He came centuries before Aaron, the brother of Moses, the first high priest; he came centuries before Levi the third son of Jacob, whose tribe gave rise from that moment on to the priesthood. He is quite outside the Aaronic Levitical priesthood. He is not one of them. Here are the Jews saying, ‘Who is Jesus Christ? You call him high priest and Messiah, but he is no priest. You cannot have a person who is a priest who is not descended from Aaron, the brother of Moses, the first high priest, and is not of the tribe of Levi.’ But Christ follows the pattern of Melchisedec, who is greater than Aaron, greater than Abraham, greater than the Levites. Melchisedec is not anywhere on the Levitical record; he precedes it. He is greater than it and he is the one who in the prophecy of David, represents, and is a symbol, a prophecy, of the coming Christ.

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Some people say that Melchisedec must have been a pre-incarnate appearance of Christ, and that is often quite strongly argued, but that cannot be correct, because Melchisedec offered sacrifices and he functioned as a priest and the Scripture tells us quite plainly, twice in Hebrews alone, that Christ offered himself as a sacrifice once. So he could not have been pre-incarnate in Melchisedec, because Melchisedec functions as a priest and offers up other sacrifices.

Other people say that when Christ came in Old Testament times as a theophany, a pre-incarnate appearance, he came as an angel, but that cannot be right because this very Scripture says that every priest is taken from among men. Valid priests were human beings and they were not embodied angels or something of that kind. They had to be men, and one great type of Christ was Melchisedec, a real man, and a man who became a priest, but he was not a theophany.

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Hebrews 7:3 Commentary and Bible Study