Tool Beta
The Ancient World Behind the Text
Pick a passage anywhere in the New Testament. See the customs and ideas a first reader knew without being told.
Hebrews 7:1-10, Melchizedek, priest-king of Salem
Melchizedek, king of Salem and priest of God Most High, met Abraham, blessed him and received a tenth of the spoil. With no father, mother or genealogy recorded, he resembles the Son of God, and because Levi was still in Abraham's body when Abraham paid him, his priesthood ranks above Levi's.
Hebrews 7:1-10, in every translation this tool compares.
The writer goes back to the brief story in Genesis 14 where Melchizedek, a priest who was also a king, blesses Abraham and takes a tenth of the spoils. He draws meaning from the name and title, and from the silence of the text about Melchizedek's family, birth and death, which he reads as a likeness of the Son. Because Abraham gave the tithe and received the blessing while Levi was not yet born, the writer argues that Melchizedek's priesthood ranks above the Levitical one. What verse 3 means is debated.
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Because Psalm 110 calls David's lord a priest like Melchizedek, a Jewish interpreter would naturally look in Genesis 14 for the likeness (Keener). Salem as Jerusalem is supported by Psalm 76:2 and Egyptian execration texts and assumed by Josephus, the Dead Sea Scrolls and the rabbis (Keener; the Zondervan dictionary); Rasmussen's atlas sets the meeting on Abram's way home from routing the eastern kings, after he met the king of Sodom in the King's Valley. Josephus says Melchizedek supplied Abram's army in an hospitable manner and accepted his tenth (Antiquities 1.10.2). Philo and Josephus explained the name as Hebrews does, king of righteousness (Keener; the ESV Study Bible). How to read without father or mother is disputed: an argument from silence of the kind Philo used (Keener; the cultural backgrounds notes), a genealogy simply not recorded (the ESV and CSB Study Bibles), or a priesthood not inherited at all (Wright). Later rabbis claimed God gave Melchizedek's priesthood to Abraham, perhaps to answer the Christian reading (Keener; the cultural backgrounds notes). One Qumran scroll made Melchizedek a heavenly figure who atones and judges at the end (Wright and Bird), but Keener observes that Hebrews does not draw on it.
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, introduction to Hebrews 7:1-10, and on Hebrews 5:6, 7:1, 7:2, 7:3, 7:4, 7:5-6 and 7:7-10
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, notes on Hebrews 5:6 and 7:3
- ESV Study Bible, study notes on Hebrews 7:1-2 and 7:3
- CSB Study Bible, word study box apator (Hebrews 7:3)
- Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 1.10.2, trans. William Whiston
- N. T. Wright, Hebrews for Everyone, comment on Hebrews 7.1-10
- N. T. Wright and Michael F. Bird, The New Testament in Its World, ch. 30, The Argument of Hebrews, section 4, and box Portals and Parallels: The Dead Sea Scrolls on Melchizedek
- J. D. Douglas and Merrill C. Tenney, Zondervan Illustrated Bible Dictionary, entry Salem
- Carl G. Rasmussen, Zondervan Atlas of the Bible, The Patriarchs and the Egyptian Sojourn
