Wednesday in the Second Week of Ordinary Time, January 20, 2021

Hebrews 7:1-3, 15-17

Melchizedek, king of Salem and priest of God Most High, met Abraham as he returned from his defeat of the kings and blessed him. And Abraham apportioned to him a tenth of everything. His name first means righteous king, and he was also “king of Salem,” that is, king of peace. Without father, mother, or ancestry, without beginning of days or end of life, thus made to resemble the Son of God, he remains a priest forever. It is even more obvious if another priest is raised up after the likeness of Melchizedek, who has become so, not by a law expressed in a commandment concerning physical descent but by the power of a life that cannot be destroyed. For it is testified:  You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.

Some early Jewish writings, such as the Babylonian Talmud, teach that the person identified in Genesis 14 as “Melchizedek”, the “king of Salem” who came to Abraham was Shem, the son of Noah.  According to these sources, Shem would have been 465 years old at that time.  According to Genesis 11, 10-11, Shem lived six hundred years, ninety-eight of them before the Flood.  “Melchizedek” is actually a title, rather than a proper name.  It means “the king of righteousness”.  Shem was also “the priest of the most high God” “Genesis 14, 18).  The author of the Letter to the Hebrews knows that the Lord Jesus was descended not from Aaron, the brother of Moses, who was appointed high priest at the time the Ark of the Covenant was built and the worship of the Old Law was established, but from Shem, the son of Noah (cf. Luke 3, 36).  Thus, the Lord Jesus is not of the priesthood of Aaron but is the legitimate high priest according to the original line of the priests of God.  The messiah was long prophesied to be of this line, meaning that the line of Aaron would be finished.  The prophecy is found in Psalm 110, 4, quoted at the end of today’s First Reading.  The verse is surprising, even shocking, and meant the inconceivable: the end of the Temple.  Perhaps knowing this gave extra impetus to the high priests to do away with Jesus: the true Messiah meant their finish.  It also would further prove that they killed him not because they did not know who he was, but because they did.

“Melchizedek . . . met Abraham as he returned from his defeat of the kings and blessed him. And Abraham apportioned to him a tenth of everything.”  We can understand these lines spiritually: Abraham signifies the man or woman who has come to realize the futility of the world: they defeat the “kings” of the world in this way.  Melchizedek, that is, the Lord Jesus, comes and “blesses” this person with the grace to live the life of faith.  Abraham, the person who has now received grace, responds to the Lord with thanks, praise, and service.

“Without father, mother, or ancestry, without beginning of days or end of life.”  By concealing Shem under his title of the “king of righteousness”, the author of Genesis shows that he is also a sign of the priest or of the righteous believer, but particularly, as Paul points out, as a sign of the Incarnate Son of God.   “If another priest is raised up after the likeness of Melchizedek.”  Paul is now speaking not only of the Lord Jesus but also of those subsequently raised up in him to share in his Priesthood for the good of the faithful throughout time.  “Who has become so, not by a law expressed in a commandment concerning physical descent but by the power of a life that cannot be destroyed.”  It is not the Law that makes priests, but grace.  “You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.”  The psalm containing this verse was sung in the Temple for a thousand years by men who knew that their positions would become obsolete when it was fulfilled.  The holy ones among them only wanted to do the will of God and were willing to give up even the priesthood of Aaron if that was what obedience to him required.  And when the Lord did come, this was what John the Baptist, the son of the priest Zechariah, did.