Bible Reference > Bible Facts > People in the Bible
Quick Summary
Melchizedek was the king of Salem and a "priest of God Most High" who met Abraham after a battle, brought out bread and wine, and blessed him. Abraham gave him a tenth of everything. He appears in only three verses of Genesis (14:18–20), is mentioned once more in Psalm 110, and then becomes a major figure in the letter to the Hebrews, which presents Jesus as "a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek." His name means "king of righteousness," and Salem, his city, is usually identified with Jerusalem.
Melchizedek may be the most mysterious person in the Bible. He walks onto the page with no introduction, no parents, no backstory, and no explanation of how a Canaanite king came to worship the true God. Three verses later he walks off again, and Genesis never mentions him again.
And yet a thousand years later, a psalm of David names him. A thousand years after that, the writer of Hebrews spends most of three chapters on him. Very few people in Scripture get so little space and leave such a long shadow.
| Passage | What it says | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Genesis 14:18–20 | The king of Salem, a priest of God Most High, brings bread and wine and blesses Abram. Abram gives him a tenth. | A priest of the true God, outside Abraham’s family, in the city that became Jerusalem |
| Psalm 110:4 | “You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.” | God swears that the king in Zion will also be a priest, of an older order than Aaron’s |
| Hebrews 5–7 | Jesus is “a high priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.” | Jesus can be priest though he is from Judah, and his priesthood never ends |
Scripture Reference
Meeting Abraham: Genesis 14:17–24
A priest forever: Psalm 110:4
Jesus and the order of Melchizedek: Hebrews 5:5–10; 6:19–20; 7:1–28
Bread, Wine and a Blessing
After the Battle
Melchizedek's three verses come at the end of the first war story in the Bible. Four kings from the east had raided the cities of the Jordan plain and carried off Abraham's nephew Lot. Abraham, still called Abram at the time, chased them north with 318 men from his household, defeated them at night and brought Lot home (Genesis 14:1–16).
On the way back, two kings came out to meet him in the Valley of Shaveh, "that is, the King's Valley" (Genesis 14:17). One was the king of Sodom. The other was a man no reader had heard of before.
"And King Melchizedek of Salem brought out bread and wine; he was priest of God Most High" (Genesis 14:18).
Priest of God Most High
The title "God Most High" translates the Hebrew El Elyon. Melchizedek worshiped the Creator, and Genesis presents him as a genuine priest of the true God, someone outside Abraham's family who already knew and served the God who had called Abraham. The site's Names of God library has a full page on El Elyon, God Most High.
He blessed Abraham with words that sound like a short hymn: "Blessed be Abram by God Most High, maker of heaven and earth; and blessed be God Most High, who has delivered your enemies into your hand!" (Genesis 14:19–20). Notice who gets the credit for the victory. Melchizedek blessed Abraham, and then he blessed God for giving him the win.
Abraham clearly recognized him. A few verses later, when Abraham spoke to the king of Sodom, he swore by "the Lord, God Most High, maker of heaven and earth" (Genesis 14:22). He used Melchizedek's own words and added the name of the Lord, as if to say: your God Most High and my God are the same God.
A Tenth of Everything
"And Abram gave him one-tenth of everything" (Genesis 14:20). This is the first time the Bible mentions giving a tenth, often called a tithe. Abraham gave it before there was any law of Moses requiring one, as an act of honor toward a priest of God. Later Scripture built a whole system of tithes for the priests and Levites, and Christians today still discuss what Abraham's example means for giving. The site gathers the key passages in Tithing in the Bible.
Two Kings, Two Responses
Genesis sets the two kings side by side on purpose. Melchizedek came out with gifts, bread and wine, and gave a blessing. The king of Sodom came out with a deal: "Give me the persons, but take the goods for yourself" (Genesis 14:21). Abraham accepted Melchizedek's blessing and gave him a tenth. He refused to take "a thread or a sandal-strap" from the king of Sodom, "so that you might not say, 'I have made Abram rich'" (Genesis 14:23). One king he honored, and from the other he would take nothing.
Where Was Salem?
Genesis calls Melchizedek "King of Salem" without saying where Salem was. The rest of the Bible gives a strong clue. Psalm 76:2 sets two names side by side as parallel lines of poetry: "His abode has been established in Salem, his dwelling place in Zion." Zion is Jerusalem. Jewish and Christian interpreters have almost always taken Salem to be an early or poetic name for Jerusalem. The "King's Valley" where the two men met shows up again in 2 Samuel 18:18, near Jerusalem. The site's Biblical Names for Jerusalem covers Salem along with the city's other names.
Some scholars have suggested other locations, but the Jerusalem identification is the dominant view, and it shapes how the rest of the Bible reads Melchizedek.
Jerusalem Before Israel
If Salem is Jerusalem, then Melchizedek is the first ruler of Jerusalem the Bible mentions, and the city's first appearance in Scripture is as the home of a righteous priest-king who blesses Abraham. That is centuries before Israel entered the Promised Land, and about a thousand years before David made Jerusalem his capital.
The name pattern continues. When Joshua entered the land, the king of Jerusalem was named Adoni-zedek, "my lord is righteous" (Joshua 10:1). In David's day, the city was held by the Jebusites, one of the peoples covered in Who Were the Canaanites? And when David took the city, the priest who served beside him was named Zadok, "righteous." The Hebrew word for righteousness, tsedeq, seems to cling to this city from its very first appearance.
That helps explain why Psalm 110, a psalm about a king ruling from Zion, would reach back to Melchizedek. David became king in the same city where Abraham once met a priest-king, and the psalm gives David's royal line the same double role.
Psalm 110: A Priest Forever
After Genesis 14, Melchizedek's name disappears for about a thousand years. Then it shows up in one of the most important psalms in the Bible.
Psalm 110 is a royal psalm, labeled "Of David." It opens with God speaking to the king: "The Lord says to my lord, 'Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool'" (Psalm 110:1). Then, in verse 4, comes a solemn oath: "The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind, 'You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek'" (Psalm 110:4).
That was a startling thing to say about an Israelite king. Under the law of Moses, kings came from the tribe of Judah and priests came from the family of Aaron in the tribe of Levi. The two jobs were kept separate. Psalm 110 gives the king from Zion a priesthood of a different kind, older than Aaron's, going back to the priest-king who ruled Jerusalem in Abraham's day. And it is sworn by God himself, "forever."
The New Testament quotes or alludes to Psalm 110 more often than any other passage of the Old Testament. Jesus himself used its first verse to ask how the Messiah could be both David's son and David's Lord (Mark 12:35–37). Peter quoted it on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2:34–35). The early Christians read Psalm 110 as a psalm about Jesus, the king seated at God's right hand. And once they did that, verse 4 raised an obvious question: if Jesus is the king of Psalm 110, is he also the priest after the order of Melchizedek?
The letter to the Hebrews answers that question.
Melchizedek in Hebrews
"According to the Order of Melchizedek"
The letter to the Hebrews was probably written to Jewish Christians who knew the temple, the priests and the sacrifices well, and who may have been tempted to go back to them. Its central claim is that Jesus is a better high priest. But that raised a problem. Jesus came from the tribe of Judah, and "in connection with that tribe Moses said nothing about priests" (Hebrews 7:14). How could he be a priest at all?
Hebrews answers with Psalm 110:4. It quotes the verse three times (Hebrews 5:6; 7:17, 21) and calls Jesus "a high priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek" (Hebrews 6:20). Jesus does not need Aaron's family tree, because his priesthood belongs to an older and different order. The site's Names of God library has a page on Jesus as Great High Priest.
"Without Father, Without Mother"
Hebrews 7 then reads Genesis 14 closely, almost word by word. It starts with the names: Melchizedek means "king of righteousness," and king of Salem means "king of peace" (Hebrews 7:2).
Then it notices what Genesis does not say. Unlike almost every important person in Genesis, Melchizedek has no genealogy, no birth story and no death notice. Hebrews draws a point from that silence: "Without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but resembling the Son of God, he remains a priest forever" (Hebrews 7:3).
Most interpreters understand Hebrews to be arguing from the way Genesis tells the story. Genesis records no parents and no death for him, so on the page he stands as a priest with no beginning and no end, a picture of the eternal Son. Notice the wording: Melchizedek "resembles" the Son of God. He is the picture, and Christ is the reality.
Greater Than Abraham
Hebrews makes two more arguments from Genesis 14. First, Abraham gave Melchizedek a tenth, and Melchizedek blessed Abraham, and "it is beyond dispute that the inferior is blessed by the superior" (Hebrews 7:7). Second, Levi, the ancestor of all Israel's priests, was still "in the loins of his ancestor" Abraham when that tithe was paid, so in a sense even the Levitical priests paid tithes to Melchizedek (Hebrews 7:9–10). His priesthood ranks above theirs.
A Better Priest
The point of all this is Jesus. The priests descended from Aaron died one after another and had to be replaced. Jesus became a priest "through the power of an indestructible life" (Hebrews 7:16). They offered sacrifices day after day. But "this he did once for all when he offered himself" (Hebrews 7:27). And because he lives forever, "he is able for all time to save those who approach God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them" (Hebrews 7:25).
For background on the priests Hebrews is comparing him to, see Who Were the Priests and Levites in the Bible? and What Is a Priest in the Bible? The authorship of the letter is discussed in Who Wrote Hebrews?
Who Was Melchizedek, Really?
Because the Bible says so little about him, people have been asking this question for more than two thousand years. Here are the main answers, side by side.
A real priest-king of Jerusalem. Most biblical scholars read Genesis 14 as describing an actual Canaanite ruler of Salem who worshiped God Most High. In this view, Hebrews builds its argument on the way Genesis tells his story, without claiming he was anything more than human.
A "type" or picture of Christ. This is the reading Hebrews itself gives. Melchizedek "resembles the Son of God" (Hebrews 7:3). A real man in history, he points ahead to Jesus as priest and king, the way the Passover lamb points ahead to the cross.
An appearance of Christ before his birth. Some Christians believe Melchizedek was actually the Son of God appearing in human form, pointing to the phrase "without father, without mother" and "he remains a priest forever." Many other interpreters answer that Hebrews says he "resembles" the Son, which would be an odd way to describe the Son himself.
Shem, the son of Noah. Some ancient Jewish interpreters, in the Aramaic paraphrases of Genesis and in the Talmud, identified Melchizedek with Shem, who by the Bible's own chronology was still alive in Abraham's day. That would explain how he knew the true God.
A heavenly figure. Among the Dead Sea Scrolls is a fragmentary text that pictures Melchizedek as a heavenly deliverer who brings release and judgment at the end of days. It shows that some Jews in Jesus' time were already thinking about Melchizedek in exalted terms.
Bread and Wine
Melchizedek "brought out bread and wine" (Genesis 14:18). Genesis does not explain the meal, and in context it may simply have been hospitality to tired soldiers. But Christian writers from the early church onward saw in it a foreshadowing of the Lord's Supper, and the oldest Eucharistic prayer of the Roman Catholic Mass still names the offering of "your high priest Melchizedek." Hebrews itself never mentions the bread and wine. More on the Lord's Supper is in What Is Communion in the Bible?
Frequently Asked Questions
Who was Melchizedek in the Bible?
Melchizedek was the king of Salem and a priest of God Most High who blessed Abraham and received a tenth of everything from him (Genesis 14:18–20). Psalm 110:4 and the letter to the Hebrews use him as a model for a priest who is also a king, and Hebrews calls Jesus a priest "according to the order of Melchizedek."
What does the name Melchizedek mean?
Melchizedek means "king of righteousness." Hebrews adds that as king of Salem he was also "king of peace" (Hebrews 7:2).
Was Melchizedek Jesus?
Most interpreters say no. Hebrews says Melchizedek "resembles" the Son of God (Hebrews 7:3), presenting him as a picture of Christ. Some Christians believe he was an appearance of Christ before the incarnation. The Bible does not settle the question directly.
What does "the order of Melchizedek" mean?
It refers to a kind of priesthood that does not depend on descent from Aaron and the tribe of Levi. Psalm 110:4 promises a king who is also "a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek," and Hebrews applies it to Jesus, who came from the tribe of Judah (Hebrews 7:11–17).
Where was Salem?
Salem is almost always identified with Jerusalem. Psalm 76:2 places Salem in parallel with Zion.
Why did Abraham give Melchizedek a tenth?
Genesis does not explain, but the tenth was a way of honoring a priest of God and acknowledging God as the one who gave the victory (Genesis 14:20). It is the first tithe mentioned in the Bible.
Was Melchizedek Shem?
Some ancient Jewish traditions say so, but the Bible itself never makes the connection.
Works Consulted
Attridge, Harold W. The Epistle to the Hebrews (Hermeneia).
Koester, Craig R. Hebrews (Anchor Bible).
Lane, William L. Hebrews (Word Biblical Commentary).
Mays, James L. Psalms (Interpretation).
Sarna, Nahum M. Genesis (The JPS Torah Commentary).
Wenham, Gordon J. Genesis 1–15 (Word Biblical Commentary).
