Who was Melchizedek?
Melchizedek was the king of Salem and "priest of the most high God" who blessed Abraham (Gen 14:18-20). Hebrews presents him as a type of Christ, "without father, without mother... made like unto the Son of God" (Heb 7:3), a priest-king whose order Christ fulfills.
What the text states
He appears suddenly in Genesis 14, king and priest, receives Abraham's tithe, and vanishes. Hebrews builds a whole argument on him: Christ is "a priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec" (Heb 5:6, Ps 110:4), a priesthood older and greater than Aaron's, combining king and priest, which no son of Aaron could. "Without father, without mother, without descent" (Heb 7:3) means the record gives him no genealogy, unlike every Levite, so he pictures the eternal, unending priesthood of Christ.
Some hold Melchizedek was a pre-incarnate appearance of Christ. We hold he was a historical king-priest presented as a type of Christ, whom Christ's priesthood surpasses.
Checked 2026-09-29 by Darren. 62 Scripture citations verified against the KJV rows. Wave 5. 62 quoted fragments table-passed against the verses table, splitting at every ellipsis. FOUR CORRECTIONS, each to the KJV row: Acts 4:12 "in none other" is not contiguous, replaced with "none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved"; Deut 1:39 "have no knowledge" corrected to "had no knowledge"; Eph 3:2 "dispensation of grace" corrected to "dispensation of the grace of God"; Rom 11:23 "shall be graffed in again" corrected to "shall be graffed in" (the KJV runs "shall be graffed in: for God is able to graff them in again").