When we look at Melchizedek, he’s an interesting figure in the Bible. And Christians have had different interpretations as to who was Melchizedek.

Some Christians have thought of him as a historical figure, a Canaanite king priest who was living at the time of Abraham. Other Christians have interpreted Melchizedek just as a type. And other people have interpreted Melchizedek as an appearance of Christ, a pre-incarnate appearance of Christ, which we would call a Christophany.

In Genesis 14, we have an interesting passage which talks about four kings. These kings from the east had subjected the people of Canaan and were expecting the people of Canaan to pay tribute. And they didn’t pay the tribute, so the next year the kings from the east came to attack the Canaanite kings and subdue them and force them to pay tribute.

And this is where Abraham enters into the story because Lot, his nephew, was living in one of these cities, so when these four kings captured the five cities south of the Dead Sea, they took Lot and his family into captivity.

So Abraham gathers all of the men that were in his household that he had trained for war, 318 men, and he surprises the four kings and conquers them, and recovers his nephew, Lot, and his family.

When he comes back, all of a sudden, we have this person called Melchizedek, who’s described as the king of Salem, which is obviously connected with Jerusalem. And he’s presented as a king and priest.

Genesis 14:18 “And Melchizedek king of Salem brought forth bread and wine: and he was the priest of the most high God. ¹⁹ And he blessed him, and said, Blessed be Abram of the most high God, possessor of heaven and earth: ²⁰ And blessed be the most high God, which hath delivered thine enemies into thy hand. And he gave him tithes of all.“

Melchizedek is the king of Salem, he’s the priest of the Most High God, the Creator God. It says in the text, he says, “Blessed be God, or El, creator of heaven and earth,” and he calls Him the Most High God.

So here we have a Canaanite king priest who is a worshiper of the one true creator God. And we shouldn’t be surprised by that. Jjust because, Abraham was a worshiper of the one true God, it doesn’t mean he was the only worshiper of the one true God. There were other people who worshiped the one true God.

Job for example, Melchizedek for example. Other people at that point in history were still worshiping, one, supreme being as the creator and God over everything and had not abandoned and fallen into polytheism.

These things have actually been clarified, by archeology in the last 100 years. In the 1920s, archeologists were excavating a site, called Ras Shamra, which turned out to be the ancient city of Ugarit.

And this city of Ugarit, flourished in the 12th century BC. And the archeologists uncovered hundreds and thousands of tablets that describe every area of Canaanite life, including their religion.

So we have many hundreds of tablets that describe the worship of Baal or Baal. The Canaanites worshiped, Baal. He is the god of lightning and thunder. He’s the West Semitic storm deity. He is the one who brings the rain, and he’s the one who brings fertility to the land.

What we see from these tablets is that there is an evolution, or maybe I should call it a devolution, to Canaanite religion. So what they show us is that at an earlier period, the Canaanites worshiped one true creator God.

They would not necessarily have known Him as Yahweh or had a relationship with Him like the people of Israel in the Old Testament, but they did worship one supreme transcendent being.

And in the period of time between Abraham, and the 12th century BC, their religion degenerated, and they abandoned the worship of one supreme God and began to worship many gods.

And so these texts that we have from Ugarit actually show us that the creator God, who’s called El, who’s called the Most High, has faded into the background and the chief god ruling all of the other gods is Baal the rain god.

So this fits perfectly with the data that we have in the Bible because in the Bible, in Genesis, we have a Canaanite king priest who is a worshiper of the one true creator God.

And what we see then in the next, from the period of Abraham, from maybe 2000 BC down to the 12th century BC, the Canaanites degenerate from worshiping one true creator God into worshiping all the forces of nature, particularly, the rain god.

Many people have not understood what the author to the Hebrews was trying to do. The author to the Hebrews, as well as David himself in Psalm 110, see Melchizedek as a model or pattern of the Messiah.

And the question is why is that? Simply because he’s both a king and a priest.

In Psalm 110, the Psalm is divided into two stanzas. In the first stanza, a divine declaration creates a king. In the second stanza, a divine oath creates a priest.

The king and the priest are the same person. And both stanzas show this coming descendant of David, this coming king priest as defeating and conquering the nations.

In the book of Hebrews, the author is seeing Melchizedek as a model or pattern of the coming Messiah.

So for example, in the book of Genesis, everybody has a genealogy, except Melchizedek. So he’s presented as if he just doesn’t have any father or mother. He’s presented as if he’s almost like an eternal person. And so, it’s not that Melchizedek was an eternal person. It’s the way the author of Genesis presents him.

It makes it feasible for him to be a model or pattern of the coming Messiah. And he is not a Christophany. He’s not a pre-incarnate, appearance of Christ.

He’s an actual, historical, individual or person. He was a king of a city in Canaan, probably around 2000 BC. And he was both king and priest.

Because Christians didn’t have very much information about the ancient near eastern background, they didn’t have very much information about the development of Canaanite religion, and because of the statements in the book of Hebrews, they misunderstood the author of the book of Hebrews to be suggesting that Melchizedek was a pre-incarnate appearance of Christ, which is not what the author to the Hebrews is actually saying.

And what’s important about Melchizedek is that he is the earliest figure that we have in the Biblical history of someone who is both king and priest. And so according to Psalm 110 and Hebrews 7, he is a model or pattern for the coming deliverer that finds ultimate fulfillment in Jesus Christ.