Melekizedek and The Priesthood of the Firstborn

Updated June 11, 2014

Part I  From Adam To Sinai

Introducing Melekizedek In The Book of Hebrews

The Book of Hebrews asserts, in the mystery of Melekizedek, that he is one who is without ancestry. This statement, just as the title, Melekizedek itself, pertains to the office.  In that office he was as a person who was first, who had no human father. He was in the office of the seed of the woman, like unto the son of G-d.  

The person who filled that office, who came out an met Abraham to bless him, who was a king in the then Jebusite city of Salem.  It will be seen through a study of the priesthood of the firstborn and through the received tradition of the sages of Israel that this king of Salem was Shem, the firstborn son of Noah.*
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*It does not add to a faithful interpretation of the Book of Hebrews to state that the Sages must be wrong and we cannot know who it was who was filling the office of Melekizedek. The meaning is that in that office Shem was not Shem, but the representative convert to the faith and hope of the resurrection of the dead.

Background of the Mystery of Melekizedek

The priesthood of Melekizedek is mysterious because it is the priesthood of Adam* after Adam was sentenced to death for sin. More, it is mysterious because it was instituted by Adam before Adam had been given any direct authorization by God for such a priesthood to represent the possibility of hope.
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*It will be seen that Adam himself personally came to act in the role of a priest. To begin with, however, in the statement that the priesthood of Melekizedek is the priesthood of Adam, the name, Adam, can be understood corporately. As such, the name, "Adam", can be translated, "Humanity".  

We first see the role of priesthood clearly in the actions of the sons of Adam, Cain and Able.  The conversation of Adam and his sons that lead to their bringing sacrifices and prayers for Humanity before G-d is not revealed to us.  However, we know that it was through the conversation of Adam that his sons were ordained to act as they did in the role of priests. Because Cain was the firstborn the service of Able was dependent on the service of Cain.  Eve saw it as a sign of hope that a son had been born to her at all under the sentence of death.  This was in accordance with the promise that G-d had made concerning her seed.  Thus, the natural promise of the inheritance of the world that was carried in the birth of the firstborn was itself given new support and a new foundation of hope.  In this way, the meaning of the firstborn became the order of priesthood.

The mystery of this priesthood of the firstborn became accentuated when G-d accepted Able's offering in preference to Cain's offering.  It was then made evident that it was not sufficient to simply be the natural born firstborn.  In order for the service of the priest to be accepted by G-d it had to have the quality of the confession that G-d desired.


Adam and Melekizedek

Indeed, this priesthood, which was carried by Noah to Shem, who was Melekizedek, was ultimately based on Adam having been the first human being.  It was the priesthood of the firstborn, but it was priesthood, the representation of the one person for the whole of Humanity, because it was the firstborn of Adam, the first human being, the corporate human being.  However, being the first human being was no longer simply a virtue.  Adam had become a sinner and was under the curse of God and the sentence of death.  The hope that Adam based this priesthood on, (and then following Adam, Seth in place of Abel, and Noah and Shem),  was always to be confessed as a mysterious hope.  Had this priesthood not been honestly represented as mysterious by its priests, a false testimony from the order of the priesthood could have resulted.  A false impression could have been given to the world by the fact of their being a priesthood of the firstborn at all that, as the serpent claimed, Adam's crime would not necessarily result in the death of all.

Although it was Able, the firstborn, who first acted as a true priest of repentance and hope toward G-d, who expressed hope through sacrifice,  Adam had himself laid the foundation for this priesthood when, even after they had sinned, he named his wife cHavah, (Eve), the Mother of All Living.  Adam did this after overhearing G-d promise that an offspring of the woman would destroy the offspring of the serpent. By giving to his wife a personal name that was an everlasting confession of hope and faith in redemption, Adam blessed the world in the role of a priest.  While Cain was disqualified from the priesthood when he killed Able, Abel had successfully begun this firstborn priesthood of hope and, while G-d did not formally institute it from above, he did show acceptance of it, and in time Adam, as head of Humanity, instituted it from below through his own act of repentance and expression of hope in G-d, when he returned to cHavah to conceive Seth.  

Adam embraced the priesthood of hope.  It was carried on by other of his children, after Abel was killed.  But, even when Adam fully repented and returned to cHavah his wife, so that Seth was born, God did not yet formally sanction the priesthood of Adam's firstborn, even when he saved Noah and his family from the great flood.  G-d did not make the promise of the seed of the woman directly to the woman nor to the man, but spoke the promise directly to the serpent and against the serpent.  The only hope that G-d gave directly to the man and the woman came in a form of concealment in a form of mitigation of judgment.  All expressions of confession and prayer for Humanity after this arose directly from below, from the initiative of the man and woman themselves.  In the same way, after the flood, G-d did not promise Noah that he would not destroy the world again under any circumstances.  And he did not promise Noah that he would bless all the world through him.  He only promised him and made a covenant that he would not destroy the world again by water.


Abraham and Melekizedek

All of this changed when God called Abraham and began to clarify the mysterious hope that caused the day of Adam's personal death to be stretched out into a thousand years — and was causing the death of corporate Adam to be stretched out into seven thousand years.  In calling Abraham, God for the first time gave the promise of the offspring of the woman to a specific member of the family of Adam.  Before Abraham this promise had not been made as a promise to anyone but only as a promise against the serpent, which God had spoken in the Garden of Eden.  Now, in Abraham and his seed, God did not so much sanction the priesthood of the firstborn instituted by Adam, as transform that priesthood into a new priesthood based on his own direct and immediate calling.

This fact is enigmatically taught by the commentary of the sages of Israel on the passage on Abraham and Melekzedek meeting recorded in Genesis.  The sages teach that because Shem failed to bless God before Abraham the priesthood was taken away from him and given to Abraham.  For Abraham never failed to honor God first, and therefore more than the creature.  

This teaching of the sages is a necessary teaching, in that there is an aspect in which there is a cutting off of the old order and of putting the new order in its place. However, on an other level, there was also an acceptance of (Shem's), Melekzedek's, testimony that the true hope and blessing of Adam was to be found in the word of God spoken to Abraham.  The accepted testimony of Shem is the prototype of the final and ultimate rejoicing of the nations with Israel in the final and ultimate redemption of Israel, because it is this that results in the blessing of all families of the earth.  Here is the deepest depth of the priesthood of Melekizedek.  When this is fully understood it will become possible to understand how and why it is that Mashiach is made a priest after the order of Melekizedek only through the resurrection of the dead, and how his prayers are all prayers of atonement.

And so there is a certain way in which the priesthood of the firstborn coming through Noah was redeemed and fully and formally sanctified by God, even as he was formally setting it aside for the sake of the priesthood of Abraham.  For Shem, in blessing Abraham was making himself a convert to the faith of Abraham and not only himself but also the whole order of his priesthood.  This was a great and mysterious act, for it was made the basis upon which Abraham's relationship to Adam would also be redeemed.

Part II From Sinai To Mashiach

When Israel was redeemed from Egypt it was on the basis of all of the firstborn of Egypt being slain, but the firstborn of Israel being preserved alive on the basis of the blood of the Passover Lamb.  The death of the Passover Lamb was, so to speak, the death of the priesthood of the order of Melekizedek, which same priesthood of the firstborn was, spiritually speaking, then resurrected in the priesthood of the firstborn of Israel. For Melekizedek was the king of a Jebusite city, which, like Egypt, was a city of Adam before the covenant of redemption, and of the new Adam, was made with Abraham.  The service of the priesthood of Melekizedek from Salem was also for Egypt, even as Egypt was made to represent the whole world at the time of the captivity of Israel.  For the service of the priesthood of Melekizedek comprehended all Adam.

There could be a priesthood of Abraham, called to the blessing of the world, called to the certain promise of the resurrection of the dead, but only on the basis of the carrying out of God's word in the sentence of death upon Adam.  Thus, the firstborn of Israel would forever always have to be redeemed by blood, in a way acknowledging the necessity of the carrying out of the sentence of death upon Adam, individually and corporately.  This commandment was, therefore, the witness given with assurance through the very existence of the firstborn of Israel, that there would come a resurrection of the dead.

In this way, God had created for himself a priesthood of the firstborn, a priesthood of a certain hope.  For Mashiach to be called a priest after the order of Melekzedek is to refer to him, by implication, as the Passover Lamb, which lamb represented the death and redemption from death of all of the firstborn of Israel, in a substitutionary way.  Because the blood of the lamb would be seen as the blood of the firstborn of Israel, the angel of death would passover their houses.  It was not that they were any less subject to the sentence of death than any other children of Adam but that they were made to be a sign of the promise of the resurrection of the dead.

In this way, the priesthood of Melekzedek was redeemed from being a priesthood of a world condemned to death and was given over to the priesthood of the firstborn of Israel as a priesthood of the certain hope of the resurrection of the dead.  When Israel sinned with the golden calf the priesthood of the firstborn of the tribes of Israel could no longer serve this testimony in this office.  The place and the office of the priesthood was therefore filled by the firstborn of the tribe of Levi, which tribe did not partake in the sin of the golden calf.

Now it is evident that this substitution of the firstborn of all the tribes of Israel by the descendants of the firstborn, Aaron, and by the one tribe, could only be until the one who God promised against the serpent came, the one who would be the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.  It is he who causes the firstborn of all Israel to live.  Therefore it is to be understood that Israel's sin is removed through him and the priesthood of the firstborn is restored to all of the tribes.  This is the redeemed priesthood of the order of, the confession of, Melekizedek.  And the Mashiach of Israel, anointed by God, though not yet anointed by all the tribes of Israel, is, being the firstborn of the dead of the tribe of Judah, made the High Priest of Israel continually, eternally, in heavenly places, according to the order of Melekizedek.