Melchizedek is the most extraordinary person of whom we have any record.
Christ was born and Adam was made, but Melchizedek never began to be
and will never cease to exist. If the Bible were not such an intensely
serious book without a gleam of humor, except of the unconscious
Hibernian kind, we might conclude that Melchizedek was _nobody_, for the
description admirably suits that character. But the Bible does not
play and must not be played with. All its personages are _bona fide_
realities, from the Ancient of Days with white woolly hair on the throne
of heaven to the prophet Jonah who took three days' lodging in the belly
of a whale.
The name Melchizedek means _king_ of justice, being derived from
_melec_, a king, and _tzedec_, justice. When the gentleman bearing this
name is introduced to us in the fourteenth of Genesis, he is king of
Salem, which means peace. Salem was a city on the site of Zion.
Originally it was called Jebus, then Zadek, then Salem, and finally
Jerusalem. So says Rabbi Joseph Ben-Gorion. But other writers, no doubt
just as well informed, differ from him; and while the doctors disagree,
simple laymen may well hold their judgment in suspense; or, better
still, dismiss Jebus, Zadek, Salem, and Jerusalem, to the limbo of
learned trivialities. Counting the spots on a leopard, the quills on
a porcupine, or the hairs in a cat's whiskers, is just as amusing and
quite as edifying as most of the problems of divines and commentators.
When Abraham returned from a successful campaign, in which he defeated
five kings and their armies with three hundred and eighteen raw
recruits, Melchizedek came out to meet him with victuals and drink.
These two friends joined in the friendly office of _scratching_ each
other. They were, in fact, a small mutual admiration society. Abraham,
although at other times a rank coward, was on this occasion a bold
warrior laden with spoil; and Melchizedek besides being King of Salem,
was "the priest of the most high God." "Bully for you, Abraham," said
Melchizedek. "Bully for you, Melchizedek," said Abraham. As usual,
however, the priest got the best of it, for the patriarch paid him
tithes, which were a capital return for his compliments. Genesis is a
little confused, indeed; and what scripture is not? "And he gave him
tithes of all" is not very clear. It reminds one of the West of England
yokel, who gave his evidence on a case of homicide in this way:
"He had a stick, and he had a stick; and he hit he, and he hit he. And
if he'd only hit he as hard as he hit he, he'd a' killed he, and not he
he."
But we must not be too hard on Bibles and yokels. So long as we can get
a scintillation of their meaning we must be satisfied. Scripture, we may
take it, means that the _he_ who paid tithes was Abraham, and the _him_
who received them was Melchizedek.
Now the book of Genesis is not an early, but a very late portion of the
Jewish scriptures, dating only a few centuries before Christ. And we may
depend on it that this little sentence about _tithes_, and perhaps the
whole story that leads up to it, was got up by the priests, to give
the authority of Abraham's name and the sanction of antiquity to an
institution which kept them in luxury at the expense of their neighbors.
Our view of the case is supported by the fact that Melchizedek's name
does not appear again in the whole of the Old Testament, except in the
hundred and tenth Psalm, where somebody or other (the parsons of
course say Christ) is called "a priest for ever after the order of
Melchizedek." Paul, or whoever wrote the Epistle to the Hebrews,
works up this hint in fine style. It would puzzle a lunatic, or a
fortune-teller, or the Archbishop of Canterbury, or God Almighty
himself, to say what the Seventh of Hebrews means. We give it up as an
insoluble conundrum, and we observe that every commentator with a grain
of sense and honesty does the same. But there is one luminous flash
in the jumble of metaphysical darkness. Melchizedek is described
as "without father, without mother, without descent, having neither
beginning of days nor end of life." It will be easy to recognise a
gentleman of that description when you meet him. When we _do_ meet him
we shall readily acknowledge him as our king and priest, and pay him
an income tax of two shillings in the pound; but until then we warn all
kings and priests off our doorsteps.
Jewish traditions say that Melchizedek was the son of Shem, and set
apart for the purpose of watching and burying Adam's carcase when it
was unshipped from the Ark. Some, however, maintain that he was of a
celestial race; while other (Christian) speculators have held that he
was no less than Jesus Christ himself, who put in an early appearance
in Abraham's days to keep the Jewish pot boiling. St. Athanasius tells a
long-winded story of Melchizedek and Abraham, which shows what stuff the
early Christians believed. According to the Talmud, Melchizedek composed
the hundred and tenth Psalm himself; and although he is without end of
days, his tomb was shown at Jerusalem in the time of Gemelli Oarrere the
traveller.
There was an heretical sect called the _Melchizedekiana_ in the third
century. They held that Jesus Christ was, according to Hebrews, only of
the order of Melchizedek, and therefore that Melchizedek himself was
the more venerable. This heresy revived in Egypt after its suppression
elsewhere, and its adherents claimed that Melchizedek was the
Holy Ghost. The last time Melchizedek was heard of he was a London
coster-monger's donkey, but whether this was a real incarnation of the
original Melchizedek no one is able to decide, unless the Lord should
again, as in the case of Balaam's companion, "open the mouth of the ass"
and inform the world of the things that belong unto its peace.