Melchizedek the Person
Hebrews says he was “made like unto the Son of God” — which settles it. A likeness is not the thing it resembles. So who was the man whose name an entire priesthood still carries?
Three Verses, and Then Silence
He enters Genesis without introduction and leaves without explanation.
“And Melchizedek king of Salem brought forth bread and wine: and he was the priest of the most high God. And he blessed him, and said, Blessed be Abram of the most high God… And he gave him tithes of all.”
Then nothing, for a thousand years, until David writes one line that changes everything: “Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek” (Psalm 110:4). A messianic psalm, naming the Messiah’s priesthood after a man who appears in three verses of Genesis.
Ask what that requires. For the psalm to mean anything, Melchizedek must have held something the Levitical priesthood did not — something older, higher, and still in force when David wrote. The Bible poses the question and does not answer it.
“Without Father, Without Mother”
The famous difficulty is in Hebrews, and it has produced some remarkable theories.
“Without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days, nor end of life; but made like unto the Son of God; abideth a priest continually.”
From the first half of that verse some conclude Melchizedek was a preincarnate appearance of Christ, or an angel, or a heavenly being who never lived a mortal life. The second half of the same verse refutes all three. “Made LIKE UNTO the Son of God.” A man is not made like unto himself.
And Psalm 110 collapses on the Christophany reading. If Melchizedek were Christ, the verse says the Messiah is a priest after the order of the Messiah — a sentence that names nothing and explains less. The whole point of the psalm is that Christ’s priesthood is patterned on an order that existed BEFORE Him in the record, and is therefore older than Levi.
So what does the phrase mean? Read it against the argument Hebrews is making. The entire chapter contrasts two priesthoods, and the Levitical one turned on genealogy — a man had to document descent from Aaron or he was “put from the priesthood” as polluted (Ezra 2:61–62). Melchizedek held his priesthood with no such pedigree entered in the record: no listed father, no listed mother, no registered descent, no term of office recorded from beginning to end. That is a statement about the ORDER, and about what the scriptural record does and does not contain — not a claim that a man had no parents.
The Restoration Supplies the Biography
Here is where the restored scripture earns its keep. The Bible raises a question about a man and drops it. Alma answers it — and the answer is that he was a man, in a hard place, doing a hard thing.
“Now this Melchizedek was a king over the land of Salem; and his people had waxed strong in iniquity and abomination… But Melchizedek having exercised mighty faith, and received the office of the high priesthood according to the holy order of God, did preach repentance unto his people. And behold, they did repent.”
A king over a wicked city who preached repentance and got it. That is why they called him the prince of peace, and why Alma says he “did reign under his father” — a father, plainly named as existing, in the very account that fills the biblical silence.
The Joseph Smith Translation of Genesis 14 adds the rest: a boy who feared God from childhood, who was ordained a high priest after the order of the covenant God made with Enoch, and who through faith “stopped the mouths of lions, and quenched the violence of fire.” Read that last phrase and then read Hebrews 11:33–34, where Paul lists exactly those deeds among the acts of faith without naming who performed them. The restored text supplies a name the New Testament left blank.
That is what a restoration looks like when it is genuine. Not a contradiction of the Bible — a completion of a sentence the Bible left hanging.
Why the Priesthood Bears His Name
The order is not originally his. Revelation states its proper title and then explains the substitution outright.
Doctrine and Covenants 107:2–4
The higher priesthood is “after the Order of the Son of God.” It was called after Melchizedek “because Melchizedek was such a great high priest” — and out of reverence, “to avoid the too frequent repetition of his name.”
So the name on the order is a courtesy toward the name of Deity, and an honor paid to one man who bore it well. Which raises the obvious question for anyone reading Hebrews without the Restoration: if this priesthood is real, where is it?
Hebrews insists the Levitical order was changed and a better one installed (Hebrews 7:11–12), and that no man takes this honor to himself (Hebrews 5:4). A priesthood that must be conferred, that is not inherited, and that Christ Himself holds — and after the apostles there is no record of anyone conferring it. The line does not fade because the doctrine was forgotten. It fades because there was nobody left authorized to pass it on.
The Verdict
Melchizedek was a man. King of Salem, priest of the Most High God, ruler of a wicked city that repented under his preaching, and the man to whom the father of the faithful paid tithes and from whom he received a blessing — because, as Hebrews says, “the less is blessed of the better.”
This is what Genesis records: a priest who blessed Abraham and received his tithes. This is what David wrote: the Messiah’s own priesthood named after that man’s order. This is what Hebrews argues: that order is greater than Levi’s, and Christ holds it. This is what Hebrews says about the man himself: MADE LIKE UNTO the Son of God — like, and therefore not.
And this is what the Restoration adds, in the place where the Bible went quiet: a boy who feared God, a king who reigned under his father, a high priest ordained after the order of the covenant given to Enoch. Reject that and you have not rejected Joseph Smith. You are left with Psalm 110 naming an order after a man you cannot identify, and Hebrews 7 arguing from a priesthood you cannot locate.
See also Does Only Jesus Hold the Priesthood?, The Priesthood — Authority That Can’t Be Self-Appointed, and Tithing — Answering the Objections.