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.
So what does that line require? For the psalm to mean anything, Melchizedek must have held something the Levitical priesthood did not. Something older, something higher, and something still in force when David wrote — or why would he name the Messiah’s own priesthood after it? The Bible poses that question and then never answers it.
“Without Father, Without Mother”
The famous difficulty is in Hebrews. 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.”
So was he Christ Himself? An angel, maybe, or some heavenly being who never lived a mortal life at all? People read the first half of that verse and land on all three. Then they stop reading. Because the second half of the same verse refutes every one of them. “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, then the verse has the Messiah serving as a priest after the order of the Messiah — a sentence that names nothing and explains less, for the entire point of the psalm is that Christ’s priesthood is patterned after an order which already existed BEFORE Him in the record, and is therefore older than Levi and older than the law.
So what does the phrase mean? Read it against the argument Hebrews is actually making. The whole chapter contrasts two priesthoods, and the Levitical one turned on genealogy. Document your descent from Aaron or you were “put from the priesthood” as polluted (Ezra 2:61–62). No pedigree, no office. Now what pedigree does the record give Melchizedek? None. No listed father, no listed mother, no registered descent, no term of office entered from beginning to end. That is a statement about the ORDER. It is a statement about what the scriptural register does and does not contain. It is 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 notice what else Alma says: he “did reign under his father.” A father. Plainly named as existing, in the very account that fills the biblical silence. So much for the man without parents.
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 go read Hebrews 11:33–34, where Paul lists exactly those deeds among the great acts of faith and never once names the man who performed them — so the restored text supplies a name that the New Testament left sitting 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 who reads Hebrews without the Restoration in hand: if this priesthood is real, and if Christ Himself holds it, then where is it?
Hebrews insists that the Levitical order was changed and a better one installed in its place (Hebrews 7:11–12), and it insists just as plainly that no man takes this honor to himself but must be called of God (Hebrews 5:4). A priesthood that must be conferred, that cannot be inherited, that no man may claim for himself, and that Christ Himself holds — and yet after the apostles there is not one record anywhere of anybody conferring it on anybody. So the line does not fade because the doctrine got forgotten. It fades because there was nobody left with the authority 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.”
Follow what the record gives you. Genesis: a priest who blessed Abraham and took his tithes. David: the Messiah’s priesthood named after that man’s order. Hebrews: that order outranks Levi’s, and Christ holds it. And on the man himself? MADE LIKE UNTO the Son of God. Like. Therefore not.
Then the Restoration speaks 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 all of that and what have you gained? Not a refutation of Joseph Smith. You are left holding Psalm 110, which names an order after a man you cannot identify, and Hebrews 7, which argues 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.