Re: Naked Bible 167: Melchizedek Part 1b
To a Hebrew mind, the nature of something – the ontology – is of little consequence. What really matters is the role a thing plays. What can we do with it? More to the point, how can it bring glory to God? While digging into the possible meanings of Melchizedek’s name and whence it comes is of little use in understanding his place in the New Testament, it can help to explain some odd details in the Old Testament.
For example, it can be shown that the second half of his name – Tzedek – is the name of a deity in the Canaanite pantheon, showing up under different names across the Ancient Near East. In essence, it points to an interest in cosmic justice, and was the name for the chief attendant of the Semitic deity El, known as Shamash in other languages, the sun deity. This indicates that some variety of sun god was worshiped in ancient Jerusalem for quite some time. It also helps to explain why solar worship kept popping up in Jerusalem all the way up through the time of Ezekiel, who in a vision saw sun worship still occurring just before Babylon destroyed Solomon’s Temple.
We see a rather natural confusion among Israelites about Jehovah being closely related to worship of the sun and Baal. It was quite strong during the reign of Manasseh and forbidden under Josiah’s reforms around 620 BC. Among the Hebrew prophets, the idea was to absorb the pagan elements into the reverence for Jehovah, but people who lacked full faith in Him would see it in reverse, that it was okay to worship God as if He were something commonly known among the pagans.
Keep in mind that throughout the Old Testament, the kind of talk that personifies Righteousness and Justice is not mere poetry. It’s the language of centuries of pagan worship, using such labels as titles for multiple separate deities. The Bible hijacks that language to talk about Jehovah to build up the faithful, but to those who lack faith in Jehovah as the sole Creator of all things, it serves as an excuse to confuse things and keep their fear-based religions alive.
See the following passages: Psalm 110; Deuteronomy 32:8; Genesis 12 and 14; Numbers 24:14-18; Genesis 49:10. It’s all about Abraham and his seed breaking the powers of the nations in Jehovah’s name. Abraham’s descendants would reclaim the nations disinherited at the Tower of Babel. Melchizedek gets thrown into the middle of all this as the symbol of what kind of New Kingdom would be formed from all of this reclamation of nations.
Even under the protocol of God’s division between priesthood and kingship, we have David as king in Jerusalem who touches the Ark of Covenant, normally permitted only by priests. David’s descendant, Jesus the Messiah, is the final executor of this restoration of the original protocol.
The Law of Moses was a placeholder, an interim passage between Abraham and Christ. The way Moses balked at God’s command to shepherd the nation (Exodus 3 and 4) foreshadows the weakness of faith among Israelites. God gets exasperated with Moses and by concession allows Aaron to take the burden of priesthood, despite his lack of character (think about the Golden Calf incident). Moses hesitates and complains, and the nation does the same thing to him every step of the way until Conquest.
The Two Witnesses are part of a parenthesis, an inserted interval between the two ends of history. Be careful not to read it back into any part of Bible history before Moses and Aaron. The early Hebrew church believed it remained normative for the New Covenant. In John’s Revelation it is part of the final witness to the world before the End. I believe it remains a part of our covenant lives until Christ returns.
