2. In the ancient Psalm cx. 1 we have Adonai (Lord), and in verse 4 Melchi-Melech (or Moloch) king, combined with tsedek, justice.
3. Tzedek (Tsaydoc or Zadok), the priest who anointed Solomon to be king. Tsaydoc supplanted the legitimate High Priest Abiathar who had taken the side of the legitimate heir to David’s throne, Adonijah, supplanted by Solomon. The deprivation of Abiathar, and exaltation of Tsaydoc to be High Priest is said (1 Kings ii. 27) to have been in fulfillment of “the word of Jahveh, which he spake concerning the house of Eli in Shiloh.” The reference is to the sentence passed on Eli and his house, to which Abiathar belonged, when Jahveh said, “And I will raise me up a faithful priest, etc.,” (1 Sam. ii. 35). Faithful priests were called “sons of Zadok,” the phrase having apparently become proverbial (Ezek. xliv. 15).
4. In 1 Chron. iii. there appear, among the descendants of Solomon, “Amaziah, Azariah his son, Jotham his son.” In 1 Chron. vi. we find among descendants of Zadok, Ahimaaz, Azariah his son, Johanan his son. Johanan is also among Solomon’s descendants, and among the descendants of both Solomon and Zadok is Shallum,—written by Josephus Salloumos (Bk. x. ch. 8). Josephus also says that Zadok was the first High Priest of Solomon’s Temple. But Solomon himself, without the assistance of any priest, dedicated the Temple, offered the sacrifices on that occasion, and so continued: “three times in a year did Solomon offer burnt offerings and peace offerings upon the altar which he built to Jahveh.” (1 Kings ix. 25). These statements establish a probability that no such person as Zadok existed at all, and that the development of this personification of justice (zedek) into a priestly personage was due to an ecclesiastical necessity of introducing a priest among the provisions of Solomon for the temple. Zadok is thus a detachment from King Solomon of the priestly functions he had discharged in the temple, according to the book of Kings; and in 1 Chron. vi., where this personification is completed, the Solomonic family names are found, as above, recurring as descendants of the personification,—Zadok.
These names are the fossil remains of controversies with Shilonite and Samaritan pretensions, which ended in consecrating the throne and altar at Jerusalem, and they prove that the consecration was that of justice and peace. Of these the Wise Man was typical. Solomon was the model from whom all of these ideals were painted. His title, Adonai, and his equity (Psalm xlv. 7, 11) are combined in Adonizedek, his glory (Psalm xlv. 3, 4) is in Adonibezek; his high priesthood is allegorized in Zadok; and in “Melchizedek, King of Salem,” his supreme characters are summed up, “King of Justice, Prince of Peace.”
In a warlike age this peacefulness of a monarch was the great and supernatural phenomenon. It is the very central idea of the whole Solomonic legend. Solomon got his name from it, even the name with Jahveh in it (Jedediah) being set aside; he was preferred above David to build the temple, because David was a warrior; in building the temple the peace was not broken even by the noise of a hammer, the stones being all in shape, it seems by supernatural power, when taken from the quarry, so as to be noiselessly fitted together; he would not fight even those who were rending parts of his kingdom away. He was the hero of the Beatitudes,—the gentle one who inherited the earth, the one who hungered and thirsted for justice and was filled, the peacemaker called the Son of God. It was he who first said, If thine enemy hunger give him food, if he thirst give him drink. And all this was allegorized in Melchizedek, who, when his country was invaded, instead of joining the five kings who resisted, loved his enemy, gave the invader food and drink.
We thus find Solomon,—the glorious cosmopolitan and secularist, whose name Jahvism could not utter without a shudder,—distributed in fable, legend, psalm, through Hexateuch and Hagiographa, and finally transfigured into a type of divine and eternal Sonship. Thus he appears in the Epistle to the Hebrews, to which we now return.
In the Epistle to the Hebrews Christ is invested with the mystical robes of Solomon. To Christ are applied the words, “I will be to him a Father, and he shall be to me a Son,” quoted from Jahveh’s promise to David concerning Solomon (2 Sam. vii. 14). To Christ are twice applied the words, “Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee,” quoted from Psalm ii. 7, admittedly Solomonic. From Psalm xlv., verses 6 and 7, ascriptions to Solomon, are applied to Christ in this Epistle. And Melchizedek is here declared to be “a great man,” “assimilated unto the Son of God.”
We may here recall the words of Josephus, a contemporary of our writer, who says that Melchizedek was made the priest of God on account of his righteousness (Ant., Bk. i. ch. 10). It may have been that there was a popular belief in the time of Josephus that Melchizedek received his ordination from Abram himself, but there is no doubt that the mysterious king’s priesthood was believed to rest upon his righteousness and above all his peacefulness.
With these preliminaries we may find the Epistle’s argument about Melchizedek less “hard of interpretation” than the writer says it is. After speaking of Abraham as having “obtained” the promise, not merely because it was God’s promise, but because he “patiently endured,” having argued that Christ, “though he was a Son, yet learned obedience by the things that he suffered”, this Epistle maintains (vi. 20) that this is the believer’s hope, whereby he enters within the veil, “whither as a forerunner Jesus entered for us, having become a high priest forever after the manner of Melchizedek.” (The sense of this is lost in the E. V. by rendering γενόμενος “made”: the argument is that though he was a Son of God even that could not make him a high priest; this he had to “become” by his own merits, uninheritable even from God, as was the case with Melchizedek.) “For this Melchizedek, being of Salem, priest of God Most High, who met Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings, and blessed him, to whom also Abraham divided a tenth part of all (being first by interpretation King of Righteousness, and next also King of Salem, that is Prince of Peace; being without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but assimilated (ἔχων ἀφωμοιωμένος) unto the Son of God), abideth a priest perpetually” (vii. 1–3).
The mystical clauses of verse 3 have for centuries been an unsolved enigma to exegetists; and Alford, after summing up the many conjectures as to their meaning, expresses his feeling that the writer had a thought which he did not intend us to comprehend! Probably, however, the writer was using language understood in his time, and which may be interpreted by comparison with expressions familiar in Jewish folklore. Some of these are preserved in the apocryphal gospels. Thus, in the Pseudo-Matthew, Levi, the teacher of Jesus, astounded by the Child’s learning, says, “I think he was born before the flood.” In the gospel of Thomas, the teacher Zacchæus says, “This child is not of earthly parents, he is able to subdue even fire. Perhaps he was begotten before the world was made.” These ideas, which correspond somewhat to the Teutonic superstition of the “changeling,” are traceable in the Fourth Gospel (viii. 56–59), where Jesus is stoned for saying, “Before Abraham was I am.”