The Son’s eternality,
which Melchizedek is made to resemble (Heb 7:3). In 7:1, after a
pointed delay, the author launches his exposition of Melchizedek’s priesthood.
In 7:1-2 he summarizes some of the account of Melchizedek and Abraham’s meeting
in Gen 14:17-24 and reflects on Melchizedek’s royal name and role. Then in 7:3
we read, “He is without father or mother or genealogy, having neither beginning
of days nor end of life, but resembling the Son of God he continues a priest forever.”
This verse and its neighborhood provoke an ever-flowing stream of scholarly
questions. My interest is chiefly in one: by saying that Melchizedek resembles
the Son in that he has “neither beginning of days nor end of life,” what does
the author imply about the being of the Son?
My answer begins with
the word translated “resembling.” We might more fully render this perfect
middle-passive participle (αφωμοιωμενος, aphōmoiōmenos) as “made like” the
Son or “having been made to resemble” the Son. Hebrews’ point is not that
Melchizedek just happens to resemble the Son of God, but that this commented-on
feature of his existence has been patterned in advance, as it were, on the
lately appearing Son. What is this feature? Properly eternal life, endless in
both directions. I take this to refer to Melchizedek’s literary profile rather
than his personal ontology. The author apparently reasons from Melchizedek’s
lack of genealogy, as well as from Scripture’s silence regarding his birth and
death, to the scriptural appearance of beginning-less and endless existence,
and hence abiding priesthood. But why does the author go so far out of his way
to ascribe to Melchizedek a properly eternal existence, especially if this is
true on a literary rather than an ontological plane? Because Melchizedek has
been “made to resemble” the Son of God, and the Son possesses in fact what
Melchizedek possesses only on paper. The Son is the model from which
Melchizedek, the scriptural anticipation, derives. Here in 7:3 it is not that
the Son became like Melchizedek but that Melchizedek was made like the Son.
If the author had
intended merely to assert that Melchizedek, like Jesus, lacked Levitical
descent, or even that Melchizedek’s priesthood, like the Son’s, is permanent,
he could have saved himself much ink and papyrus. Instead, he hammers the point
that Melchizedek’s existence is like the Son’s precisely in being properly
eternal, a kind of life that only God has. Here in 7:3, therefore, “Son of God”
is a divine designation. (R.B. Jamieson, The Paradox of Sonship: Christology
in the Epistle to the Hebrews [Studies in Christian Doctrine and Scripture;
Downers Grove, Ill.: IVP Academic, 2021], 68-69)
