Tuesday, April 16, 2024

Jerome on Melchizedek being "Without a father, without a mother" in Hebrews

  

In addition, they say that in the letter to the Hebrews, received by all the Greeks and some Latins, there is more detailed discussion. This Melchizedek, that is, “Just king,” was king of Salem, that is, “king of peace.” He is “without a father, without a mother.” How this should be understood is explained immediately by the single word, αγενεαλογητος (“without a recorded genealogy”), not that he was without father and mother, since Christ too has a father and a mother according to each of his natures. Instead, this is said because he is introduced abruptly in Genesis, that he met Abraham when he was returning from the slaughter of his enemies, and neither before nor afterward is his name written down. Now the Apostle establishes that the priesthood of Aaron, that is to say, of the Jewish people, had a beginning and an end. But that of Melchizedek, that is, of Christ’s Church, is eternal, for the past and the future, and it has no author; and that when [the Levitical] priesthood is transferred, there must also be a change of law. Thus does the word of the Lord go forth out of the citadel of Zion, and the law of God from Jerusalem; and it does so from Sarah, who is free, not from Hagar the handmaid and Mount Sinai. And he emphasizes the difficulty of the matter with his prefatory words when he says: “About which we have much to say, and it is inexplicable.” If the vessel of election is seized with astonishment before the mystery, and if he confesses that this discussion above his thoughts and expressions, how much more ought we who are worms and fleas admit that the only thing we know is that we do not know anything! Let us be content with offering a glimpse of a vast palace through a tiny keyhole, as it were. Thus we should say that the Apostle has compared the two priesthoods: that of the first people and that of the second. And his whole discussion is carried out to show that Melchizedek had been a priest from the Gentiles before Levi and Aaron. His previous merit was so great that Abraham blessed the future priests of the Jews in his loins, and all that follows in praise of Melchizedek is applied to his being a type of Christ, the development of which are mysteries of the Church. (Jerome, “Epistle 73 to Evangelus the Priest Concerning Melchizedek,” A.D. 398, in St. Jerome: Exegetical Epistles, 2 vols. [trans. Thomas P. Scheck; The Fathers of the Church 147; Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2023], 1:310-11)

 

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