Page 24 - Pentateuch

God, and it was credited to him as righteousness,” James goes on to insist on works. “You see that a person
is considered righteous by what they do and not by faith alone (2:23-24).” Abraham’s faith in the character
of God and the promises of God led him to live his life differently. The very nature of faith demands the
same in any age. Faith in a great God will inevitably lead to quite different actions.

The entire life of Abraham is testimony to the truths stated to this point. Reading successively through the
Genesis chapters about Abraham, we are confronted with a series of events designed by God to deepen
Abraham’s understanding of God’s character and promise. Notice how in almost every chapter God reveals
Himself to Abraham through a different name tied to the life situation.

12:1 – “The LORD had said to Abram.” This and the next chapter describe Abram leaving his homeland and
traveling through Canaan into Egypt and back to Canaan. The focus is on the land as a gift from God (12:7,
10; 13:1, 9, 15). Throughout these chapters, the name YHWH is used. This is God’s personal name,
identifying him as the self-existing one, the personal God who is daily involved for good in the lives of his
people.

14:19 – “Blessed be Abram by God Most High.” A group of city-state
kings moves through the land, taking Lot captive. Abraham rescues !Ayl.[, la – El
his nephew. Upon returning, he meets Melchizedek, the king of

Salem, who blesses him. Abraham learns that his God is over everyone and every event.

Any of these names and the events connected to them could be studied further. The person of Melchizedek
provides us with much good, practical information. He was king of the city of Salem and a priest of God
Most High. He must have been a genuine priest, for he was able to bless Abraham, acknowledging how God
helped Abraham (14:19). He received tithes from Abraham (14:20), showing Abraham’s recognition of his
status as a priest of “God Most High.”

All this happened in approximately the year 2000 B.C., about 500 years before God gave the Law to Moses
at Mount Sinai and consecrated the descendants of Aaron to be priests. The book of Hebrews makes much
of Melchizedek. He is “without father or mother, without genealogy, without beginning of days or end of
life, resembling the Son of God, he remains a priest forever” (7:3).

Commentators have speculated for centuries about this mysterious character. Some have identified him as
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Shem, one of the sons of Noah. He would have survived the flood by some 500 years (Gen. 11:11). Others,
taking note of phrases such as “without father or mother” and “without beginning of days or end of life,”
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suggest an angel or even the Son of God in human form.

Yet the writer of Hebrews is simply contrasting the priestly system given under Moses with an earlier
model. The priests under the law were required to prove their genealogy. They could not be “without
father and mother.” They passed on the right to be a priest to their sons after them. They had a beginning
and an end in life. They did not remain priests forever. This was the Levitical system. The implication in
Genesis is of a system established before Moses that was superior to the Mosaic system, even though the
Mosaic system was given by God.

Melchizedek was a true priest of God in an older sense. He is an illustration of a cultural memory that had
preserved instructions on how to approach God, given to Noah at the time of the flood. Such cultural
memories are reflected in the passages about Pharaoh (12:10-20) and Abimelech (Ch. 20). The truths about

31 F. F. Bruce, The Epistle to the Hebrews (Grand Rapids: Erdmann, 1991), p. 161, n. 26.
32 Arthur W. Pink refers to a variety of suppositions in Exposition of Hebrews (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1954), p. 360.
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