"1For this Melchizedek, king of Salem, priest of the Most High God, met Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings and blessed him, 2 and to him Abraham apportioned a tenth part of everything. He is first, by translation of his name, king of righteousness, and then he is also king of Salem, that is, king of peace. 3 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."
Hebrews 7:1-3
We come now to the significance of Melchizedek, and in so doing resume the thread of the thought which was left at 5:11. The statements made in this chapter are from one point of view clear enough, but it is the context and significance of what is said in relation to the rest of the argument that we must try to grasp, and it is here that the difficulty lies. Bear in mind that the Apostle has been setting the New Covenant and dispensation of Christ against the Old, showing the immeasurable superiority of the New. Thus, Christ is better than the angels, than Moses, than Joshua; and now, Christ's Priesthood is shown to be superior to the Old Testament Aaronic priesthood. The Apostle displays this superiority - if we may anticipate the argument of the chapter - by pointing out that Jesus does not descend from the tribe of Levi, from which tribe the Aaronic priesthood came, but from Judah, a tribe that had no part in the Old Testament priesthood at all. Christ is a priest after another order, that of Melchizedek. It is to answer the question, "Who is this Melchizedek, and how is his order of priesthood superior to the Levitical order?" that he therefore proceeds to expound the references to Melchizedek as they appear in Genesis. And the first point is this: Melchizedek stands in the sacred record as one having neither beginning of days nor end of life, having no genealogy. This does not mean that he was an eternal figure in the sense of having a timeless, continuing existence. It is rather that the fact of there being no record of his origin or end is taken by the writer as an illustration of the point he is trying to make. Melchizedek just is, and as such he stands as a type, or foreshadowing of a greater than Himself Who was to come, Who really is eternal, Who really abideth continually. That is the meaning of the Apostle's reference to that mysterious Old Testament figure.