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35 I will not violate my covenant;
    the promise of my lips I will not alter.(A)

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II

11 The Lord swore an oath to David in truth,
    he will never turn back from it:(A)
“Your own offspring(B) I will set upon your throne.

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18 Melchizedek, king of Salem,[a] brought out bread and wine. He was a priest of God Most High.

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Footnotes

  1. 14:18 Melchizedek, king of Salem (Jerusalem, cf. Ps 76:3), appears with majestic suddenness to recognize Abraham’s great victory, which the five local kings were unable to achieve. He prepares a feast in his honor and declares him blessed or made powerful by God Most High, evidently the highest God in the Canaanite pantheon. Abraham acknowledges the blessing by giving a tenth of the recaptured spoils as a tithe to Melchizedek. The episode is one of several allusions to David, king at Jerusalem, who also exercised priestly functions (2 Sm 6:17). Hb 7 interprets Melchizedek as a prefiguration of Christ. God Most High: in Heb. El Elyon, one of several “El names” for God in Genesis, others being El Olam (21:33), El the God of Israel (33:20), El Roi (16:13), El Bethel (35:7), and El Shaddai (the usual P designation for God in Genesis). All the sources except the Yahwist use El as the proper name for God used by the ancestors. The god El was well-known across the ancient Near East and in comparable religious literature. The ancestors recognized this God as their own when they encountered him in their journeys and in the shrines they found in Canaan.

just as he says in another place:[a]

“You are a priest forever
    according to the order of Melchizedek.”(A)

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Footnotes

  1. 5:6–8 The author of Hebrews is the only New Testament writer to cite Ps 110:4, here and in Hb 7:17, 21, to show that Jesus has been called by God to his role as priest. Hb 5:7–8 deal with his ability to sympathize with sinners, because of his own experience of the trials and weakness of human nature, especially fear of death. In his present exalted state, weakness is foreign to him, but he understands what we suffer because of his previous earthly experience.

21 but he with an oath, through the one who said to him:

“The Lord has sworn, and he will not repent:(A)
    ‘You are a priest forever’”—

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