Without father or mother, without genealogy, without beginning of days or end of life, resembling the Son of God, he remains a priest forever.

As we work through Hebrews 7 we are going to find a repeated emphasis on the eternal Priesthood of Jesus. I don’t believe the writer is arguing that Melchizedek actually was eternal. The point is that he appears on the pages of Scripture as being ”without genealogy”, so he seems’ to be without beginning or end.

Raymond Brown helpfully comments:

”He makes special mention of the fact that in Genesis we are given no ancestral details when Melchizedek’s name is mentioned, a little surprising in view of the numerous genealogies found in that book. The author does not wish for a moment to imply that because Melchizedek’s human parents are not mentioned they did not exist. The main point here is that In Scripture nothing is said of these things. So ‘in the silences as well as in the statements’ Melchizedek is ‘a fitting type of Christ’ (Bruce). This priest-king is in this sense timeless and as such he resembles the Son of God who continues a priest for ever…It is not Jesus who resembles Melchizedek, but Melchizedek who resembles the Lord Jesus. ‘Melchizedek was thus the facsimile of which Christ is the reality (Hawthorne).” (‘Christ above all’, p. 129).