We can't really understand all of the ways that Melchizedek is significant

until we see the thing that he points to, which is Jesus, who is the king priest.

That's why he has all this grand mystery about him, this kind of need for speculation about him.

Maybe he's an angel, maybe he's this, maybe he's that.

Because his significance exists

not only in his historical life, but in something grander that he points to.

Daniel Stevens is an assistant professor of New Testament interpretation at Boyce College. He's

also the author of Songs of the Sun, reading the Psalms

with the author of Hebrews from Crossway. Daniel, thanks so much for joining me today on the

Crossway podcast. Yeah, absolutely glad to. So when you heard that we wanted to talk about

Malkisadec today, this mysterious figure in the Old Testament.

Your reply was interesting. You said something like, yeah, let's go for it. Everyone wants to know

what the deal is with Malkisadec. And that kind of got me thinking. So it seems like you've gotten

questions about this guy before in your time teaching. Is that right? Yeah. So ever since I started studying

Hebrews, whenever somebody finds that out, there is invariably a set of two questions that they

asked me. Number one, who's the author of Hebrews and is it Paul? And number two, what's the deal

with this Melchizedek guy? Usually, my answer to both those is I have no idea but we can actually talk a little bit more

on each of them if we need to and so this Melchizedek thing is something that seems to capture

everyone's imagination at least he's enigmatic he's mentioned just a few times and so happy to talk

about it yeah so what is it about him that you think is maybe most fascinating? Why is

his identity such a thing that Christians, maybe, you know, young college students, seminary students,

why are they so, why are we all so kind of drawn to this guy for some reason? Well, we're given

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