The LORD has sworn, and will not relent,
You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.
Read Chapter 110
Augustine of Hippo
AD 430
11. And unto what art Thou born? "The Lord hath sworn, and will not repent: Thou art a Priest for ever after the order of Melchizedec" (ver. 4). For unto this wast Thou born from the womb before the morning star, that Thou mightest be a Priest for ever after the order of Melchizedec. For in that character in which He was born of the Father, God with God, coeternal with Him who begot Him, He is not a Priest; but He is a Priest on account of the flesh which He assumed, on account of the victim which He was to offer for us received from us. "The Lord," then, "hath sworn." What then meaneth, the Lord hath sworn? Doth the Lord, who forbiddeth men to swear Himself swear? Or doth He possibly forbid man to swear chiefl.by on this account, that he may not fall into perjury, and for this reason the Lord may swear, since He cannot be forsworn. For man, who, through a habit of swearing, may slip into perjury, is rightly forbidden to swear: for he will be farther from perjury in proportion as he is...
Repent. Not that He can ever do so, or give way to error: but the sacred writer expresses himself thus, to give us the greatest security. (Calmet)
The order. Hebrew dibrathi, "my order "Melchisedech. The i has been perhaps designedly inserted, to render the argumentation in the epistle to the Hebrews of no weight, "as the force of the text sinks into just nothing. "(Kennicott)
Protestants and Pagnin here abandon the Hebrew. But Montanus corrects the latter, and substitutes "upon my word "which is more honest, as he deemed the Hebrew text unerring, though here it be not so unquestionably, as the Almighty would thus address Melchisedech, unless that title be here given to Christ. St. Jerome takes no notice of my, no more than the apostle (Haydock)
This instance "may perhaps put all serious Christians upon deliberating
whether they should any longer maintain the absolute integrity of the present Hebrew text. "See Psalm xv. 10. (Kennicott, Dis. i. p. 219.)
Melchisedech. Christ is decla...
