The Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls: The ... - josephprestonkirk

PAUL GARNET 369
11QMelch (11Q13) 2.4–8 says: The law of the Jubilee release is to be
fulfilled when Melchizedek comes and brings back the exiles, freeing
them from the debt of their iniquities. This will happen in the first year
of the Jubilee that follows the nine Jubilees (alluding to Dan 9:24, where
there is a promise of a period of 490 years to atone for Israel’s iniquity).
The Day of Atonement is the end of the tenth Jubilee “in [or ‘by’] [which]
atonement will be made for [(al] all the sons of [light] and the men of the lot
of Melchizedek.” The preposition used points to cultic atonement of the
people as on the Day of Atonement (Lev 16:33), but the emphasis on a
predetermined period of time as in Dan 9:24 makes me suspect that this
cultic atonement language in 11Q13 is also a metaphor for atonement by
the passage of time. In the context, Melchizedek is to bring the captives
back to their inheritance, proclaim liberty to them to free them from their
iniquities “in the first week of the Jubilee after the nine Jubilees.” Then at
the end of the tenth Jubilee, atonement will be made, in the “year of favor
for Melchizedek,” when he will fulfill Ps 82:1 (amid the gods, God
judges), giving righteous judgment among the holy ones against Belial
and his spirits and effecting punishment. Thus will begin the time of
peace spoken of in Isa 52:7 (“the messenger who announces peace”).
This messenger is the anointed of the spirit prophesied in Dan 9:25 (an
anointed one/Messiah, a prince). 15 It seems tempting to equate this messenger
with the Melchizedek who is to “proclaim liberty to the captives.”
If so, Melchizedek here is a messianic figure who is called “God” in fulfilling
Ps 82:1, who makes atonement in some way for the faithful and
defeats Belial. Many, however, reject this equation. 16 The term applied to
Melchizedek is “Elohim,” not “El,” the usual term for the Supreme Being
in the DSS. Furthermore, the identification of this Melchizedek with the
messiah/anointed of Dan 9:25 does violence to the chronology of
Daniel’s prophecy, where the Messiah appears before the completion of
the 490-year period. In the surviving material no connection is made
with the Melchizedek of Gen 14:18 or of Ps 110:4, for that matter. One
may speculate that Qumran judged Melchizedek to be superhuman, on
the ground that no ancestry or progeny is mentioned in the Genesis text,
just as Hebrews sees him as a type of the Son of God by a similar reasoning;
yet the only certain connection with the OT Melchizedek is the
meaning of the name: “king of righteousness.”
Though both 11QMelch (11Q13) and the Epistle to the Hebrews
(6:19–20; 10:20; cf. Lev 16:12, inside the veil/curtain) refer to the Day of
15. 11QMelch (11Q13) 2.4–20.
16. See Fred L. Horton, Jr., The Melchizedek Tradition (SNTSMS 30; Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1976), 78.