What is the context?
The writer returns to Melchizedek, introduced in Genesis 14:18–20. He is both king of Salem and priest of God Most High. He blesses Abraham, who gives him a tenth of the plunder.
Hebrews draws significance from his name and kingdom: righteousness and peace. It also draws attention to the way he appears in Scripture without a recorded family line, birth or death. Those features form a comparison with the Son’s enduring priesthood.
The word translated like describes being made similar. The passage directs us to the Son through the comparison. It does not supply an unrecorded biography or a list of earlier priests from whom Melchizedek inherited his office.
How is this passage commonly understood?
Calvin, Wesley and the USCCB notes understand the missing family and life records as part of the scriptural portrayal which points to Christ. They do not take their absence as proof that the historical king had no human parents. Wesley expressly distinguishes the unrecorded death of Melchizedek from Christ’s actual enduring life.
Where does this fit in God's plan?
Psalm 110:1–4 brings royal authority and enduring priesthood together. Hebrews itself applies that priestly promise to Jesus. Melchizedek’s earlier appearance therefore belongs to a connection Scripture makes, rather than an identity that must be supplied from speculation.
Colossians 1:19–20 describes peace made through Christ’s cross. The king-priest picture finds its fullest significance in the One whose righteous rule and saving work bring people into peace with God.
What is our position?
Our study Who Shepherds the Church? reads the absence of Melchizedek’s recorded genealogy and succession as part of Scripture’s picture of Christ’s lasting priesthood. The study emphasizes a priesthood that does not depend on a human family line passing a mediating office from generation to generation.