Corpus of Latin Ecclesiastical Writers, Vol. LV: The Letters of Augustine, Part II

and through various paths arrived at a single conclusion, namely that Melchisedech was a Canaanite man, the king of the city of Jerusalem—which was first called Salem, later Jebus, and finally Jerusalem—and that it is no wonder if he is described as a priest of the most high God without circumcision, without legal ceremonies, and without the lineage of Aaron, since Abel, Enoch, and Noah also pleased God and offered victims, and we have read in the volume of Job that he himself was both an offerer of gifts and a priest, and that he sacrificed offerings daily for his children. And they say that Job himself was not of the lineage of Levi, but of the stock of Esau, although the Hebrews maintain otherwise.

3. Yet, just as Noah, when he was intoxicated in his house and stripped and mocked by his eldest son, provided a type of the Savior and of the people of the Jews, and Samson, the lover of the harlot and the poor woman Delilah, killed many more of the enemy in his death than in his life so that he might express the passion of Christ—and indeed almost all the saints, patriarchs, and prophets expressed a figure of the Savior in some way—so too did Melchisedech. Because he was a Canaanite and not of the lineage of the Jews, he served as a type of the priesthood of the Son of God, concerning whom it is said in the one hundred and ninth psalm: You are a priest forever according to the order