7:12
The Levitical priesthood and the Law were inextricably tied together. You cannot have one without the other. So if the priesthood goes, so the Law must go as well. Or, as Jesus said, you cannot put new wine into old wineskins.
7:13,14
The attention now turns to Jesus. He is our great high priest. He is also most definitely not descended from the tribe of Levi. So He is not part of the Levitical priesthood. The role of Melchizedek, and the sparsity of references to him, fits perfectly with his role as pointing towards the true high priest.
Jesus descended from the tribe of Judah. The genealogies in Matthew and Luke make this clear. Note the implicit proof that the people knew of the genealogies. Moreover, Jesus is sometimes referred to as the son of David (Rom 1:3). This is part of the internal evidence for the reliability of the New Testament.
However, in the current context the key point is that Jesus was descended, humanly, from the tribe of Judah, and this tribe was not at all connected with the Levitical priesthood.
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