Melchi

Two men named Melchi appear in Luke's genealogy of Jesus, both on the ancestral line traced from Joseph back through David and Nathan to Adam. The name surfaces only in this single chain; outside Luke 3 the figures leave no narrative trace.

The nearer Melchi

The first stands a few generations above Joseph, between Levi and Jannai: "the [son] of Matthat, the [son] of Levi, the [son] of Melchi, the [son] of Jannai, the [son] of Joseph" (Lu 3:24). He occupies a position close enough to the evangelist's own time that the names around him — Matthat, Levi, Joseph — are otherwise unknown apart from this list.

The remote Melchi

A second Melchi sits much earlier in the same genealogy, separated from the first by roughly a dozen generations: "the [son] of Melchi, the [son] of Addi, the [son] of Cosam, the [son] of Elmadam, the [son] of Er" (Lu 3:28). He belongs to the long stretch between Nathan son of David and the post-exilic figures of Zerubbabel's line, where the genealogy preserves names that do not appear elsewhere in scripture.

The two Melchis serve only as links in the chain by which Luke runs the line of descent from Jesus back through Joseph to Adam.