Changes

Shem couldn’t save humanity, no matter how much he knew, or how well his brain worked: the entire world had changed, and now people were fortunate to remain strong, if still alive, to the age at which a man formerly got married and had his first child. And, if the old world had been abominable, this present one didn’t look to be shaping up any better: Nations were being made, and each, in turn, was failing the law of righteousness from their inception. Shem was worried, as any mere man would be who understood the world from such a depressingly privileged position. Though he had never known Adam, he had been in mind of Adam’s death, and of God’s first great promise, because he had seen first-hand the grace by which God had preserved the elect, and by the sign in the cloud the remembrance of which God never again would so ‘grace’ the world. So, when he learned that Abram was the best suited for being the father of the next world, he took action. Shem had a hunch, at the very least, of what God would do, and that it would be a new thing, never vainly the old thing twice. So, even if, according to some students of scripture, Shem didn’t know of the patterns that were possible in a text, the whole point of ‘Melchizedek’ was to make a statement about [[Shiloh]], and in such a pivotal, information-dense way, that the only thing that could best it for drama was something of which Shem, at that time, had no foreknowledge: a certain incident in the relationship between a certain father and his son.

Shem couldn’t save humanity, no matter how much he knew, or how well his brain worked: the entire world had changed, and now people were fortunate to remain strong, if still alive, to the age at which a man formerly got married and had his first child. And, if the old world had been abominable, this present one didn’t look to be shaping up any better: Nations were being made, and each, in turn, was failing the law of righteousness from their inception. Shem was worried, as any mere man would be who understood the world from such a depressingly privileged position. Though he had never known Adam, he had been in mind of Adam’s death, and of God’s first great promise, because he had seen first-hand the grace by which God had preserved the elect, and by the sign in the cloud the remembrance of which God never again would so ‘grace’ the world. So, when he learned that Abram was the best suited for being the father of the next world, he took action. Shem had a hunch, at the very least, of what God would do, and that it would be a new thing, never vainly the old thing twice. So, even if, according to some students of scripture, Shem didn’t know of the patterns that were possible in a text, the whole point of ‘Melchizedek’ was to make a statement about [[Shiloh]], and in such a pivotal, information-dense way, that the only thing that could best it for drama was something of which Shem, at that time, had no foreknowledge: a certain incident in the relationship between a certain father and his son.

That incident began at the 555th verse.

That incident centers on the 555th verse.

== Introduction to the other keys ==

== Introduction to the other keys ==