became God's high-priest, for it was Shem who was the real Melchisedek, the righteous king of Salem, who is spoken of by Moses, Gen. xiv; by David, Psalms cx, 4, and by St. Paul, Hebrews vii, 1. This man, the son of Noah, Shem by name, and Melchisedek by appellation, was, of all men who have lived since the flood, the best qualified to instruct the people of those first ages, during the five hundred years of his life after the flood. As he was born more than a hundred years before the flood, he must have acquired a vast amount of antediluvian knowledge, as well as unbounded influence among the then young tribes and nations, of that part of the world, after the flood. He could tell them all about the institutions, arts, agriculture, commerce, science, and the extent of the antediluvian population; with every particular respecting the location of the garden of paradise, the tree of life, the tree of knowledge, the creature called the serpent; the size and stature of Adam, and of men in general; the forerunners, or supernatural signs, of the flood; the opinions of the people about it, and respecting his father's building the ark; where the ark was built, and what course it was borne on the waters; the circumstance of Enoch's translation; what the promise of the seed of the woman meant; his opinion of the Messiah, as well as of the power which caused the serpent to speak, and use articulate sounds, or language; and whether Adam, as Jewish tradition relates, prophesied of the ruin of the world by water first, and then by fire at last; with thousands of other amazingly interesting matters.
Shem, or Melchisedek, over-lived his father Noah
