We rejoiced at Lot’s rescue, but I was not surprised when after very few weeks he told me he was leaving again. It seemed a decision he was not happy about, there were lines around his eyes and his shoulders slumped as he told me. I smiled and clapped him on the back and told him to eat oven roasted meat for me. Off he went to, I later learned, the city of Sodom, then a prosperous metropolis.

It was no more than ten days after Lot left us again that a messenger arrived in our little encampment with a message, he said, for me.

This was in every way a surprise. That anyone knew that I was here—that anyone had any reason to wish to find me, Abram, who had been absent from anything most men consider civilization for more than a decade, that was the initial shock. But the messenger—such a horse I had rarely seen even in Ur, caparisoned with jewels all over its harness. Carnelian and turquoise, even glass. I could not even imagine that any man obviously so important, so wealthy, could have anything to say to me himself, and that he claimed to be sent on an errand by a master was so unbelievable that for a moment I wondered whether there might be another Abram in the camp, though I knew , of course, that there was not.

The messenger smiled at me, and not in a cruel way. He asked me would I hear the message—I realized I had been staring at him for several moments, without saying anything. I shook myself out of my daze and tended to his horses, brought him inside, and gave him water and milk.

He told me he came from King Melchizedek of Salem, which city I had heard of even in Ur. It was prosperous one in the south of Canaan. Melchizedek, he said, wished to meet with me. The king had said that he and I had much to discuss.

Perhaps this messenger took my unthinking disbelief that such a thing could possibly be true as hesitation, or worse, refusal. He leaned in very close then, almost whispering, and said the king wishes me to say that He who sent you to the wilderness sends you now to the king. He looked me steadily in the eyes, and asked me, slowly, intently, will you go.

I told him that the king’s wish was in every respect my command. He smiled, and with no more words, and not even a meal, went upon his way.