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 things, II.). O foolish ones, compare yourselves to a tree; take the vine; first it sheddeth the leaf, then a shoot cometh (then a leaf, then a flower: II. omits), and after that a sour berry, then a cluster fully ripe. (Here I. ends; II. continues): So also my people hath had unquietnesses and afflictions: afterward it shall receive good things."

The resemblance to 2 Peter iii. 4, etc. (where is the promise of his coming?) is pointed out by Lightfoot.

The difficulty I find in acquiescing in Lightfoot's conjecture is that I do not quite see whom Eldad and Medad would be addressing. In the story as we have it in Numbers xi., their prophecy is uttered not very long after the giving of the Law, and just before the gift of the quails. The people have not been long in the wilderness—not long enough, it seems to me, to make it appropriate that they should say "we have grown old in looking for the fulfilment of the promises." Such language would be more fitting in the mouth of Israel when in exile and hoping for the Return. And so I think that those are perhaps more likely to be right who suggest that the apocryphal Ezekiel is the source of this passage.



The Book of Og the Giant, who is said by the heretics to have fought with a dragon after the Flood. This is the most sensational entry in the Gelasian Decree. How we should like to have the book in which such stirring incidents were related!

What can we elicit from records, or reasonably conjecture, about it? It was circulated by heretics. What heretics? I guess the Manichæans, for in a list of Manichæan books given by Timotheus, Presbyter of Constantinople (Fabricius, Cod. Apocr. N.T., i. 139) is one called "The matter (or treatise) of the Giants", which may fairly be identified with the Book of Og. Other Manichæan writings—the Foundation and the Treasure of Life—