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 Upon the occasion of such a concourse of Jews, the Chaldeans feared a rising and plotted to come and slaughter them. The prophet made the waters of the river stand, that the Israelites might cross it and escape. Their pursuers were drowned.

By his prayer, in a time of famine, he procured them a sudden and miraculous supply of fish, and raised many to life who had died. When their enemies attacked them, he obstructed them by portents and they ceased from troubling.

In Babylon he judged the tribes of Dan and Gad, who were impious and persecuted the followers of the Law, and wrought this miracle, that serpents devoured their children and their cattle. And he predicted that on their account the people should not return to Jerusalem, but should be in Media until the end of their transgression. And of those tribes was the man who slew him: for they withstood him until the day of his death.

What I have omitted in this abstract is a description of Ezekiel's tomb, and some traits evidently taken from the canonical book. Most of what I have given does not appear anywhere else: it may be based on current tradition. The one point that does occur elsewhere is Ezekiel's violent death. In the Syriac Acts of Philip, the Apocalypse of Paul and the Imperfect Work on Matthew (a remarkable Arian commentary of the fifth century, rather rich in apocryphal quotations), it is said that he was dragged by his feet upon the mountains until his brains were dashed out. Origen also, in a passage to be quoted later (under Zechariah), speaks of Ezekiel's martyrdom as being related in apocryphal writings. In almost the only picture I know of his death (fifteenth-century glass in St. Martin's, Coney Street, York) he is hung by his armpits on a gibbet and two men are tormenting him. This has no old authority behind it that I can discover.

The analogy of the Ascension of Isaiah and the Paralipomena of Jeremiah suggests the possibility that in the apocryphal Ezekiel the climax of the story was that