The narrative of the Hebrew version is then continued: how the king enquired as to Esther's petition and request. whom thou hast begun to This is evidently a touch of Page 78. If Mordecai, before fall, be of the seed of the Jews, etc. fatalism. The family council cannot help being struck with the circumstance that the man through whom Haman has just been humiliated is one of those he had plotted to destroy by massacre; here is the finger of Nemesis. Haman's superstition in casting lots for a lucky day for the massacre has been already pointed out. . Page 81. A copy of the writing was published. The Septuagint again offers the letter at full length. One of its sentences may be quoted: For by these means he thought, finding us destitute of friends, to have translated the kingdom of the Persians to the Macedonians. But we find that the Jews, whom this most ungracious wretch hath delivered to utter destruction, are no evil-doers, but live by most just laws: and that they be children of the most high and most mighty living God, who hath ordered the kingdom both unto us and to our progenitors in the most excellent manner. It may be remarked that such interpolated speeches must not be considered in the light of forgeries; they simply illustrate the convention of ancient history by which the historian would bring out the situation of affairs in the form of an imaginary speech put into the mouth of a personage of the history. TITLE PAGE The first verses of the book seem to make an elaborate title page; for which compare the elaborate titles of Proverbs and Deuteronomy. The Book of Tobit resembles Ecclesiasticus in the fact that the Hebrew original has not survived, and the translation of our English versions is made from the Septuagint. The Hebrew versions that exist are late, and of no critical weight. Page 89. And when I was in mine own country, etc. The long sentence commencing with these words I have made by altering the punctuation of the R. V. By removing the full stops which in that version are made to separate coordinate sentences, it is possible to save the historic probability of the text. As it stands in the R. V., Tobit is made to assert that the falling away of Naphtali from the worship of Jerusalem took place when he was a young man: this would make him more than two centuries old when carried into captivity. What is obviously meant is that when he was a young man he alone went to Jerusalem to the feasts; the explanation about the falling away of the tribe being introduced to explain why this was significant. The sentence as thus punctuated is regular, if somewhat long; the temporal sentence, When I was young, has for its principal sentence, all the tribe of Naphtali . fell away, and all the tribes which fell away together sacrificed to the heifer Baal, and I alone went often, etc. There is nothing in this punctuation to conflict with the Greek text. Page 92. Where are thine alms and thy righteous deeds? The insinuation is, his calamity has revealed that all his piety was hypocritical. Page 96. Pour out thy bread on the burial of the just. Two explanations are offered of this expression. One is that it refers to the custom of carrying food to a house of mourning, in behalf of the mourners who would be unable, as unclean, to visit their homes. The other assumes the custom of putting food on the tomb, though for the poor and not for the dead. The custom, whatever it was, is noted also in Jeremiah (chapter xvi. 7) : Neither shall men break bread for them in mourning, to comfort them for the dead. Page 99. A fish leaped out of the river, and would have swallowed up the young man. The Chaldaic version puts the matter differently—that the fish threatened to eat Tobias's bread. Page 100. Raguel may in no wise marry her to another according to the law of Moses, or else he shall be liable to death. No law of Moses is known as bearing on the case, except that of Numbers, chapter xxxvi. 6-9, which simply prescribes the marriage of a daughter heiress within her tribe; nor is there any death penalty attached. Page 103. But when the devil smelled the smell, he fled into |