Chapter III.—Examples of youthful...

Chapter III.—Examples of youthful devotedness.

Moreover, the wise Daniel, while he was a young man, passed judgment on certain vigorous old man, ¹³⁶⁵ showing them that they were abandoned wretches, and not [worthy to be reckoned] elders, and that, though Jews by extraction, they were Canaanites in practice. And Jeremiah, when on account of his youth he declined the office of a prophet entrusted to him by God, was addressed in these words: “Say not, I am a youth; for thou shalt go to all those to whom I send thee, and thou shalt speak according to all that I command thee; because I am with thee.” ¹³⁶⁶ And the wise Solomon, when only in the twelfth year of his age, ¹³⁶⁷ had wisdom to decide the important question concerning the children of the two women, ¹³⁶⁸ when it was unknown to whom these respectively belonged; so that the whole people were astonished at such wisdom in a child, and venerated him as being not a mere youth, but a full-grown man. And he solved the hard questions of the queen of the Ethiopians, which had profit in them as the streams of the Nile [have fertility], in such a manner that that woman, p. 121 though herself so wise, was beyond measure astonished. ¹³⁶⁹

Footnotes

120:1365

The ancient Latin version translates ὠμογέροντας “cruel old men,” which perhaps suits the reference better.

120:1366

Jer. i. 7.

120:1367

Comp. for similar statements to those here made, Epistle to the Magnesians (longer), chap. iii.

120:1368

Literally, “understood the great question of the ignorance of the women respecting their children.”

121:1369

Literally, “out of herself.”