d in
the land of Damascus, all of whom God called princes because they
sought him.(6)... The legislator is the interpreter of the law, as
Isaiah said, "Bringing forth a tool for his work" (Isa. 54 16),
and the nobles of the people are those who came to delve the well
with the statutes which the legislator decreed that men should
walk in them in the complete end of wickedness; and besides these
they shall not obtain any (statutes) until the teacher of
righteousness shall arise in the last times.

The migration is referred to in several other places: "The captivity of
Israel, who migrated from the land of Judah" (4 2 f.);(7) "those who held
firm made their escape to the northern land," by which the region of
Damascus is meant (7 13 f.; cf. 7 15, 18 f.). The time of the migration is
plainly indicated in the passage quoted above (5 20 ff.). The men who,
after the end of the devastation of the land, "removed the boundary," and
led Israel astray, speaking rebelliously against the commandments of God
by Moses and against his holy Anointed, prophesying falsely to turn Israel
away from following God, in consequence of which the land was laid waste,
are most naturally taken for the hellenizing leaders of the Seleucid time.
In this period, it seems that a number of Jews, including priests and
levites, withdrew to the region of Damascus,(8) and there they
subsequently bound themselves by covenant to live strictly in accordance
with the law as defined by their legislator.

With this the other allusions agree. Thus in A, p. 8 (= B, p. 19), at the
end of a violent invective against the sinners, of whom it is said, "The
princes of Judah are like those who remove the boundary," we read that
"they separated not from the people [and their sins, B], but
presumptuously broke through all restraints, walking in the way of the
wicked (heathen), of whom God said, 'The venom of dragons is their wine,
and the head of asps is cruel'(9) (Deut. 32 33). The dragons are the kings
of the nations, and their wine means their ways, and the head of asps is
the head of the Greek kings who came to inflict vengeance upon them." This
again is most naturally understood of Antiochus Epiphanes; the calamities
he brought on the Jews were a direct consequence of the course of the
hellenizing party.(10)

A definite date for these occurrences is given in 1 5 ff.: "When God's
wrath was over, three hundred and ninety years after he g