Holding as I do the paramount authority of the LXX., I have not scrupled to follow them against the Masoretic interpretation when the sense of a passage seemed to require it, and I deem it a sufficient answer to any objections on this head, that the rendering proposed is supported by the LXX. On the whole, however, these differences are, as remarked above, not very great, and we have rather occasion for surprise, not that there is here and there a divergence, but that on the whole there is so substantial agreement. The pointing which we have in our Hebrew Bibles embodies a most valuable and venerable tradition, but in its present form younger by centuries than that furnished by the rendering of the LXX. While, therefore, we admit its great value, we ought not to make its authority absolute, and this is done to all intents and purposes by those who reject without question the ancient interpretation because it conflicts with the present pointing. No language is too high to characterize our obligations to those Jewish fathers who have guarded so faithfully that special trust committed to them――the oracles of God. But the Synagogue is no more infallible in matters of criticism than is the Church. Neither the Masorets nor the LXX. are inspired, though inspiration has been by their respective partisans vehemently claimed for both. Each party, also, has unduly depreciated the other, and the Hebrew scholars have been for centuries divided into punctists and anti-punctists. But as there is no royal road to learning, so there is no short-cut to certainty; the whole evidence, let it come from whence it may, must be diligently weighed and compared. So far as the version of the LXX. is concerned, this is not done until their errors, or supposed errors, have been at least duly explained and accounted for, even when their renderings are rejected. OTHER VERSIONS OF ANTIQUITY.