the story shows that they did not call in the aid of the heathen secular power, until the last bloody act required a consummation which the ordinances of Rome forbade to the Jews, and then only did they summon the aid of the governor’s military force. Indeed, they were too careful in preserving their few peculiar secular privileges still left, to give up the smallest power of tyrannizing, permitted by their Roman lords. _The long nights in contrast with the heat of the day._――It should be remembered, that according to a just calculation, these events happened in the month of March, when the air of Palestine is uncomfortably cold. Conder, in his valuable topographical compilation, says, “during the months of May, June, July and August, the sky is for the most part cloudless; but during the night, the earth is moistened with a copious dew. Sultry days are not unfrequently succeeded by intensely cold nights. To these sudden vicissitudes, references are made in the Old Testament. Genesis xxxi. 40: Psalm cxxi. 6.” [Modern Traveler, Palestine, p. 14.] The cold season, (קור _Qor_,) immediately following the true winter, (חרפ _Hhoreph_,) took in the latter part of the Hebrew month Shebeth, the whole of Adar, and the former half of Nisan; that is in modern divisions of time,――from the beginning of February to the beginning of April, according to the _Calendarium Palestinae_, in the Critica Biblica, Vol. III: but according to Jahn, (Archaeologia Biblica § 21,) from the _middle_ of February to the _middle_ of April, the two estimates varying with the different views about the dates of the ancient Hebrew months.