One land shall also ask another and say: Is righteousness—that doeth the right—passed through thee? And it shall answer: No. And it shall be that in that time men shall hope and not obtain, shall labour and not prosper” (v. 1-12). Regarding the Messianic Kingdom itself it is to be of limited duration, and, according to the “Eagle Vision” Gentiles as well as Jews are to enjoy it: “And so the whole earth, freed from thy violence, shall be refreshed again, and hope for the judgement and mercy of Him that made her” (xi. 46).[334] In the “Vision of the Man from the Sea” the Gentiles are wholly destroyed by the Messiah, and his kingdom is only for his own people (xiii. 8-13). In the Book of Wisdom there is no doctrine of the Messiah, nor is there, in the Jewish Palestinian sense, a belief in a Messianic Kingdom; what we do find, however, is that Jewish traditional eschatological conceptions are utilized by the author, and that a glorious future is believed to be reserved for the Jews; there are two passages in which this future is portrayed, viz. iii. 8:[335] They [i.e. the righteous] shall judge nations, and have dominion over peoples; And the Lord shall reign over them for evermore. The thought that is apparently in the writer’s mind here is that of such passages as Isaiah ii. 4_a_: “And He shall judge among the nations, and shall decide concerning many peoples,” and Isaiah xlix. 23: “And kings shall be thy nursing-fathers and queens thy nursing-mothers; they shall bow down to thee with their faces to the earth ...”; these, it is true, refer to an earthly theocracy, whereas the author of Wisdom is speaking of the hereafter, but the _adaptation_ of Scriptural passages is a very natural procedure; he does not define closely the nature of the eternal kingdom which will be set up hereafter, any more than the prophet does in regard to his ideal earthly kingdom. The other passage is v. 15-23: But the righteous live for ever, And the Lord is their reward, And the care for them with the Most High. Therefore shall they receive a glorious kingdom, And a diadem of beauty from the Lord’s hand; Because with His right hand will He cover them, And with His arm will He shield them. So far this passage, like the other one, is based upon Old Testament Messianic passages such as Isaiah xl. 10, iv. 5, 6, xxviii. 5, 6, lix. 16, 17, and others[336]; but in verses 17-23^{_ab_}, where the Most High goes out Himself as a warrior, a different element enters in. It is true, that here, too, the Old Testament conception of Jehovah as a mighty man of war lies at the back of the passage, but there are also other eschatological, or rather apocalyptic, traits which appear. These elements have been utilized by the author of Wisdom, who has sought to spiritualize them: