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 gave them into the power of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, he visited them, and caused to spring up from Israel and Aaron a root of his planting to inherit his land and to thrive on the good things of his earth. And they recognized their wickedness and knew that they were guilty men, and they were like blind men and like men groping their way for twenty years. And God took note of their deeds, that with perfect heart they sought him, and he raised up for them a teacher of righteousness to guide them in the way of his heart.”