[364] Comp. Gen. xxiv. 7; Exod. xxiii. 20; Deut. xxxvi. 1. The phrase applied to Joshua the high priest (Zech. iii. 2), "Is not this a brand plucked out of the burning?" originated the legend that, when the false prophets Ahab and Zedekiah had been burnt by Nebuchadrezzar (Jer. xxix. 22), Joshua had been saved, though singed. This and other apocryphal stories illustrate the evolution of _Haggadoth_ out of metaphoric allusions. [365] πνεῦμα νότιον διασύριζον, "a dewy wind, whistling continually." [366] Song of the Three Children, 23-27. [367] _Vay. Rab._, xxv. 1 (Wünsche, _Bibliotheca Rabbinica_). [368] Ecclus. xviii. 16: "Shall not the dew assuage the heat?" [369] _Speaker's Commentary_, on the Apocrypha, ii. 305-307. [370] Jos., _Antt._, XII. iii. 3; Jahn, _Hebr. Commonwealth_, § xc. CHAPTER IV _THE BABYLONIAN CEDAR, AND THE STRICKEN DESPOT_ "Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall."--PROV. xvi. 18. Thrice already, in these magnificent stories, had Nebuchadrezzar been taught to recognise the existence and to reverence the power of God. In this chapter he is represented as having been brought to a still more overwhelming conviction, and to an open acknowledgment of God's supremacy, by the lightning-stroke of terrible calamity. The chapter is dramatically thrown into the form of a decree which, after his recovery and shortly before his death, the king is represented as having promulgated to "all people, nations, and languages that dwell in all the earth."[371] But the literary form is so absolutely subordinated to the general purpose--which is to show that where God's "judgments are in the earth the inhabitants of the earth will learn righteousness,"[372]--that the writer passes without any difficulty from the first to the third person (iv. 20-30). He does not hesitate to represent Nebuchadrezzar as addressing all the subject nations in favour of the God of Israel, even placing in his imperial decree a cento of Scriptural phraseology. Readers unbiassed by _a-priori_ assumptions, which are broken to pieces at every step, will ask, "Is it even historically conceivable that Nebuchadrezzar (to whom the later Jews commonly gave the title of _Ha-Rashang_, 'the wicked') could ever have issued such a decree?"[373] They will further ask, "Is there any shadow of evidence to show that the king's degrading madness and recovery rest upon any real tradition?"