Dice are also mentioned in the New Testament, where occurs the word cubeia (Eph. iv. 14), ('the only word for "gambling" used in the Bible'), a word in very common use, among Paul's kith and kin, for 'cube,' 'dice,' 'dicery,' and it occurs frequently in the Talmud and Midrash. The Mishna declares unfit either as 'judge or witness,' 'a cubea-player, a usurer, a pigeon-flier (betting-man), a vendor of illegal (seventh-year) produce, and a slave.' A mitigating clause--proposed by one of the weightiest legal authorities, to the effect that the gambler and his kin should only be disqualified 'if they have but that one profession'--is distinctly negatived by the majority, and the rule remains absolute. The classical word for the gambler or dice-player, cubeutes, appears aramaized in the same sources into something like kubiustis, as the following curious instances may show: When the Angel, after having wrestled with Jacob all night, asks him to let him go, 'for the dawn has risen' (A. V., 'the day breaketh'), Jacob is made to reply to him, 'Art thou, then, a thief or a kubiustis, that thou art afraid of the day?' To which the Angel replies, 'No, I am not; but it is my turn to-day, and for the first time, to sing the Angelic Hymn of Praise in Heaven: let me go.' In another Tadmudical passage an early biblical critic is discussing certain arithmetical difficulties in the Pentateuch. Thus he finds the number of Levites (in Numbers) to differ, when summed up from the single items, from that given in the total. Worse than that, he finds that all the gold and silver contributed to the sanctuary is not accounted for, and, clinching his argument, he cries, 'Is, then, your master Moses a thief or a kubiustis? Or could he not make up his accounts properly?' The critic is then informed of a certain difference between 'sacred' and other coins; and he further gets a lesson in the matter of Levites and Firstborn, which silences him. Again, the Talmud decides that, if a man have bought a slave who turns out to be a thief or a kubiustis,--which has here been erroneously explained to mean a 'manstealer,'--he has no redress. He must keep him, as he bought him, or send him away; for he has bought him with all his vices. Regarding the translation 'sleight' in the A.V., this seems a correct enough rendering of the term as far as the SENSE of the passage goes, and comes very near the many ancient translations--'nequitia,' 'versutia,' 'inanis labor,' 'vana et inepta (?) subtilitas,' &c., of the Fathers. Luther has 'Schalkheit,'--a word the meaning of which at his time differed considerably from our acceptation of the term. The Thesaurus takes Paul's cubeia (s.v.) more literally, to mean 'in alea hominum, i. e., in certis illis casibus quibus jactantur homines.'(59) (59) E. Deutseh in the Athenaeum of Sept. 28, 1867.