³⁹ And your little ones, who, you said, would come into strange hands, your children, who now have no knowledge of good or evil, they will go into that land, and to them I will give it and it will be theirs.

¹⁵ Butter and honey will be his food, when he is old enough to make a decision between evil and good.

¹⁶ For before the child is old enough to make a decision between evil and good, the land whose two kings you are now fearing will have become waste.

³ Why is the Lord taking us into this land to come to our death by the sword? Our wives and our little ones will get into strange hands: would it not be better for us to go back to Egypt?

³¹ And your little ones, whom you said would come into strange hands, I will take in, and they will see the land which you would not have.

¹¹ And am I not to have mercy on Nineveh, that great town, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons without the power of judging between right and left, as well as much cattle?

¹¹ Before the children had come into existence, or had done anything good or bad, in order that God's purpose and his selection might be effected, not by works, but by him whose purpose it is,

³ Among whom we all at one time were living in the pleasures of our flesh, giving way to the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and the punishment of God was waiting for us even as for the rest.