than it had been before; and, as I judge, he desired to make one more proof of the Pharisees, whether they also would not have faith in him. And straightway he crossed over and came again to Capernaum.
As we rowed across the lake back to Capernaum we rejoiced greatly; for we thought that the time was at hand when the Galileans (for of the intent of the Pharisees we knew naught) would ask Jesus to work a sign in heaven, and Jesus would now grant their request. But when Jesus had done this, we trusted that the whole nation should have believed in him, and that the time should have come that he should redeem Israel. Howbeit certain of the disciples (and more especially Judas of Kerioth) took it ill that Jesus should have listened to the prayer of an heathen woman which was an idolater. For although Esaias saith that the Gentiles are to come to the rising of the Lord, and that the Gentiles shall seek to the Deliverer of Israel, yet had it been always fixed and rooted in our hearts that the deliverance of the Gentiles (if it should come to pass at all) must come by the uprising of the children of Israel, who should be princes and kings, conquering and triumphing over the nations of the earth. And then the Gentiles were to seek to Israel and to become proselytes, entering into the true fold. And this belief Jesus had confirmed in our hearts in that he had bidden us to go not to the Samaritans nor to the Gentiles, but only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Which saying Jesus himself now seemed to contradict, having thus healed the Syrophœnician maiden. But whether it had been revealed to our Master, through the words of the Syrophœnician, that the deliverance of the Gentiles should come more speedily than had been supposed, and not by fetching a compass, as it were, round all the borders of Israel, but by a more direct course, concerning this I know nothing: but Quartus judgeth that it was so.
