and retribution for good and evil deeds." This occurs in a collection of rather incoherent paragraphs, roughly in chronological order, which deal with Old Testament history, and are followed by a more connected narrative going over the same ground. The quotation coincides with a passage in the Ascension of Isaiah (iv. 12 ff.), "and he shall bear sway three years and seven months and twenty-seven days," etc. The number of days (1334) disagrees with Cedrenus. In Asc. i. 2, 4 we have an apparent reference to visions of Hezekiah, who summons Manasseh "in order to deliver unto him the words of righteousness which the King himself had seen (in his sickness, i. 4, 13), and of the eternal judgments and the torments of Gehenna," etc. Dr. Charles and others have not unnaturally thought of the Testament of Hezekiah as a writing, part of which at least has been incorporated into the Ascension. This part is supposed by Dr. Charles to comprise Asc. iii. 13b. to iv. 18—a prediction of Christ and Antichrist. The data in Asc. i. imply that Hezekiah had certain revelations about these matters in his sickness in the fifteenth year of his reign. And the "testamentary" part of the book would be, according to analogy, his telling these revelations, at the end of his life, to his son Manasseh. Manasseh remains unaffected by them, and Isaiah tells Hezekiah that Manasseh will do evil and will put him, Isaiah, to death, and that God will not allow Hezekiah to slay Manasseh in order to prevent this crime. That is the substance of Asc. i.
The writer of the Opus Imperfectum on Matthew, in his first homily, when treating of the genealogy of Christ, and particularly of the name of Manasseh, quotes something which does not exactly correspond with our texts of the Ascension, but comes very near them.
"When Ezechias had fallen sick at one time and Esaias the prophet had come to visit him, Ezechias called his son Manasses, and began to command him that he ought to fear God, and how to rule his kingdom,
