Chapter III.—Examples of youthful devotedness. Moreover, the wise Daniel, while he was a young man, passed judgment on certain vigorous old men,884 showing them that they were abandoned wretches, and not [worthy to be reckoned] elders, and that, though Jews by extraction, they were Canaanites in practice. And Jeremiah, when on account of his youth he declined the office of a prophet entrusted to him by God, was addressed in these words: “Say not, I am a youth; for thou shalt go to all those to whom I send thee, and thou shalt speak according to all that I command thee; because I am with thee.”885 And the wise Solomon, when only in the twelfth year of his age,886 had wisdom to decide the important question concerning the children of the two women,887 when it was unknown to whom these respectively belonged; so that the whole people were astonished at such wisdom in a child, and venerated him as being not a mere youth, but a full-grown man. And he solved the hard questions of the queen of the Ethiopians, which had profit in them as the streams of the Nile [have fertility], in such a 121 manner that that woman, though herself so wise, was beyond measure astonished.888 884 The ancient Latin version translates ὠμογέροντας “cruel old men,” which perhaps suits the reference better. 885 Jer. i. 7. 886 Comp. for similar statements to those here made, Epistle to the Magnesians (longer), chap. iii. 887 Literally, “understood the great question of the ignorance of the women respecting their children.” 888 Literally, “out of herself.” Chapter III.—Examples of youthful devotedness. 336 Chapter III.—Examples of youthful devotedness.