"To cut him off from desolating me wholly!" Marsyas declared.
Eleazar looked away over the hollows and gentler hills covered with houses, toward the summit of Olivet, golden in the sun.
"Then I shall not dissuade thee, Marsyas; but I can not go with thee," he said.
"Why?" Marsyas demanded, with a flush of feeling.
"I have suffered from oppression in the name of the Lord; it is the Lord's will. I have changed in the days of my misfortunes."
Marsyas came close to him.
"Art thou a Nazarene, Eleazar?" he asked in a low tone.
"Nay, I am a good Jew, a better Jew, for I have become a Jew, again, through understanding."
But Marsyas was not willing to wait for the rabbi's philosophy; he moved restlessly as he stood, and finally put forth his hand to say farewell, but Eleazar held it.
"Wait, but a moment," he said, "and let me speak. Thou sayest thou wouldst secure thyself from devastation at the Pharisee's hands; since nothing can stop Saul, and nothing stop thee, there is death at the end of thy doing. I do not know what moves thee now; perchance it is more than the vow sworn to avenge Stephen. But thou goest to help thyself; and—to assist in convincing the heathen that Israel is an oppressor in the name of God!"