[19]
The repetition of the same invocation at the commencement of the Prayer
and the Song is noteworthy; if the two are not contemporary, it has
probably been borrowed by the composer of the Prayer. But the difficulty
(often magnified) of reconciling the statements of v. 15 (38) with the
Jews' civil and ecclesiastical condition at the time of Daniel iii.
wears quite a different aspect if the Prayer is regarded as an
interpolation of later date by another hand. Altogether this theory of
the interpolation of the Prayer is surrounded with a considerable air of
probability.
Five extra verses are interspersed in the Syriac of the Song, calling
upon the hosts of the Lord, ye that fear the Lord, cold and heat (the
winter and summer of our _Benedicite_), the herbs of the field, and the
creeping things of the earth (Churton's translation). Of these "frigus
and aestus" is in the Vulgate, taken from ??. The source of the others is
unapparent, though creeping things would very naturally follow beasts
and cattle, as in Gen. vii.
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