Of the righteous remnant (iii, 12-iv, 6)

Howbeit, with the rest of them-that is, with those that held fast to His commandments-God ever made good His everlasting Covenant with Israel, revealing to them the hidden things concerning which Israel in general had gone astray-even His holy sabbaths and His glorious festivals, His righteous ordinances, the ways of His truth and the purposes of His will, ‘the which, if a man do, he shall live’ [Lev. 18.5]. He opened for them a well with water abounding,14 which they might dig. But them that spurned those waters He did not permit to live. And though they kept sullying themselves with human transgression and with filthy ways, and kept saying, “Tis our own concern’, yet did God with His mysterious power shrive their iniquity and forgive their transgression and build for them in Israel a firmly established House the like of which has not existed from ancient times until this day.

They that hold fast unto Him are destined for life eternal, and theirs is all mortal glory, even as God has sworn unto them by the hand of the prophet Ezekiel, saying: vibe priests and the levites and the sons of Zadok that kept the charge of My sanctuary when the children of Israel went astray from Me, these it is that shall offer unto Me the fat and the blood’ [Ezek. 44.15]. By ‘priests’ is meant those in Israel that repented and departed from the land of Judah. [By ‘levites’] is meant those that associated themselves15 with them. By ‘sons of Zadok’ is meant those elect of Israel that have been designated by name and that shall go on functioning in the last days. Behold, their names have been specified, the families into which they are to be born, the epochs in which they are to function, the full tale of their tribulations, the length of their sojourn in exile, and the precise nature of their deeds.