are impoverished; but rather you hate in them the name of Christ.
Certainly He who is despised in them will fight for them, if
necessary, with overflowing anger. If he has promised them with
prophetic mouth that 'the name of God will be praised from east to
west,'[171] for he is said to be exalted not over the Jews, but over
all nations, and by the mouth of God himself it was said that the
people who had not been his people were now his people, and those who
had not been loved were now loved,[172] and what had been among the
Jews was transferred to all nations by the grace of adoption, and
among the rest of them the face of the God of the Jews was provided,
then who except a madman would dare attack the sons of God? I
predict that if you fight them, you will bring upon yourself great
discomfort and shame. You will undergo certain military defeat,
enrich the Christians with booty taken from you, and you yourself
will run off in ignominious flight. Even if death does not wait for
you in this battle, you may be certain that your life will end within
a year. Their God does not take immediate vengeance when a crime is
done, but defers the punishment until the crime itself has come to
full fruition. For this reason, my son, I fear that you may be
increasing the horror of your death by delaying it." Stunned by his
mother's miraculous eloquence, pale and weakened by the announcement
of his impending death, Kherboga replied, "And you, I would like to
know how you came by this knowledge, how you have discovered that the
Christian people will use its strength against us, that they are
about to triumph in battle over us, that they will despoil us,
and that I shall die a sudden death within the year." She said, "Son,
we know that nearly one hundred years have gone by since it was
discovered in certain secret books of a pagan sect that the Christian
people would rise up against us in battle and subjugate us entirely,
setting up their kingdom where we now exercise dominion, so that