Kebra Nagast

Concerning the murmuring of Israel the Tent of Witness by the Tabernacle of the La\v of God, the holy Zion, with censers and incense and the holy instruments ? Why should Moses, and his brother Aaron, and their children alone do this ? Are we not people whom God hath chosen as much as they are, And when Moses and shall we not do His Will ? " Do ye whatsoever ye heard [this] he said unto them, will." And the elders of Israel went and had made seventy censers wherewith to cense Zion and to praise God, and they took incense and coals in the censers, and went and came into the Holy of Holies to offer up incense. And immediately they threw the incense into the censers, at the first swing of them fire came forth from the censers, and they were burned up straightway and melted away. And as wax melteth before the face of the fire, even so did they melt away and as grass withereth when flame approacheth it, even so were they ' ; consumed, together with their instruments, and there was nothing left of them except their censers. And " God said, Sanctify to Me these censers for My Tent (or, Pavilion), and they shall be used for My offerings, for they are consecrated by the death of those men." l Now the censer is Mary, and Christ, the Son of God, the Godhead, is the coals, and the odour of the incense is the perfume of Christ, and through the perfume of Him Apostles, and Prophets, and Martyrs, and Monks, have rejected the world and inherited the kingdom of heaven. And the chains of the censers are the ladder which Jacob saw, to which [the angels] clung as they went up and came down and upon the perfume of ; the incense the prayers of the pure eo up to the throne of God. And when the flame had burned up the sinners, the people who were kinsmen of these who had been destroyed reviled Moses and Aaron, and said unto " Ye have made our elders to perish " and they them, ; 1 See Numbers xvi. 175