845. When they are asked whether they firmly believe that they will all get to the land of Canaan, they say that all will then go there, and that the Jews who are dead will then rise again, and from their sepulchres will enter that land. To the reply that they cannot possibly come out of the sepulchres, because they are already living after death they say that they will then descend and enter their bodies, and so live again. When told that the land cannot hold them all, they reply that it will then be enlarged. When told that the kingdom of the Messiah, because He is the Son of God, will not be on earth but in heaven, they reply that the land of Canaan will then be heaven. When told that they do not know where Bethlehem Ephratah is, where the Messiah is to be born, according to the prediction in Micah (5:2), and in the Psalms (132:6), they reply that the mother of the Messiah will nevertheless there give birth to Him; and some say that wherever she brings forth there is Bethlehem. When they are asked how the Messiah can dwell with such wicked people, and it is proved by many passages in Jeremiah, and especially by the sons of Moses (Deut. 32), that they are the worst of men, they reply that among the Jews there are both good and bad, and that the bad are there meant. When they are told that they sprang from a Canaanitish woman, and from Judah's whoredom with his daughter-in-law (Gen. 38), they answer that that was not whoredom. But when to this it is replied that still Judah commanded her to be brought forth and burnt for whoredom, they go away to consult about it, and after consultation say that Judah only acted the part of a brother-in-law, a duty which neither his second son, Onan, nor his third son, Selah, fulfilled. And to this they add that very many of them are of the tribe of Levi, who held the priestly office, and that it is enough that they are all from the loins of Abraham. When they are told that within the Word there is a spiritual sense wherein Christ or the Messiah is fully treated of, they reply that this is not true; and some of them say that within the Word, or in its depths, there is nothing but gold; and other such statements they make.