Eldad And Medad (Modad According To The Septuagint)

Two men who prophesied in the camp during the wanderings in the wilderness (Num. xi. 26-29). According to an old rabbinical tradition, they predicted the war with Gog and Magog. "The king from the land of Magog will unite all the hosts of the heathen in a warfare on the soil of Palestine against the Jews returning from the Exile at the Messianic time, but the Lord [= Κύρις] will be ready in the time of distress and slay them with the fire issuing forth from His throne, and their bodies will fall upon the mountains of the land of Israel and be eaten up by the wild beasts and the birds of heaven. Then will all the dead of the people of Israel be revived and partake of the bliss prepared for them from the beginning" (Targ. Yer. to Num. xi. 26; comp. Sanh. 17a; Tan., Beha'aloteka, ed. Buber, 22). According to the fragment of Targum Yer. (ib.), the heathen will fall into the hand of the Messiah (comp. Bacher, "Ag. Tan." i. 88, ii. 119; "Monatsschrift," 1857, pp. 346 et seq.).

This Messianic prophecy of Eldad and Medad seems to have been made the subject of a special work, consisting of 400 lines, which circulated in the first Christian century; it is quoted in the "Shepherd of Hermas," vision ii. 3, as containing the sentence found also in the Targum: "The Lord [Κύριος] is nigh to those in distress." See Schürer, "Gesch." 3d ed., iii. 266.

E. G. H. K.