For the man was over forty years of age on whom this miracle of restoration to health had been performed.

"And when he was just forty years old, it occurred to him to visit his brethren the descendants of Israel.

"But at the end of forty years there appeared to him in the Desert of Mount Sinai an angel in the middle of a flame of fire in a bush.

This was he who brought them out, after performing marvels and signs in Egypt and at the Red Sea, and in the Desert for forty years.

So God turned from them and gave them up to the worship of the Host of Heaven, as it is written in the Book of the Prophets, "'Were they victims and sacrifices which you offered Me, forty years in the Desert, O House of Israel?

For a period of about forty years, He fed them, like a nurse, in the Desert.

Next they asked for a king, and God gave them Saul the son of Kish, a Benjamite, who reigned forty years.