A Jewish document written a few decades after Hebrews, around a.d. 100, contains a prayer: “All this I have spoken before you, O Lord, because you have said that it was for us that you created this world. . . . And now, O Lord, behold, these nations, which are reputed as nothing, domineer over us and devour us. But we your people, whom you have called your first-born, only begotten, zealous for you, and most dear, have been given into their hands.”—James H. Charlesworth, ed., The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, vol. 1 (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1983), p. 536.