Abraham could no longer contain himself. "O Mighty, Eternal One, hallowed by Your power! Be favorable to my petition. As you have brought me up to your height, so make known to me, your beloved one, as much as I ask. Will what I have seen happen to them for long?"
How long would the suffering last? The oldest question of the oppressed, echoing through every generation that watched empires rise and crush the faithful beneath their weight.
God showed Abraham a multitude of His people and said: "On their account, through four periods of subjugation as you have seen, I shall be provoked by them, and in these my retribution for their deeds shall be accomplished."
The four periods corresponded to the four world-empires: Babylon, Media, Greece, and Rome. Each one a century of dominion over Abraham's descendants, punishment for straying from the covenant.
"But in the fourth outgoing of a hundred years and one hour of the age, the same being a hundred years, it shall be in misfortune among the heathen."
The math was apocalyptic. The entire present age was reckoned as twelve hours, each hour equaling a hundred years, a single cosmic day of 1,200 years. The writer, standing in the aftermath of Rome's destruction of the Temple, believed he was at the edge of the final hour. The suffering was not permanent. It was measured. Counted. Known to God down to the last year.
Abraham had asked: how long? The answer was: there is an end. The age of ungodliness has a fixed duration. When the twelfth hour passes, everything changes.