variables in declare statement

Hi Guyz, I have a problem with a 4gl program. The program is receiving two arguments, a beginning date and an end date . The following declaring statement fails on the attempt to open. Let bobp = arg_val(1) Let eobp = arg_val(2) Declare acct_cur cursor for Select account_number from customer_account Where (close_date between eobp and eobp) Order by account_number I get error -217 when openning the cursor. When I hard code the dates, I don't get any error. I know that I can work around this by preparing the statement in a string but I want to know why I'm getting this error. Please Help. austin