Faithfulness during Persecution in 2 Maccabees

2 Maccabees 6

¹ Not long after this, the king sent out an old man of Athens to compel the Jews to depart from the laws of their fathers and not to live by the laws of God,

² and also to pollute the sanctuary in Jerusalem and to call it by the name of Olympian Zeus, and to call the sanctuary in Gerizim by the name of Zeus the Protector of foreigners, even as the people who lived in that place did.

³ The visitation of this evil was harsh and utterly grievous.

⁴ For the temple was filled with debauchery and reveling by the heathen, who dallied with prostitutes, and had intercourse with women within the sacred precincts, and moreover brought inside things that were not appropriate.

⁵ The altar was filled with those abominable things which had been prohibited by the laws.

⁶ A man could neither keep the Sabbath, nor observe the feasts of their ancestors, nor so much as confess himself to be a Jew.

⁷ On the day of the king’s birth every month, they were led along with bitter constraint to eat of the sacrifices. When the feast of Dionysia came, they were compelled to go in procession in honor of Dionysus, wearing wreaths of ivy.

⁸ A decree went out to the neighboring Greek cities, by the suggestion of Ptolemy, that they should observe the same conduct against the Jews, and should make them eat of the sacrifices,

⁹ and that they should kill those who didn’t choose to go over to the Greek rites. So the present misery was for all to see.

¹⁰ For example, two women were brought in for having circumcised their children. These, when they had led them publicly around the city with the babes hung from their breasts, they threw down headlong from the wall.

¹¹ Others who had run together into the caves nearby to keep the seventh day secretly, were betrayed to Philip and were all burned together, because their piety kept them from defending themselves, in view of the honor of that most solemn day.

¹⁸ Eleazar, one of the principal scribes, a man already well advanced in years, and of a noble countenance, was compelled to open his mouth to eat swine’s flesh.

¹⁹ But he, welcoming death with honor rather than life with defilement, advanced of his own accord to the instrument of torture, but first spat out the flesh,

²⁰ as men ought to come who are resolute to repel such things as not even for the natural love of life is it lawful to taste.

²¹ But those who had the charge of that forbidden sacrificial feast took the man aside, for the acquaintance which of old times they had with him, and privately implored him to bring flesh of his own providing, such as was proper for him to use, and to make as if he did eat of the flesh from the sacrifice, as had been commanded by the king;

²² that by so doing he might be delivered from death, and so his ancient friendship with them might be treated kindly.

²³ But he, having formed a high resolve, and one that became his years, the dignity of old age, and the gray hairs which he had reached with honor, and his excellent education from a child, or rather the holy laws of God’s ordaining, declared his mind accordingly, bidding them to quickly send him to Hades.

²⁴ “For it doesn’t become our years to dissemble,” he said, “that many of the young should suppose that Eleazar, the man of ninety years, had gone over to an alien religion;

²⁵ and so they, by reason of my deception, and for the sake of this brief and momentary life, would be led astray because of me, and I defile and disgrace myself in my old age.

²⁶ For even if for the present time I would remove from me the punishment of men, yet whether I live or die, I wouldn’t escape the hands of the Almighty.

²⁷ Therefore, by bravely parting with my life now, I will show myself worthy of my old age,

²⁸ and leave behind a noble example to the young to die willingly and nobly a glorious death for the revered and holy laws.” When he had said these words, he went immediately to the instrument of torture.

²⁹ When they changed the good will they bore toward him a little before into ill will because these words of his were, as they thought, sheer madness,

³⁰ and when he was at the point to die with the blows, he groaned aloud and said, “To the Lord, who has the holy knowledge, it is manifest that, while I might have been delivered from death, I endure severe pains in my body by being scourged; but in soul I gladly suffer these things because of my fear of him.”

³¹ So this man also died like this, leaving his death for an example of nobleness and a memorial of virtue, not only to the young but also to the great body of his nation.

2 Maccabees 7

¹ It came to pass that seven brothers and their mother were at the king’s command taken and shamefully handled with scourges and cords, to compel them to taste of the abominable swine’s flesh.

² One of them made himself the spokesman and said, “What would you ask and learn from us? For we are ready to die rather than transgress the laws of our ancestors.”

³ The king fell into a rage, and commanded that pans and caldrons be heated.

⁴ When these were immediately heated, he gave orders to cut out the tongue of him who had been their spokesman, and to scalp him, and to cut off his extremities, with the rest of his brothers and his mother looking on.

⁵ And when he was utterly maimed, the king gave orders to bring him to the fire, being yet alive, and to fry him in the pan. And as the smoke from the pan spread far, they and their mother also exhorted one another to die nobly, saying this:

⁶ “The Lord God sees, and in truth is entreated for us, as Moses declared in his song, which witnesses against the people to their faces, saying, ‘And he will have compassion on his servants.’ ”

⁷ And when the first had died like this, they brought the second to the mocking; and they pulled off the skin of his head with the hair and asked him, “Will you eat, before your body is punished in every limb?”

⁸ But he answered in the language of his ancestors and said to them, “No.” Therefore he also underwent the next torture in succession, as the first had done.

⁹ When he was at the last gasp, he said, “You, miscreant, release us out of this present life, but the King of the world will raise us who have died for his laws up to an everlasting renewal of life.”

¹⁰ After him, the third was made a victim of their mocking. When he was required, he quickly put out his tongue, and stretched out his hands courageously,

¹¹ and nobly said, “I got these from heaven. For his laws’ sake I treat these with contempt. From him, I hope to receive these back again.”

¹² As a result, the king himself and those who were with him were astonished at the young man’s soul, for he regarded the pains as nothing.

¹³ When he too was dead, they shamefully handled and tortured the fourth in the same way.

¹⁴ Being near to death he said this: “It is good to die at the hands of men and look for the hope which is given by God, that we will be raised up again by him. For as for you, you will have no resurrection to life.”

¹⁵ Next after him, they brought the fifth and shamefully handled him.

¹⁶ But he looked toward the king and said, “Because you have authority among men, though you are corruptible, you do what you please. But don’t think that our race has been forsaken by God.

¹⁷ But hold on to your ways, and see how his sovereign majesty will torture you and your descendants!”

¹⁸ After him they brought the sixth. When he was about to die, he said, “Don’t be vainly deceived, for we suffer these things for our own doings, as sinning against our own God. Astounding things have come to pass;

¹⁹ but don’t think that you will be unpunished, having tried to fight against God!”

²⁰ But above all, the mother was marvelous and worthy of honorable memory; for when she watched seven sons perishing within the space of one day, she bore the sight with a good courage because of her hope in the Lord.

²¹ She exhorted each one of them in the language of their fathers, filled with a noble spirit and stirring up her woman’s thoughts with manly courage, saying to them,

²² “I don’t know how you came into my womb. It wasn’t I who gave you your spirit and your life. It wasn’t I who brought into order the first elements of each one of you.

²³ Therefore the Creator of the world, who shaped the first origin of man and devised the first origin of all things, in mercy gives back to you again both your spirit and your life, as you now treat yourselves with contempt for his laws’ sake.”

²⁴ But Antiochus, thinking himself to be despised, and suspecting the reproachful voice, while the youngest was yet alive didn’t only make his appeal to him by words, but also at the same time promised with oaths that he would enrich him and raise him to high honor if he would turn from the ways of his ancestors, and that he would take him for his friend and entrust him with public affairs.

²⁵ But when the young man would in no way listen, the king called to him his mother, and urged her to advise the youth to save himself.

²⁶ When he had urged her with many words, she undertook to persuade her son.

²⁷ But bending toward him, laughing the cruel tyrant to scorn, she spoke this in the language of her fathers: “My son, have pity upon me who carried you nine months in my womb, and nursed you three years, and nourished and brought you up to this age, and sustained you.

²⁸ I beg you, my child, to lift your eyes to the sky and the earth, and to see all things that are in it, and thus to recognize that God made them not of things that were, and that the race of men in this way comes into being.

²⁹ Don’t be afraid of this butcher, but, proving yourself worthy of your brothers, accept your death, that in God’s mercy I may receive you again with your brothers.”

³⁰ But before she had finished speaking, the young man said, “What are you all waiting for? I don’t obey the commandment of the king, but I listen to the commandment of the law that was given to our fathers through Moses.

³¹ But you, who have devised all kinds of evil against the Hebrews, will in no way escape God’s hands.

³² For we are suffering because of our own sins.

³³ If for rebuke and chastening, our living Lord has been angered a little while, yet he will again be reconciled with his own servants.

³⁴ But you, O unholy man and of all most vile, don’t be vainly lifted up in your wild pride with uncertain hopes, raising your hand against the heavenly children.

³⁵ For you have not yet escaped the judgment of the Almighty God who sees all things.

³⁶ For these our brothers, having endured a short pain that brings everlasting life, have now died under God’s covenant. But you, through God’s judgment, will receive in just measure the penalties of your arrogance.

³⁷ But I, as my brothers, give up both body and soul for the laws of our fathers, calling upon God that he may speedily become gracious to the nation, and that you, amidst trials and plagues, may confess that he alone is God,

³⁸ and that in me and my brothers you may bring to an end the wrath of the Almighty which has been justly brought upon our whole race.”

³⁹ But the king, falling into a rage, handled him worse than all the rest, being exasperated at his mocking.

⁴⁰ So he also died pure, putting his whole trust in the Lord.

⁴¹ Last of all, after her sons, the mother died.

⁴² Let it then suffice to have said thus much concerning the sacrificial feasts and the extreme tortures.