Judas Faces Lysias at Bethsura

Some survivors from the foreign army escaped and told Lysias what had happened. When he heard the report, he was thrown into confusion and lost heart. What he had hoped to do against Israel had not happened, and the king’s command had not been fulfilled.

The next year, Lysias prepared another campaign. He gathered sixty thousand chosen infantry and five thousand cavalry to subdue Judas and his people. They came into Idumaea and camped at Bethsura, and Judas met them with ten thousand men.

When Judas saw how strong the army was, he prayed. He blessed the Saviour of Israel and remembered earlier rescues, when God had brought down a mighty attacker in David’s day and had delivered the Philistine army into the hand of Jonathan son of Saul and his armour-bearer.

Judas asked God to hand this army over to Israel. He prayed that their enemies would be ashamed of their army and cavalry, that fear would enter their hearts, and that their strength would melt away. He asked that those who knew God’s name would praise him with thanksgiving.

Then the battle began. About five thousand men from Lysias’s army fell. When Lysias saw his troops put to flight, and saw the courage of Judas’s men, ready either to live or to die nobly, he withdrew to Antioch. There he gathered hired soldiers, intending to return to Judea with an even larger army.