2 Maccabees 8

¹ Judas, otherwise known as Maccabaeus, and his companions made their way secretly among thevil ages, ral ying their fellow-countrymen; they recruited those who remained loyal to Judaism and assembledabout six thousand.

² They cal ed on the Lord to have regard for the people oppressed on al sides, to take pity on theTemple profaned by the godless,

³ to have mercy on the city now being destroyed and level ed to the ground, to hear the blood of thevictims that cried aloud to him,

⁴ to remember too the criminal slaughter of innocent babies and to avenge the blasphemies perpetratedagainst his name.

⁵ As soon as Maccabaeus had an organised force, he at once proved invincible to the foreigners, theLord's anger having turned into compassion.

⁶ Making surprise attacks on towns and villages, he fired them; he captured favourable positions andinflicted very heavy losses on the enemy,

⁷ general y availing himself of the cover of night for such enterprises. The fame of his valour spread farand wide.

⁸ When Philip saw Judas was making steady progress and winning more and more frequent successes,he wrote to Ptolemy, the general officer commanding Coele-Syria and Phoenicia, asking for reinforcements inthe royal interest.

⁹ Ptolemy chose Nicanor son of Patroclus, one of the king's First Friends, and sent him without delay atthe head of an international force of at least twenty thousand men to exterminate the entire Jewish race. As hisassociate he appointed Gorgias, a professional general of wide military experience.

¹⁰ Nicanor for his part proposed, by the sale of Jewish prisoners of war, to raise the two thousand talentsof tribute money owed by the king to the Romans.

¹¹ He lost no time in sending the seaboard towns an invitation to come and buy Jewish manpower,promising delivery of ninety head for one talent; but he did not reckon on the judgement from the Almighty thatwas soon to overtake him.

¹² When news reached Judas of Nicanor's advance, he warned his men of the enemy's approach,

¹³ whereupon the cowardly ones and those who lacked confidence in the justice of God took to theirheels and ran away.

¹⁴ The rest sold al their remaining possessions, at the same time praying the Lord to deliver them fromthe godless Nicanor, who had sold them even in advance of any encounter-

¹⁵ if not for their own sakes, then at least out of consideration for the covenants made with theirancestors, and because they themselves bore his sacred and majestic name.

¹⁶ Maccabaeus marshal ed his men, who numbered about six thousand, and exhorted them not to bedismayed at the enemy or discouraged at the vast horde of gentiles wickedly advancing against them, but tofight bravely,

¹⁷ keeping before their eyes the outrage committed by them against the holy place and the infamous andscornful treatment inflicted on the city, not to mention the destruction of their traditional way of life.

¹⁸ 'They may put their trust in their weapons and their exploits,' he said, 'but our confidence is in almightyGod, who is able with a single nod to overthrow both those marching on us and the whole world with them.'

¹⁹ He reminded them of the occasions on which their ancestors had received help: that time when, underSennacherib, a hundred and eighty-five thousand men had perished;

²⁰ that time in Babylonia when in the battle with the Galatians the Jewish combatants numbered onlyeight thousand, with four thousand Macedonians, yet when the Macedonians were hard pressed, the eightthousand had destroyed a hundred and twenty thousand, thanks to the help they had received from Heaven, andhad taken great booty as a result.

²¹ Having so roused their courage by these words that they were ready to die for the laws and theircountry, he then divided his army into four,

²² putting his brothers, Simon, Joseph and Jonathan in command of one division each, and assigningthem fifteen hundred men apiece.

²³ Next, he ordered Esdrias to read the Holy Book aloud and gave them their watchword 'Help fromGod'. Then, putting himself at the head of the first division, he attacked Nicanor.

²⁴ With the Almighty for their ally they slaughtered over nine thousand of the enemy, wounded andcrippled the greater part of Nicanor's army and put them al to flight.

²⁵ The money of their prospective purchasers fell into their hands. After pursuing them for a good while,they turned back, since time was pressing:

²⁶ it was the eve of the Sabbath, and for that reason they did not prolong their pursuit.

²⁷ They col ected the enemy's weapons and stripped them of their spoils, and because of the Sabbatheven more heartily blessed and praised the Lord, who had saved them and who had chosen that day for the firstmanifestation of his compassion.

²⁸ When the Sabbath was over, they distributed some of the booty among the victims of the persecutionand the widows and orphans; the rest they divided among themselves and their children.

²⁹ They then joined in public supplication, imploring the merciful Lord to be ful y reconciled with hisservants.

³⁰ They also chal enged the forces of Timotheus and Bacchides and destroyed over twenty thousand ofthem, gaining possession of several high fortresses. They divided their enormous booty into two equal shares,one for themselves, the other for the victims of the persecution and the orphans and widows, not forgetting theaged.

³¹ They carefully col ected the enemy's weapons and stored them in suitable places. The rest of thespoils they took to Jerusalem.

³² They kil ed the tribal chieftain on Timotheus' staff, an extremely wicked man who had done great harmto the Jews.

³³ In the course of their victory celebrations in Jerusalem, they burned the men who had fired the HolyGates; with Cal isthenes they had taken refuge in one smal house; so these received a fitting reward for theirsacrilege.

³⁴ The triple-dyed scoundrel Nicanor, who had brought the thousand merchants to buy the Jews,

³⁵ finding himself with the Lord's help humbled by men he had himself reckoned as of very little account,stripped off his robes of state, and made his way across country unaccompanied, like a runaway slave, reachingAntioch by a singular stroke of fortune, since his army had been destroyed.

³⁶ Thus the man who had promised the Romans to make good their tribute money by sel ing theprisoners from Jerusalem, bore witness that the Jews had a defender and that they were in consequenceinvulnerable, since they fol owed the laws which that defender had ordained.