Judas Maccabeus
1 ① Mattathias’ son, Judas Maccabeus, succeeded him. 2His brothers and all who had followed his father gave him their support and they continued the war with determination.
3Judas made the name of his people more famous. He put on his breastplate and girded himself with the armor of war like a giant; he fought many battles and protected his camp with his sword.
4He was like a lion when he attacked, like a lion’s whelp roaring over its prey.
5He pursued the renegades in their secret places and consigned to the flames those who troubled his people.
6All the renegades feared him, all evildoers were confounded, and liberation was accomplished through him.
7Many kings feared him, while the people of Israel rejoiced in his deeds.
His memory shall be blessed forever. 8He went through the cities of Judah utterly destroying the impious and saved Israel in their trial.
9His fame resounded to the ends of the earth for having gathered those about to perish.
First successes
10 ② Apollonius also gathered together men from the pagans and a good number of Samaritans to fight Israel. 11When Judas learned of this, he went out to meet him in battle; he defeated and killed him. Many of the enemy fell and the rest fled. 12They seized the plunder and Judas took the sword of Apollonius, and from then on he always used it in battle.
13Seron, the commander of the Syrian army, learned that Judas had gathered many men and that the whole community of believers was at his side. 14He thought: “This is now the opportunity for me to make myself famous and become an important man in the kingdom. I will go to fight Judas and his men who do not obey the king’s order.” 15So he did, and a strong army of pagans went up with him to help him take vengeance on the children of Israel.
16As Seron approached the slope of Beth-horon, Judas went out to confront him with a small company of warriors. 17But on seeing the enemy advancing against them, Judas’ men said to him, “How can we, few as we are, fight against so many? And besides, we feel weak for we have not eaten anything today.”
18But Judas declared: “A multitude shall easily fall into the hands of a few, for Heaven can win over equally well with the help of many or of few. 19Victory does not depend on the number of those who fight, but on Heaven which gives us strength. 20They come against us, moved by their pride and lawlessness, to seize us and take possession of our wives and children and to take everything away from us. 21But we are fighting for our lives and our laws. 22God will crush them before us; so do not be afraid.”
23As soon as he finished speaking, he suddenly rushed against the enemies. Seron and his army were defeated. 24They pursued them down the slope of Beth-horon to the plain. And about eight hundred of Seron’s men fell and the rest escaped to the land of the Philistines.
25With this, fright and fear of Judas and his brothers seized the pagans who lived around them. 26The fame of his name reached the king, and the pagan nations recounted his battles.
Antiochus prepares for war
27When this news reached King Antiochus, he was furious, so he ordered all the forces of his kingdom to assemble, for he had a powerful army. 28He opened his treasury and paid the troops a year’s salary, ordering them to be prepared for any eventuality. 29But he found that the money in the treasury had run short, for the taxes of the provinces had decreased due to dissension and disaster, which he himself had caused in the land by changing the laws that were in force from the earliest days. 30He feared that, as before, he would not have enough funds for his expenses and for the gifts he used to give more lavishly than preceding kings. 31So great was his need that he decided to go to Persia to collect the taxes from those provinces and raise considerable funds.
32Then he left Lysias, a nobleman from the royal family, in charge of the affairs of government, from the river Euphrates to the Egyptian frontier, 33and with the responsibility of educating the king’s son, Antiochus, until his return. 34And he turned over to Lysias half of his troops with the elephants and gave him instructions about his policies. On matters dealing with the inhabitants of Judea and Jerusalem, 35Lysias was to send an army to destroy and crush the defenders of Israel and all who remained in Jerusalem and to wipe out even the memory of them. 36Then he was to have foreigners settle throughout the Jewish territory and distribute the land to them by lot.
37The king took with him the remaining half of the army and set out from Antioch, the capital of the kingdom, in the year one hundred and forty-seven. He crossed the river Euphrates and went through the upper provinces.
38Lysias chose from among the Friends of the King, Ptolemy the son of Dorymenes, Nicanor and Gorgias – all influential men. 39With them, he dispatched forty thousand infantry and seven thousand cavalry to the Judean province to destroy it as the king had ordered. 40They marched out with their troops and encamped on the plain near Emmaus. 41The merchants of the region heard of their arrival, so they went to the camp with large amounts of silver, gold and fetters, proposing to buy the Israelites as slaves. The Syrian army and those from the province of the Philistines also joined the troops.
42Judas and his brothers understood that the situation was becoming worse, because the enemy had encamped in their territory. So when they learned of the king’s order to destroy and crush the people, 43they said, “Let us uplift our people from their miserable situation and fight for them and for the Holy Place!”
44The whole community assembled to prepare for war, and they prayed and asked God for mercy and compassion.
45Like a desert, Jerusalem was left without inhabitants. None of her children went in or out. The temple was profaned, and foreigners lived in the city which had become a dwelling place for the pagans. There was no more rejoicing for Jacob, no flute or zither was heard.
The Jews gather at Mizpah
46So they gathered and went to Mizpah opposite Jerusalem because Mizpah had been a place of prayer for Israel. 47They fasted that day, put on sackcloth, sprinkled ashes on their heads and tore their garments. 48They opened the Book of the Law to look for an answer to their questions, just as the pagans consulted the images of their idols. 49They brought the vestments of the priests, the first-fruits and the tithes, and they brought in the Nazirites who had completed the days of their consecration; 50they cried aloud to Heaven and said: “What shall we do with this people, and where shall we take them? 51For your sanctuary has been trampled on and profaned, your priests are in mourning and are humiliated. 52And now the pagans have gathered together to destroy us. You know what they are plotting against us. 53How can we resist them, if you do not come to help us?” 54Then they sounded the trumpets and made a great outcry.
55After this, Judas appointed officials to lead his people: leaders of a thousand men, leaders of a hundred, of fifty, and of ten. 56Then he told those who were building houses, those about to marry, those who were planting vineyards, and those who were afraid, to return to their homes, as the Law allowed. 57Next the army marched out and encamped to the south of Emmaus. 58Judas told them: “Prepare your weapons; be valiant and be ready to fight in the morning against those foreigners who have joined forces to crush us and remove our Holy Place from this land. 59It is better to die fighting than to live and see the misery of our nation and of the Holy Place. 60May Heaven’s will be done in everything.”
- After the death of Mattathias, his son Judas heads the resistance.
For three centuries the attention of the believers had been exclusively focused on worship activities. Priests and Levites appeared as the only models of faith. Now, because of circumstances, there is a change. Suddenly the Jewish people are looking again at the days of the Judges or of David. For many of them, the model believer becomes the armed fighter who risks his life to liberate his people.
Actually the brutal persecution brought them to the point where refraining from fighting meant renouncing everything which had made the Jewish people different from all others.
Before the unequal struggle, we have Judas' profession of faith: God can give victory to a few fighting a multitude. This is how David spoke when he faced Goliath (1 S 14:6 and 17:47). - The books of Maccabees repeatedly stress that the Jews fought, above all, to defend their Holy Place. This Temple was the symbol of the whole Law, that is, of their whole religion.
We must all fight for the things that give meaning to our lives and without which a secure future would be meaningless. For the Jews of those days, to give up their customs and their worship was like renouncing their faith, since they were entrusted with the divine promises. Though the Temple itself was no more than stones and wood, with some precious metal, they could not abandon it without losing their human dignity and their vocation as believers.
The Maccabees were not very different from those who, today, dare to remind us of the rights of the poor, and to demand the participation of all in modern societies oftentimes founded on injustice. They are arrested, tortured and they die to demand political change, but in so doing, they defend their own faith, because if they kept quiet, they would have lost their human dignity and they have renounced the spirit of justice and freedom (Gal 5:11-12).
