2 Maccabees 4

1 But the Simon spoken of earlier, who had turned informer about the money and against his own country, kept speaking evil of Onias, saying that it was Onias who had set Heliodorus on and had been the maker of these evils. 2 He dared to call the city’s benefactor, the guardian of his own people, a man burning with zeal for the laws, a plotter against the state. 3 The hatred went so far that murders were being carried out by one of the men Simon had approved.

4 Onias saw how dangerous the quarrel had become, and he saw that Apollonius son of Menestheus, the governor of Coele-Syria and Phoenicia, was feeding Simon’s malice. [a] 5 So he took himself to the king — not to accuse his fellow citizens, but looking to the good of all the people, in public matters and in private. 6 For he saw that without the king’s attention it was impossible for affairs to find any peace, and that Simon would never leave off his folly.

7 But when Seleucus departed this life and Antiochus, called Epiphanes, took over the kingdom, Jason the brother of Onias got the office of chief priest for himself by underhanded means. 8 He promised the king, in a petition, three hundred and sixty talents of silver, and eighty talents out of some other revenue. [b] 9 Besides these he undertook to pay a hundred and fifty more, if he were allowed by the king’s authority to set up a gymnasium and a training school for the young men, and to enroll the men of Jerusalem as Antiochians.

10 The king agreed, and as soon as Jason had the office in his hands he began to bring his own countrymen over to the Greek way of life. 11 He set aside the royal favors granted to the Jews through John, the father of Eupolemus — the man who went as envoy to the Romans for friendship and alliance — and he tore down the lawful ways of public life and brought in new customs against the law. 12 He was glad to found a gymnasium right beneath the citadel itself, and he took the best of the young men and brought them under the hat. [c]

13 So there came such a peak of Greek ways and such an advance of foreign ways, through the boundless impurity of Jason — that ungodly man, and no chief priest — 14 that the priests were no longer eager for the service at the altar. They looked down on the sanctuary and neglected the sacrifices, and hurried instead to take their share of the unlawful allowance in the wrestling school as soon as the call to the discus came. [d] 15 They counted the honors of their fathers as nothing, and thought the glories of the Greeks the finest thing of all.

16 For this very reason a hard state of things closed in around them. The very men whose ways they were so eager for, and whom they wanted to be like in everything, became their enemies and their punishers. 17 For it is no light thing to act in an ungodly way against the divine laws — but the time that follows will make this plain.

18 When the games that are held every fifth year were being celebrated at Tyre, and the king was present, 19 Jason, that polluted man, sent official envoys from Jerusalem, men registered as Antiochians, carrying about four pounds of silver for the sacrifice to Heracles. But the men who carried it thought it was not fitting to spend the money on that sacrifice, and asked that it go to some other expense. [e] 20 So the money, as far as the sender meant it, went to the sacrifice to Heracles; but because of the men who carried it, it went to the building of warships.

21 Apollonius son of Menestheus was sent to Egypt for the enthronement of King Philometor. Antiochus learned that the man had turned against his interests and began to look to his own safety, and so he came to Joppa and went on from there to Jerusalem. [g] 22 Jason and the city welcomed him with great show, and he was brought in with torches and shouting. After that he moved his army on into Phoenicia.

23 Three years later Jason sent Menelaus, the brother of the Simon spoken of before, to carry the money to the king and to finish the reports on pressing business. 24 But when Menelaus was brought before the king, he flattered him with an air of authority and got the office of chief priest for himself, outbidding Jason by three hundred talents of silver. 25 He came back with the king’s orders in hand, bringing nothing worthy of the office of chief priest, but carrying the fury of a cruel ruler and the rage of a wild beast. [h]

26 So Jason, who had cheated his own brother, was cheated by another, and was driven out as a fugitive into the country of the Ammonites. 27 Menelaus held the office, but of the money he had promised the king he paid nothing in good order, 28 though Sostratus, the commander of the citadel, kept demanding it — for the collecting of the revenues fell to him. And for this reason the two of them were summoned by the king. 29 Menelaus left his own brother Lysimachus as his deputy in the office of chief priest, and Sostratus left Crates, the commander over the Cyprians.

30 While all this was going on, the people of Tarsus and of Mallus rose in revolt, because their cities had been handed over as a gift to Antiochis, the king’s concubine. [i] 31 So the king came in haste to settle the matter, leaving as his deputy Andronicus, one of the men of rank. 32 Menelaus thought he had been handed a good moment. He stole some of the gold vessels of the temple and made a present of them to Andronicus, and others he had already sold to Tyre and the cities round about.

33 When Onias had clear proof of it he denounced him, having withdrawn to a place of refuge at Daphne, near Antioch. 34 So Menelaus took Andronicus aside and urged him to get Onias into his hands. Andronicus came to Onias, and, persuaded to treachery, he took his right hand and gave his own with oaths; and though Onias was suspicious of him, he talked him into coming out of the place of refuge — and on the spot he made away with him, with no reverence for what was right. [j] 35 For this reason not only Jews but many of the other nations too were angry and heavy-hearted at the unjust murder of the man.

36 When the king came back from the region of Cilicia, the Jews in the city appealed to him — and the Greeks joined in their hatred of the crime — over the killing of Onias against all reason. 37 Antiochus was grieved to the soul and turned to mercy, and he wept, remembering the dead man’s self-control and great good order. 38 Blazing with anger, he stripped the purple from Andronicus at once and tore off his clothes, led him through the whole city to the very place where he had committed the outrage against Onias, and there he made an end of the murderer — the Lord repaying him the punishment he deserved.

39 When many temple robberies had been carried out in the city by Lysimachus, with the consent of Menelaus, and word of it had spread abroad, the crowd gathered against Lysimachus, for by then many gold vessels had been carried off. 40 As the crowds rose and filled with rage, Lysimachus armed about three thousand men and began the violence, with a certain Auranus leading them, a man far gone in years and no less in folly. 41 But when they saw Lysimachus attacking, some snatched up stones, some heavy sticks, and some grabbed handfuls of the ashes lying there, and hurled them all together at the men around Lysimachus. [k] 42 So they wounded many of them, struck some to the ground, and drove them all into flight — and the temple robber himself they cut down beside the treasury.

43 Over these things a charge was brought against Menelaus. 44 When the king came to Tyre, three men sent by the council of elders pleaded the case before him. [l] 45 But Menelaus, who had already lost, promised a large sum of money to Ptolemy son of Dorymenes to win the king over. 46 So Ptolemy took the king aside into a colonnade, as though to let him get some air, and brought him around.

47 He cleared Menelaus of the charges — the man who was the cause of all the evil — and condemned to death those wretched men who, if they had pleaded their case even before Scythians, would have been let go innocent. 48 So the men who had spoken for the city, for the people, and for the holy vessels quickly paid an unjust penalty. 49 Because of it even the men of Tyre were disgusted at the crime, and provided magnificently for their burial. 50 And so, through the greed of the men in power, Menelaus stayed in office, growing worse in malice, and set there as a great plotter against his fellow citizens.