2 Maccabees 5

1 About this time Antiochus set out on his second expedition into Egypt. 2 And it happened that over the whole city, for nearly forty days, there appeared horsemen racing through the air in robes shot with gold, armed with spears and drawn up in companies, and swords being drawn — 3 squadrons of cavalry in formation, charges made and counter-charges on both sides, the moving of shields, masses of pikes, showers of thrown weapons, the glint of gold ornaments, and body armor of every kind. 4 So everyone prayed that the appearing had come for good. [a]

5 When a false report went round that Antiochus had departed this life, Jason took not fewer than a thousand men and made a sudden attack on the city. The defenders on the wall were driven back, and when the city was at last being taken, Menelaus fled into the citadel. 6 But Jason went on slaughtering his own citizens without mercy. He did not see that a day won against his own kin is the bitterest defeat of all; he thought he was setting up trophies over enemies, not over his own people. 7 He did not get hold of the office. In the end all his plotting brought him was shame, and he went off again as a fugitive into the country of the Ammonites.

8 So he came to a bad end. Charged before Aretas the ruler of the Arabs, fleeing from city to city, hunted by everyone, hated as a deserter of the laws, loathed as the butcher of his own country and his own townsmen, he was washed up in Egypt. [b] 9 The man who had driven so many from their own country died in a foreign land. He had sailed to the Spartans, hoping to find shelter there because of their kinship. [c] 10 The man who had thrown out a multitude unburied was mourned by no one. He had no funeral of any kind, and no share in the tomb of his fathers.

11 When word of what had happened reached the king, he took it that Judea was in revolt. So he broke camp in Egypt with the soul of a wild beast, and took the city by force of arms. 12 He ordered his soldiers to cut down without mercy everyone they met, and to slaughter those who went up onto the housetops. 13 There was killing of young and old, wiping out of boys and women and children, slaughter of girls and infants. 14 In those three days eighty thousand were destroyed: forty thousand in hand-to-hand fighting, and no fewer than the number slaughtered were sold as slaves.

15 Not satisfied with this, he dared to enter the holiest temple in all the earth, with Menelaus for a guide — the man who had turned traitor to the laws and to his own country. 16 With polluted hands he took up the holy vessels, and with common hands he swept away the gifts that other kings had set up to add to the glory and honor of the place. 17 Antiochus was lifted up in his mind. He did not see that the Master was angry for a little while because of the sins of those who lived in the city, and that this was why the place had been passed over.

18 For if they had not been caught up in many sins, this man too would have been flogged the moment he came forward and turned back from his rashness — as Heliodorus was, whom King Seleucus sent to inspect the treasury. 19 But the Lord did not choose the nation for the sake of the place; he chose the place for the sake of the nation. 20 And so the place itself, which had shared in the nation’s troubles, shared afterward in its good things as well. Left behind in the anger of the Almighty, it was set right again in all its glory when the great Master was reconciled.

21 So Antiochus carried off eighteen hundred talents from the temple and hurried away to Antioch, imagining in his arrogance that he could make the land sail and the sea walk — so lifted up was his heart. [d] 22 He left officers behind to afflict the people: at Jerusalem, Philip, a Phrygian by birth and more barbarous in his ways than the man who appointed him; 23 at Gerizim, Andronicus; and beside these, Menelaus, who lorded it over his fellow citizens worse than all the rest, with a hostile mind toward the Jewish townspeople. [e]

24 He also sent Apollonius, the commander of the Mysians, with an army of twenty-two thousand, ordering him to kill all the grown men and to sell the women and the boys. [f] 25 Apollonius came to Jerusalem, played the man of peace, and held back until the holy day of the Sabbath. Then, catching the Jews at rest, he ordered his men out under arms, 26 and ran through everyone who had come out to watch. Then he rushed into the city with his armed men and cut down great numbers. 27 But Judas, also called Maccabeus, one of some ten men, withdrew into the wilderness. He and his companions lived in the mountains like wild animals, and they kept eating what grew wild, so as to have no share in the defilement. [g]