2 Maccabees 6

1 Not long after this the king sent an elderly Athenian to force the Jews to depart from the laws of their fathers and to stop living by the laws of God, 2 and to defile the sanctuary in Jerusalem and rename it for Olympian Zeus, and the sanctuary on Gerizim for Zeus the Friend of Strangers, as the people who lived in that place had asked. [a] 3 The onset of this evil was hard, and grievous to the whole people.

4 The temple was filled with wild living and reveling by the nations. They took their ease with prostitutes and lay with women inside the holy courts, and they brought in things that had no business there. 5 The altar was heaped with unlawful things, which the laws shut out. 6 A man could not keep the Sabbath, or hold the feasts of his fathers, or so much as admit that he was a Jew.

7 On the king’s birthday each month they were driven by bitter force to eat of the sacrifice, and when the feast of Dionysus came they were made to wear ivy and walk in the procession for Dionysus. [b] 8 A decree went out to the neighboring Greek cities, at Ptolemy’s suggestion, to follow the same course against the Jews and to make them eat of the sacrifices, 9 and to slaughter those who would not choose to go over to Greek ways. Anyone could see the misery that had come.

10 Two women were brought in for having circumcised their children. They hung the babies at their mothers’ breasts, paraded the women publicly through the city, and threw them down from the wall. 11 Others had run together into the caves nearby to keep the seventh day in secret. They were reported to Philip and were all burned together, because they held back from defending themselves, out of regard for the honor of that most holy day. [c]

12 Now I urge those who take up this book not to be cast down by these disasters, but to consider that these punishments were not for the destruction of our people but for their training. [d] 13 In fact it is a sign of great kindness when the godless are not let alone for long, but meet their penalties at once. 14 For with the other nations the Master waits patiently, and does not punish them until they have come to the full measure of their sins; but he judged that it should not be so with us,

15 so that he would not have to take vengeance on us at the end, once our sins had come to their full. 16 That is why he never withdraws his mercy from us. He trains us with disaster, but he does not abandon his own people. 17 Let this much be said as a reminder. Now we must get back to the story in a few words.

18 Eleazar, one of the leading scribes, a man already far on in years and very fine in the look of his face, was forced to open his mouth and eat pork. 19 But he welcomed a death with honor rather than a life of foulness, and went of his own accord to the drum, [e] 20 spitting the meat out — the way men ought to come forward who have the courage to refuse what it is not right to taste, even for the love of life.

21 But the men in charge of that unlawful sacrificial meal took him aside privately, because they had known him a long time, and urged him to bring meat of his own, prepared by himself, which it was lawful for him to eat, and to pretend that he was eating the sacrificial meat the king had ordered, 22 so that by doing this he might escape death, and be treated kindly for the sake of their old friendship with him. 23 But he made a noble decision, worthy of his years and the dignity of his old age, worthy of the gray hair he had earned and worn so well, and of the fine way he had lived from childhood — and above all worthy of the holy law God himself established. So he answered at once, and told them to send him on to Hades: [f]

24 “It does not become our years to pretend, and so lead many of the young to suppose that Eleazar at ninety has gone over to foreign ways — [g] 25 and that they should be led astray on my account, through my pretending, and for the sake of a little scrap of life; and I would win nothing for myself but foulness and a stain on my old age. 26 For even if I escape the punishment of men for the present, I will not escape the hands of the Almighty, either alive or dead. 27 So by giving up my life bravely now I will show myself worthy of my old age, 28 and leave the young a noble example of how to die gladly and nobly for the honored and holy laws.” When he had said this, he went straight to the drum.

29 The men leading him turned the goodwill they had felt for him a moment before into hatred, because the words he had spoken seemed to them, as they took it, to be madness. 30 When he was about to die under the blows, he groaned and said, “It is clear to the Lord, who has the holy knowledge, that though I could have been set free from death, I bear cruel pains in my body under the lash — and in my soul I gladly suffer these things, because I fear him.” 31 So this man died, and left his death behind him as an example of nobility and a memorial of virtue, not only for the young but for the great body of his nation.