2 Maccabees 7

1 It also happened that seven brothers were arrested along with their mother, and the king was forcing them to touch the flesh of pigs, which the law forbids, beating them with whips and cords. [a] 2 One of them became their spokesman and said, “What do you mean to ask us, and to learn from us? We are ready to die rather than break the laws of our fathers.”

3 The king flew into a rage and ordered pans and cauldrons to be heated. 4 As soon as they were red hot, he ordered them to cut out the tongue of the one who had spoken for the rest, to strip the skin from his head, and to cut off his hands and feet, while his brothers and his mother looked on. [b] 5 When he had been made useless in every part, the king ordered him carried to the fire, still breathing, and fried in the pan. And as the fumes of the pan spread far, the brothers, with their mother, encouraged one another to die nobly, saying this: 6 “The Lord God is watching, and in truth he is comforted over us, just as Moses made it plain in the song that testifies against us to our face, when he said, ‘And he will be comforted over his servants.’” [c]

7 When the first had died in this way, they brought out the second to make sport of him. They tore the skin off his head with the hair, and asked him, “Will you eat, before your body is punished limb by limb?” 8 He answered in the language of his fathers: “No.” So he too took the next torment, as the first had. 9 At his last breath he said, “You wretch — you release us from this present life; but the King of the world will raise us up to live again forever, because we die for his laws.” [d]

10 After him they made sport of the third. When they asked for his tongue he put it out at once, and he held out his hands without flinching, 11 and he said nobly, “I got these from heaven, and for the sake of his laws I think nothing of them, and from him I hope to get them back again.” 12 So the king himself and those with him were astonished at the young man’s soul, at how he counted his pains as nothing.

13 When this one too had died, they tormented the fourth the same way, beating him. 14 And as he came near the end he said this: “It is better to die at the hands of men and hold to the hopes God gives — that we will be raised up again by him. For you there will be no rising to life.” [e]

15 Next they brought the fifth forward and beat him. 16 He looked at the king and said, “You have authority among men, and you are perishable, and you do what you please. But do not think that our people have been abandoned by God. 17 Only wait, and watch his great strength — how he will torment you and your offspring.”

18 After him they brought the sixth, and as he was about to die he said, “Do not deceive yourself for nothing. We suffer these things because of ourselves, having sinned against our own God, and things worthy of wonder have happened. 19 But do not think you will go unpunished for taking it on yourself to fight against God.”

20 The mother was astonishing beyond them all, and worthy of good remembrance. She watched her seven sons perish in the space of a single day, and she bore it with a good heart because of her hopes in the Lord. 21 She encouraged each of them in the language of their fathers, filled with a noble mind, rousing her woman’s reasoning with a man’s courage. She said to them: 22 “I do not know how you appeared in my womb. It was not I who gave you the breath and the life, and it was not I who arranged the parts of each of you. 23 So then, the Maker of the world, who formed the beginning of man and found out the beginning of all things, will give the breath and the life back to you again with mercy, since you now count yourselves as nothing for the sake of his laws.”

24 Antiochus thought he was being despised, and he was suspicious of the voice that reproached him. The youngest was still alive, so he not only urged him with words but promised him on oath that he would make him rich and enviable, and would take him as a friend and put affairs in his hands, if he would change over from the ways of his fathers. 25 When the young man paid no attention at all, the king called the mother over and urged her to counsel the boy toward his own rescue. 26 After he had urged her at length, she agreed to persuade her son.

27 She leaned close to him, and, mocking the cruel tyrant, she said this in the language of their fathers: “My son, have mercy on me. I carried you nine months in my womb, I nursed you three years, I fed you and brought you up to this age and provided for you. 28 I ask you, child: look up at the sky and the earth, see everything in them, and know that God did not make them out of things that were; and the human race comes to be the same way. [f] 29 Do not be afraid of this executioner. Show yourself worthy of your brothers, and accept your death, so that in the mercy I may receive you back together with your brothers.”

30 She was still finishing when the young man said, “What are you all waiting for? I do not obey the king’s decree; I obey the decree of the law that was given to our fathers through Moses. 31 And you, who have invented every kind of evil against the Hebrews, will not escape the hands of God. 32 We are suffering because of our own sins. 33 And if our living Lord has been angry a little while, to rebuke us and to train us, he will be reconciled again with his own servants. 34 But you, unholy man, vilest of all men — do not be lifted up for nothing, puffed up with hopes that are not sure, raising your hand against the servants of heaven. [g] 35 You have not yet escaped the judgment of the Almighty God, who watches everything. 36 For our brothers, after bearing a short pain, have now fallen under God’s covenant of ever-flowing life; but you, by the judgment of God, will carry off the righteous penalty of your arrogance. [h] 37 And I, like my brothers, give up body and soul for the laws of our fathers, calling on God to be merciful to our nation quickly, and to bring you, through tests and whippings, to acknowledge that he alone is God, 38 and to let the wrath of the Almighty, justly brought on our whole people, stop with me and my brothers.”

39 The king fell into a rage and handled this one worse than all the rest, taking the mockery bitterly. 40 So this one too died clean, having put his whole trust in the Lord. 41 Last of all, after her sons, the mother died.

42 Let this much, then, be enough to have set out about the sacrificial meals and the tortures beyond all measure. [i]