2 Maccabees 10

1 Now Maccabeus and the men with him, with the Lord leading them on, recovered the temple and the city. [a] 2 They pulled down the pagan altars the foreigners had built in the marketplace, and the sacred precincts as well. [b] 3 They cleansed the sanctuary and built another altar. They heated stones and took fire out of them, and after two years’ time they offered sacrifices, and they burned incense, lit the lamps, and set out the loaves. [c]

4 When this was done they fell face down and begged the Lord that they might never again meet with troubles like these; but that if they ever did sin, he himself would correct them with fairness, and not hand them over to abusive and barbarous nations. [e]

5 On the very day the sanctuary had been treated as common by foreigners, on that same day it was made clean again — the twenty-fifth of that same month, which is Chislev. [f] 6 They kept eight days with gladness, in the manner of the Feast of Tents, remembering how, a little while before, they had spent the Feast of Tents in the mountains and in caves, feeding like wild animals. [g] 7 So they carried leafy wands and fair branches and palms as well, and raised songs to the One who had brought them through to the cleansing of his own place. 8 And they laid it down, by a decree and a vote of them all, that the whole nation of the Jews should keep these days year by year. [h]

9 Such, then, was the end of Antiochus, the one called Epiphanes. [j] 10 Now we will set out what happened under Antiochus Eupator, the son of that ungodly man, cutting the account short to the evils the wars themselves brought. [k] 11 When this king took over the kingdom he put a certain Lysias in charge of affairs, and made him chief commander of Coele-Syria and Phoenicia.

12 Ptolemy, called Macron, had made it his rule to keep justice toward the Jews because of the wrong that had been done to them, and he tried to deal with them peaceably. 13 For that he was accused by the king’s friends before Eupator. He heard himself called traitor at every turn, because he had abandoned Cyprus, which Philometor had entrusted to him, and had gone over to Antiochus Epiphanes; and since he could no longer hold his high office with honor, he poisoned himself and left this life. [l]

14 Gorgias, who had become commander of that country, kept hiring foreign troops and kept the war with the Jews fed at every turn. 15 Along with him the Idumeans, who held strongholds at every useful point, wore the Jews down; and by taking in men banished from Jerusalem they set about keeping the war alive. 16 But Maccabeus and his men made their plea and asked God to be their ally, and then rushed upon the strongholds of the Idumeans. 17 They fell on them hard, took the places, beat back every man fighting from the wall, cut down all who came in their way, and killed no fewer than twenty thousand.

18 No fewer than nine thousand had fled together into two very strong towers that had everything needed to stand a siege, 19 so Maccabeus left Simon and Joseph, and Zacchaeus too, with men enough to besiege them, and went off himself to the places that needed him more. 20 But Simon’s men were greedy for money. Some of the men in the towers bribed them: they took about nine hundred pounds of silver and let a number of them slip away. [m] 21 When Maccabeus was told what had happened, he gathered the leaders of the people and accused these men of selling their brothers for silver, since they had turned their enemies loose against them. 22 So he put them to death as traitors, and took the two towers on the spot. 23 Prospering in everything his weapons took in hand, he destroyed more than twenty thousand in the two strongholds.

24 Timothy, whom the Jews had beaten before, gathered foreign forces in enormous numbers, brought together no small body of the horses of Asia, and came to take Judea captive by the spear. 25 As he drew near, Maccabeus and his men turned to plead with God. They sprinkled earth on their heads and tied sackcloth around their waists, 26 and threw themselves down on the step in front of the altar, asking him to be merciful to them, and to be an enemy to their enemies and an adversary to their adversaries, as the law makes plain. [n]

27 When the prayer was over they took up their weapons and marched a good way out from the city; and when they came near the enemy they halted by themselves. 28 Just as the dawn was spreading, the two sides fell on each other. The one side had, along with their courage, their refuge in the Lord as their pledge of success and victory; the other made rage the leader of their fighting. 29 The battle grew hard, and there appeared to the enemy out of heaven five splendid men on horses with golden bridles, and they led the Jews. 30 They took Maccabeus between them and covered him with their own armor and kept him unwounded, while they shot arrows and thunderbolts at the enemy, who were struck blind, thrown into confusion, and cut to pieces. 31 Twenty thousand five hundred were cut down, and six hundred horsemen.

32 Timothy himself fled to a stronghold called Gazara, a very well-guarded fort, where Chaereas was in command. 33 Maccabeus and his men gladly laid siege to the fort for four days. 34 Those inside, trusting the strength of the place, spoke abusively beyond all bounds and let fly words that must not be said. [o] 35 But as the fifth day began to show, twenty young men of Maccabeus’s company, burning with rage at the abuse, threw themselves at the wall like men and, in a wild rage, cut down everyone who came in their way. 36 Others climbed up the same way while the defenders were busy with these, set the towers on fire, kindled fires and burned the abusers alive. Still others broke open the gates, let in the rest of the army, and took the city. 37 They killed Timothy, who had hidden himself in a pit, and his brother Chaereas, and Apollophanes. 38 When this was done, with songs and thanksgivings they blessed the Lord, who does great good for Israel and gives them the victory.