2 Maccabees 13

1 In the 149th year word reached Judas and his men that Antiochus Eupator was coming into Judea with a great host, [a] 2 and with him Lysias his guardian, who was also in charge of the government. Each of them had a Greek force of a hundred and ten thousand foot soldiers, five thousand three hundred cavalry, twenty-two elephants, and three hundred chariots fitted with scythes. [b]

3 Menelaus joined them too, and kept urging Antiochus on with a great deal of play-acting — not for the rescue of his homeland, but because he supposed he would be set over the government. 4 But the King of kings stirred up the anger of Antiochus against the guilty wretch. Lysias showed the king that this man was the cause of all the trouble, and the king gave orders to take him to Beroea and put him to death there in the way that place has. [c]

5 In that place there is a tower seventy-five feet high, full of ashes, and it has a turning device that drops sheer on every side down into the ashes. [e] 6 There anyone guilty of robbing a temple, or who has gone to some other extreme of evil, is thrust to his death by all. 7 By such a death it fell to Menelaus the lawbreaker to die, without so much as a handful of earth for his burial — 8 and justly so. He had committed many sins against the altar, whose fire and ashes were holy, and in ashes he received his death. [f]

9 The king was coming on savage in mind, meaning to show the Jews worse than anything done in his father’s time. 10 When Judas learned this, he told the people to call on the Lord day and night — that now, if ever at any other time, he would come to the help of men about to be stripped of the law, of their homeland, and of the holy temple, 11 and would not let a people who had just been given a little breathing space fall under the hand of the reviling nations. 12 When they had all done this together, and had begged the merciful Lord with weeping and fasting, lying face down for three days without a break, Judas encouraged them and gave the order to be ready.

13 Then, alone with the elders, he decided to march out and settle the matter with God’s help, before the king’s army could break into Judea and take the city. 14 He handed the decision over to the Creator of the world, urged the men with him to fight nobly to the death for the laws, the temple, the city, the homeland, and their life as a people; and he made his camp near Modein.

15 He gave the men around him the watchword “God’s victory.” Then, with the best of his picked young men, he fell on the royal quarters by night. He killed about two thousand men in the camp, and ran the leading elephant through, along with the man in the tower on its back. [g] 16 In the end they filled the camp with fear and confusion, and withdrew with the day theirs. 17 This had been done as day was already beginning to break, because the Lord’s shelter was helping him.

18 The king, having had a taste of the daring of the Jews, tried their positions by stratagem. 19 He advanced on Beth-zur, a strong fort of the Jews; he was driven back, he was checked, he came off the worse; [i] 20 and Judas sent in what the men inside needed. 21 But Rhodocus, from the Jewish ranks, was passing the secrets to the enemy. He was hunted out, caught, and shut away.

22 The king spoke a second time with the men in Beth-zur, gave his right hand, took theirs, withdrew, attacked Judas and his men, came off the loser; 23 heard that Philip, who had been left in charge of the government in Antioch, had turned desperate; was thrown into confusion, appealed to the Jews, gave way, swore to all their just terms, came to an agreement, offered a sacrifice, honored the sanctuary, and dealt kindly with the place; [j] 24 and he welcomed Maccabeus, and left Hegemonides as commander from Ptolemais to the Gerrhenians. [k] 25 He came to Ptolemais. The people of Ptolemais were angry about the terms; they were furious, and wanted to throw the agreement out. 26 Lysias came forward to the platform, made what defense he could, persuaded them, calmed them, won them over, and marched back to Antioch. So it went with the king’s coming and his going.