4 Maccabees 13

1 If, then, the seven brothers thought nothing of pains that went as far as death, it is agreed on every side that devout reason is absolute master of the passions. [a] 2 For if they had been made slaves to the passions and had eaten defiled food, we would say that the passions had beaten them. [b] 3 But it is not so. By the reason that God himself praises, they got the better of the passions, 4 and there is no overlooking how their thinking took the lead, for they mastered both passion and pain. 5 How, then, can anyone refuse them the mastery over the passions that sound reasoning gives, when they did not turn back from the agonies of fire?

6 For just as the towers that jut out in front of a harbor beat back the threat of the waves and give a calm mooring to the ships sailing in, 7 so the seven-towered sound reasoning of the young men fortified the harbor of devoutness and defeated the passions in their lack of self-control. [c]

8 They formed a holy chorus of devoutness and put heart into one another, saying: 9 “Brothers, let us die as brothers for the law. Let us do as the three young men in Assyria did, who thought nothing of the furnace they all faced alike. [d] 10 Let us not play the coward when devoutness is to be shown.”

11 And one said, “Take courage, brother.” And another said, “Hold out nobly.” 12 And another, remembering, said, “Remember where you come from, and by what father’s hand Isaac held out to be slaughtered for devoutness.”

13 Then each one of them, all of them together, looked at the others with bright faces and great boldness, and they said, “Let us dedicate ourselves to God with our whole heart — to the one who gave us our souls — and let us put our bodies to use in the keeping of the law. 14 Let us not be afraid of the man who thinks he is killing us. 15 For the contest of the soul is great, and great is the danger that lies in everlasting torment for those who break God’s command. [e] 16 So let us arm ourselves with the mastery over the passions that divine reason gives. 17 For if we die like this, Abraham and Isaac and Jacob will welcome us, and all our fathers will praise us.”

18 And as each of the brothers was dragged away, the ones who were left said to him, “Do not shame us, brother, and do not prove false to our brothers who died before us.”

19 You are not unaware of the bonds of love that hold brothers together — the bonds that the divine and all-wise provident care portioned out through fathers to the children born to them, and planted by way of the mother’s womb. [f] 20 In that womb brothers live the same length of time, are shaped in the same span, grow from the same blood, and are brought to term through the same soul. 21 They are born after the same span of time and drink milk from the same springs, and out of those embraces souls that love their brothers are raised up side by side. 22 They grow stronger still by being reared together, by the daily habit of one another, by the rest of their schooling, and by our own training in the law of God.

23 So then, since brotherly love is by its very make-up a fellow feeling, the seven brothers had all the more fellow feeling toward one another. 24 They were schooled in the same law, trained in the same virtues, and reared together in a righteous life, and so they loved one another all the more. 25 Their shared zeal for nobility and goodness stretched tighter the good will and the single mind they had toward each other, [g] 26 for together with devoutness they made their love for one another something they longed for all the more. 27 And yet, though nature and habit and the settled ways of virtue were all making the bonds of brotherhood grow in them together, the brothers who were left bore it, for devoutness’ sake. They watched their brothers abused, tormented to death,