4 Maccabees 14

1 and more than that, they urged them on into the abuse — so that they not only thought nothing of the agonies, but mastered the passions of brotherly love as well. [a] 2 O reason, more kingly than kings and freer than free men! [b] 3 O holy and well-tuned harmony of the seven brothers in devoutness!

4 Not one of the seven boys turned coward; not one drew back from death. 5 They all ran as though on the road to immortality, and hurried toward death by way of the torments. 6 Just as hands and feet move in one accord at the soul’s directions, so those holy boys, as if moved by the immortal soul of devoutness itself, agreed together on death for its sake.

7 O all-holy seven of brothers in one accord! For just as the seven days of the world’s making circle around devoutness, [c] 8 so the boys danced their round about the seven, closing their ring around the fear of the torments and breaking it up.

9 We shudder now merely hearing of the affliction of those young men. They did not only see it, and did not only hear the threat spoken on the spot — they suffered it and held out, and that in the anguish of fire. [d] 10 What could be more painful than that? The power of fire is sharp and quick, and it broke their bodies down fast.

11 Do not count it a wonder that reason had the mastery of those men in their torments, when even a woman’s mind thought nothing of agonies more varied still. [e] 12 For the mother of the seven young men bore the racking of each one of her children.

13 Look at how tangled a thing the affection of loving your own children is, dragging everything toward the fellow feeling of the heart — 14 so much so that even animals without reason have the same fellow feeling and affection for their young that people do.

15 Among the birds, the tame ones that keep to the roofs of our houses hold their shield over the nestlings. 16 Others make their nests on mountain tops, on the sheer walls of ravines, in the hollows of trees and at their crowns; there they hatch their young, and they keep off whatever comes near. 17 And if they cannot keep it off, they fly in circles around them, aching with affection, calling out in their own voice, and they help their young however they can.

18 But why point to the fellow feeling that animals without reason have for their young, 19 when even bees, at the season when the comb is being made, fight off whoever comes near, striking with their sting as with iron at those who approach the nest, and beating them back to the death? 20 Yet fellow feeling for her children did not move the mother of these young men, whose soul was one with Abraham’s. [f]