4 Maccabees 16

1 If, then, even a woman — an old woman, and the mother of seven sons — could hold out while she watched her children tortured to death, then it is agreed: devout reason is sovereign over the passions. [a] 2 So I have shown that it is not men only who have mastered the passions; a woman too thought nothing of the greatest tortures.

3 The lions around Daniel were not so savage, nor was the furnace of Mishael, blazing with its fiercest fire, as the nature that burned in that woman — her love of her children — when she saw her seven sons tortured in one way after another. [b] 4 But with the reason that devoutness gives, the mother put out passions so many and so great.

5 Reason this out as well. If the woman had been faint of soul, mother though she was, she would have wailed over them, and she might well have said something like this: [c]

6 “How wretched I am, and how many times over miserable! I bore seven sons and I have become the mother of none. 7 Seven times I carried a child for nothing, seven ten-month terms with no good in them, nursings that came to nothing, wretched years of feeding them at the breast. 8 For nothing, my sons, I bore all those labor pains, and the harder cares of raising you.

9 Some of my sons never married, and those who did married for nothing. I will not see children of yours. I will never be called grandmother and counted blessed. 10 I had many children, and beautiful children, and here I am a widow, and alone, with dirge upon dirge. 11 And when I die, I will not have one son left to bury me.” [d]

12 But the holy, God-fearing mother wailed no such dirge over any of them. She did not turn a single one of them aside to keep him from dying, and she did not grieve for them as though they were dying. 13 It was as though she had a mind of adamant, and were bearing the whole number of her sons a second time, into immortality. Instead she urged them on toward death for devoutness, and begged them to go. 14 Mother — soldier of God for devoutness’ sake, old, and a woman — by steadfastness you defeated even a ruler, and in what you did and what you said you were found stronger than a man. [e]

15 For when you were seized along with your children, you stood there watching Eleazar tortured, and you said to your sons in the Hebrew language: [f]

16 “My sons, this is a noble contest. You have been called into it to bear witness for the nation, so fight it out gladly for the law of our fathers. 17 It would be a shameful thing for this old man to endure the agonies that devoutness brings while you, young men, are frightened off by the tortures. 18 Remember that it is because of God that you were given your share of the world and had the enjoyment of your lives, 19 and that for this reason you owe it to God to endure every pain for him.

20 It was for him that our father Abraham hurried to cut the throat of his son Isaac, the father of our nation; and Isaac, watching his own father’s hand come down on him with the sword, did not flinch. [g] 21 Daniel the righteous was thrown to the lions, and Hananiah and Azariah and Mishael were slung into a furnace of fire — and they endured, because of God. [h] 22 So you too, since you hold the same trust toward God, must not take this hard. 23 It is against all reason that people who know devoutness should not stand up to pain.”

24 With words like these the mother of seven encouraged each one of her sons, and persuaded them to die rather than break the command of God. 25 They knew this as well: that those who die because of God live to God, as Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the patriarchs do. [i]