4 Maccabees

4 Maccabees 17

How the Mother Died

1 Some of the spearbearers said that when she herself was about to be seized and put to death, she threw herself onto the pyre, so that no one would lay a hand on her body.

2 Mother — you who with seven sons broke down the ruler’s violence, made his evil plans come to nothing, and showed how noble trust can be! 3 You were a roof set nobly on the pillars of your children, and you carried the earthquake of the tortures without once leaning.

4 Take heart, then, mother, holy in soul: the hope your endurance holds is sure with God. 5 The moon in the sky among the stars does not stand in such dignity as you stand honored before God — you who led seven sons, each of them a star’s equal, into the light of devoutness, and are set fast with them in heaven. 6 For your bearing of children went back to Abraham our father.

Words for a Tomb

7 If we were allowed to paint the story of your devoutness the way a painter works on a panel, would the people looking at it not shudder, seeing a mother of seven children endure one torture after another, all the way to death, for devoutness?

8 It would have been worth cutting these words on the tomb itself, to be read as a memorial by the people of our nation:

9 “Here lie buried an old priest, an old woman, and seven sons,

through the violence of a ruler

who wanted to pull down the way the Hebrews live as a people.

10 They avenged their people, with their eyes on God,

and endured the tortures all the way to death.”

A Contest Fought for God

11 Truly it was a divine contest that they fought through. 12 Virtue was presiding over the games that day, testing them by endurance. The victory was imperishable life — a life that lasts through long ages.

13 Eleazar went into the ring first; then the mother of the seven sons entered the contest; then the brothers took their turn. 14 The ruler fought against them, and the world and the life of men looked on. 15 The fear of God won, and crowned its own athletes.

16 Who did not marvel at those athletes of the divine law-giving? Who was not astounded? 17 The ruler himself and his whole council marveled at their endurance, 18 and it is because of that endurance that they now stand beside the divine throne and live out the blessed age. 19 For Moses says, “And all who have been made holy are under your hands.”

What Their Deaths Won

20 And so these men, made holy because of God, have been honored — and not with that honor only, but by the fact that through them our enemies did not get the upper hand over our nation, 21 that the ruler was punished, and that our homeland was made clean. They had become, as it were, a life given in exchange for the sin of the nation. 22 Through the blood of those devout men, and through the atonement their death made, the divine provident care brought Israel safely through, after all the harm done to it before.

23 For when the ruler Antiochus looked at the courage of their virtue and at their endurance under torture, he held their endurance up to his soldiers as an example, 24 and he found his men noble and courageous for battle on foot and for siege work, and he stormed and beat every one of his enemies.