Judas Purifies the Temple

When Apollonius, the general of Samaria, heard of this, he took his army and hurried to march against Judas. Judas met him, joined battle with him and defeated him. He killed many of his men, and among them Apollonius himself, their general; and he took the sword Apollonius happened to be wearing and kept it for himself. But he wounded more than he killed, and he took a great deal of plunder from the enemy’s camp and went his way. When Seron, the general of the army of Coele-Syria, heard that many had joined Judas and that he had an army around him large enough to fight and make war, he decided to march against him, thinking it his duty to try to punish those who broke the king’s orders. So he gathered as large an army as he could, added to it the fugitive and impious Jews, and came against Judas. He came as far as Beth-horon, a village of Judea, and pitched his camp there. Judas went to meet him, and when he was about to give battle he saw that his soldiers were reluctant to fight, because they were few and because they were short of food, for they were fasting. So he encouraged them. He told them that victory and the conquest of enemies come not from great numbers in an army but from piety toward God; and that they had the plainest examples of this in their forefathers, who by their righteousness, exerting themselves for their own laws and their own children, had often conquered many tens of thousands — for innocence is the strongest army. By this speech he led his men to despise the enemy’s numbers and to fall on Seron. When they joined battle with him, he defeated the Syrians; and when their general fell among the rest, they all ran away as fast as they could, thinking that their best way to escape. So he pursued them as far as the plain and killed about eight hundred of the enemy, but the rest escaped to the region near the sea. [a]

When King Antiochus heard of these things, he was very angry at what had happened. So he gathered all his own army, together with many mercenaries he had hired from the islands, and prepared to invade Judea about the beginning of spring. But when he had paid out his soldiers’ wages, he saw that his treasury was short and that he lacked money, for the taxes had not all been paid because of the factions among the nations; and he had been so lavish and so generous that what he had was not enough for him. So he resolved first to go into Persia and collect the taxes of that country. He therefore left a man named Lysias, who stood high in his favor, as governor of the kingdom, from the Euphrates River as far as the borders of Egypt and of Lower Asia. He entrusted to him a part of his forces and of his elephants, and charged him to bring up his son Antiochus with all possible care until he came back. He also ordered him to conquer Judea, enslave its inhabitants, utterly destroy Jerusalem and wipe out the whole nation. When King Antiochus had given Lysias these orders, he went into Persia; and in the 147th year he crossed the Euphrates and went on to the upper provinces. [b]

Lysias then chose Ptolemy son of Dorymenes, Nicanor and Gorgias, very powerful men among the king’s friends, gave them forty thousand foot soldiers and seven thousand horsemen, and sent them against Judea. They came as far as the city of Emmaus and pitched their camp in the plain. Auxiliaries came to them from Syria and the surrounding country, and many of the fugitive Jews as well. Besides these, some merchants came to buy those who would be carried off as captives, bringing fetters to bind the prisoners, and the silver and gold they meant to pay as their price. When Judas saw their camp and how many their enemies were, he persuaded his own soldiers to take courage. He urged them to place their hopes of victory in God and to make supplication to him in sackcloth, according to the custom of their country, showing the dress they usually wore to pray in the greatest dangers, and so to prevail on God to give them victory over their enemies. Then he drew them up in the ancient order of battle their forefathers had used, under their commanders of thousands and other officers, and he dismissed those who were newly married and those who had newly acquired property, so that they would not fight like cowards out of too great a love of life, in order to enjoy those blessings. When he had arranged his soldiers in this way, he encouraged them to fight with the following speech: “My fellow soldiers, no time calls more urgently than the present for courage and contempt of danger. If you fight bravely now, you can recover your liberty. Liberty is pleasant to all men in itself, but for us it is far more desirable, because it gives us the freedom to worship God. Since that is where you stand now, you must either recover that liberty, and with it a happy and blessed way of life — the life according to our laws and the customs of our country — or else submit to the most shameful sufferings; and no seed of your nation will be left if you are beaten in this battle. So fight bravely. Suppose that you must die even if you do not fight; but believe that besides such glorious rewards as the liberty of your country, your laws and your religion, you will then win everlasting glory. Prepare your souls, then, as men who will engage the enemy at daybreak tomorrow.” [d]

That was the speech Judas made to encourage them. Then the enemy sent Gorgias with five thousand foot and a thousand horse to fall on Judas by night, with some of the fugitive Jews as guides for that purpose. But the son of Mattathias saw it, and resolved to attack the enemies who were in their camp, now that their forces were divided. So when his men had eaten their supper in good time, he left many fires burning in their camp and marched all night against the enemy at Emmaus. When Gorgias found no enemy in their camp, he suspected that they had withdrawn and hidden in the mountains, and he resolved to go and look for them wherever they were. But at about daybreak Judas appeared before the enemy at Emmaus with only three thousand men, and those poorly armed because of their poverty. When he saw the enemy very well and skillfully fortified in their camp, he encouraged the Jews and told them that they must fight even if it were with their bare bodies, for God had sometimes of old given such men strength, even against those who were more numerous and armed besides, because of their great courage. So he commanded the trumpeters to sound for battle. By falling on the enemy when they did not expect it, and so astonishing and confusing them, he killed many of those who resisted him, and pursued the rest as far as Gazara and the plains of Idumea, Ashdod and Jamnia; and about three thousand of them fell. Yet Judas urged his soldiers not to be too eager for the spoils, for they still had to fight a battle with Gorgias and the forces with him; but once they had overcome them, they could plunder the camp in safety, since these were the only enemies left and they expected no others. Just as he was speaking to his soldiers, Gorgias’s men looked down at the army they had left in their camp and saw that it had been overthrown and the camp burned; for the smoke rising from it showed them what had happened, even from a great distance. When those with Gorgias realized how things stood and saw that Judas’s men were ready to fight them, they too were terrified and took to flight. Then Judas, as though he had already beaten Gorgias’s soldiers without fighting, came back and seized the spoils. He took a great quantity of gold and silver, and of purple and blue cloth, and returned home with joy, singing hymns to God for their success; for this victory did much toward the recovery of their liberty. [e]

At this Lysias was dismayed by the defeat of the army he had sent, and the next year he gathered sixty thousand picked men. He also took five thousand horsemen and invaded Judea. He went up to the hill country of Beth-zur, a village of Judea, and pitched his camp there. Judas met him with ten thousand men, and when he saw how many his enemies were, he prayed to God to help him. Then he joined battle with the first of the enemy to appear, defeated them and killed about five thousand of them, and so made himself a terror to the rest. Indeed Lysias, seeing the great spirit of the Jews and how ready they were to die rather than lose their liberty, and fearing their desperate way of fighting as if it were real strength, took the rest of the army back with him and returned to Antioch. There he enlisted foreigners into his service and prepared to invade Judea with a greater army. [f]

Since the generals of Antiochus’s armies had now been beaten so often, Judas called the people together and told them that after the many victories God had given them, they ought to go up to Jerusalem, purify the temple and offer the appointed sacrifices. But as soon as he and the whole multitude came to Jerusalem and found the temple deserted, its gates burned down, and plants growing wild in the temple because it had been abandoned, he and those with him began to mourn and were utterly dismayed at the sight of the temple. So he chose some of his soldiers and ordered them to fight the guards in the citadel until he had purified the temple. When he had carefully cleansed it, he brought in new vessels: the lampstand, the table and the altar, all made of gold. He hung the curtains at the gates and added doors to them. He also took down the altar of burnt offering and built a new one of stones he gathered, not of stones cut with iron tools. So on the twenty-fifth day of the month Chislev, which the Macedonians call Apellaios, they lit the lamps on the lampstand, offered incense on the altar, laid the loaves on the table and offered burnt offerings on the new altar. Now it so happened that these things were done on the very same day on which their holy worship had fallen away and been turned to profane and common use, three years earlier; for the temple was made desolate by Antiochus and remained so for three years. This desolation came on the temple in the 145th year, on the twenty-fifth day of the month Apellaios, in the 153rd Olympiad; and it was dedicated anew on the same day, the twenty-fifth of the month Apellaios, in the 148th year, in the 154th Olympiad. And this desolation came about according to the prophecy of Daniel, which had been given 408 years before; for he had declared that the Macedonians would overthrow it. [g]

Judas celebrated with the citizens the festival of the restoration of the temple sacrifices for eight days, and left out no kind of pleasure from it; he feasted the people on very rich and splendid sacrifices, and he honored God and delighted them with hymns and psalms. Indeed, they were so glad at the revival of their customs — having unexpectedly regained, after so long an interruption, the freedom of their worship — that they made it a law for their descendants to keep a festival of eight days for the restoration of their temple worship. From that time to this we celebrate this festival and call it Lights. I suppose the reason is that this liberty appeared to us beyond our hopes, and that this is how the festival got its name. Judas also rebuilt the walls around the city and raised very high towers against the raids of enemies, and posted guards in them. He also fortified the city of Beth-zur, so that it might serve as a citadel against any trouble that might come from our enemies.