Simon Succeeds Jonathan

When Trypho learned how things had ended for Demetrius, he was no longer loyal to Antiochus, but plotted to kill him and seize the kingdom for himself. What stood in the way of this plan was his fear of Jonathan, who was a friend of Antiochus; so he decided to get Jonathan out of the way first and then set about his designs on Antiochus. Resolving to destroy him by deceit and treachery, he came from Antioch to Beth-shan, which the Greeks call Scythopolis. There Jonathan met him with forty thousand picked men, for he supposed Trypho had come to fight him. When Trypho saw that Jonathan was ready for battle, he won him over with gifts and friendliness and ordered his own officers to obey Jonathan. By this he meant to assure him of his goodwill and remove every suspicion, so that Jonathan would grow careless and could be taken off guard, foreseeing nothing. He also advised him to dismiss his army. There was no need to bring it now, he said, since there was no war and everything was at peace. He urged him instead to keep a few men about him and come with him to Ptolemais, for he would hand the city over to him and put all the other strongholds in the country into his power; that, he said, was what he had come for. [a] Jonathan suspected none of this. Believing that Trypho gave him this advice out of goodwill and honest intent, he dismissed his army and kept only three thousand men. Two thousand of these he left in Galilee, and he himself went with the other thousand to Ptolemais with Trypho. The people of Ptolemais shut the gates, as Trypho had ordered them to do; he took Jonathan alive and killed all who were with him. He also sent men against the two thousand left in Galilee to destroy them too. But they had heard the report of what had happened to Jonathan, and before Trypho’s men arrived they put on their armor and marched out of the country. The men sent against them, seeing them ready to fight for their lives, left them alone and returned to Trypho.

When the people in Jerusalem heard that Jonathan had been taken and the soldiers with him destroyed, they lamented what had befallen him, and everyone missed him bitterly. A great fear fell on them, and with good reason, and it grieved them: now that they had lost Jonathan’s courage and foresight, the nations around, who were hostile to them and had kept quiet only because of Jonathan, would rise against them, and by making war on them would force them into the gravest danger. And what they suspected did happen. When the nations heard of Jonathan’s death, they began to make war on the Jews as having no leader, and Trypho himself gathered an army, meaning to go up into Judea and make war on its people. Simon saw the people of Jerusalem terrified by all this. Wishing to put heart into them by a speech, so that they would stand up eagerly to Trypho when he came, he called the people together in the temple and there began to encourage them: “My countrymen, you know well how gladly I and my brothers, with our father, have dared to die for your freedom. I have no lack of such examples, and those of our house have counted it their part to die for the laws and our worship. So there is no fear great enough to drive this resolve out of our souls and bring in, in its place, a love of life and a contempt for glory. Follow me, then, eagerly wherever I lead, for you are not without a leader able to suffer and to do the greatest things for you. I am not better than my brothers, that I should spare my own life; nor am I worse, that I should flee and abandon what seemed to them the noblest thing of all, to die for the laws and for your worship of God. By the very deeds that must prove me their true brother, I will show myself their brother. For I am confident that I will take vengeance on the enemy, that I will rescue all of you, with your wives and children, from their outrages, and that with God’s help I will keep the temple safe from being sacked. For I see that the nations despise you as having no leader, and are eager for war.” [b]

When Simon had spoken these words, the people took heart again. Their spirits, which had sunk through fear, rose to better and good hope, so that all the people cried out together that Simon should be their leader and have charge of them in place of his brothers Judas and Jonathan; they would obey him, they said, in whatever he commanded. He at once gathered all the fighting men of his own forces and hurried to rebuild the walls of the city, securing it with very high and strong towers. He sent a friend of his, one Jonathan son of Absalom, with an army to Joppa, with orders to drive out its inhabitants, for he was afraid they would hand the city over to Trypho. He himself stayed behind to guard Jerusalem. [d] Trypho set out from Ptolemais with a large army and came into Judea, bringing Jonathan with him in chains. Simon met him with his forces at the city of Adida, which stands on a hill with the plains of Judea lying below it. When Trypho learned that the Jews had made Simon their leader, he sent to him, meaning to get the better of him too by deceit and treachery. He told him that if he wanted his brother Jonathan released, he must send a hundred talents of silver and two of Jonathan’s sons as hostages, so that Jonathan, once set free, would not make Judea revolt from the king; for he was being held in chains just now, Trypho said, because of money he had borrowed from the king and still owed. Simon was not deceived by Trypho’s trick. He understood that if he gave the money he would lose it and still not free his brother, and would hand Jonathan’s sons to the enemy besides. But he was afraid of being slandered before the people as the cause of his brother’s death, for not having given either the money or the sons for him. So he gathered the army and told them Trypho’s terms. He said that they were a trap and a plot, but that it was better to send him the money and the sons than to refuse what Trypho proposed and be blamed for not being willing to save his brother. So Simon sent Jonathan’s sons and the money. Trypho took them, but he did not keep his word or release Jonathan. Instead he took his army and went around through the country, having decided to go up to Jerusalem by way of Idumea, and he came to Adora, a city of Idumea. Simon marched alongside him with his army, always camping opposite him. [e]

Those in the citadel sent to Trypho, begging him to hurry to them and send them food. He made his cavalry ready, intending to be in Jerusalem that same night. But a heavy snow fell in the night, covering the roads and making them so deep that they could not be traveled, especially by horses, and this kept him from reaching Jerusalem. So Trypho moved off from there and came into Coele-Syria. He made a swift invasion of the land of Gilead, killed Jonathan there, gave orders for him to be buried, and returned himself to Antioch. Simon sent to the city of Baskama and brought his brother’s bones back, and buried them in Modein, their native town; and all the people mourned greatly for him. Simon also built a very large monument for his father and his brothers, of white polished stone. He raised it to a great height, to be seen from far away, set colonnades around it, and put up pillars each made of a single stone, a wonderful thing to see. Besides these he built seven pyramids for his parents and his brothers, one for each, made to astonish by their size and beauty, and they are preserved to this day. So much care, we know, did Simon take over Jonathan’s burial and over building monuments for his family. Jonathan died when he had been high priest four years and had led the nation. These were the circumstances of his death. [g]

Simon, whom the people had made high priest, freed the nation in the very first year of his high priesthood from its slavery to the Macedonians, so that they paid them tribute no longer. The Jews gained this freedom and release from tribute after a hundred and seventy years under the kings of Syria, counted from the time when Seleucus, called Nicator, took possession of Syria. The people’s devotion to Simon was so great that in their contracts with one another and in their public records they wrote, “In the first year of Simon, benefactor and ethnarch of the Jews”; for under him they prospered greatly and overcame the enemies around them. Simon subdued the city of Gazara, and Joppa, and Jamnia. He also took the citadel in Jerusalem by siege and razed it to the ground, so that it would no longer be a base from which their enemies, once they seized it, could do them harm, as it had been until then. When he had done this, he thought it best and most to their advantage to level the very hill on which the citadel happened to stand, so that the temple would be higher. He called the people to an assembly and urged them to let him do it, reminding them of what they had suffered from the garrison and the Jewish deserters, and of what they might suffer if a foreigner should hold the kingdom again and a garrison be set in the citadel. With these words he persuaded the people, since he was advising them for their own good. They all set to work and cut down the hill, and without stopping night or day they brought it down level with the ground in three full years. From then on the temple stood higher than everything, now that the citadel and the hill it stood on had been demolished. These were the things done under Simon. [i]