Antiochus Epiphanes and Judas

At the time when Antiochus, who was called Epiphanes, was disputing possession of all Syria with Ptolemy the Sixth, a feud broke out among the powerful men of Judea. They were rivals for power, since none of those in high position could bear to be subject to his equals. Onias, one of the high priests, got the upper hand and drove the sons of Tobias out of the city. They fled to Antiochus and begged him to invade Judea, using them as his guides. The king, who had long been eager to do so, agreed. He set out himself with a very large force, took the city by storm, and killed a great number of those who favored Ptolemy. He let his soldiers loose to plunder without restraint, and he himself robbed the sanctuary and stopped the continual daily sacrifices for three years and six months. But Onias the high priest fled to Ptolemy and received from him a place in the district of Heliopolis, where he built a small town modeled on Jerusalem and a sanctuary like its own. We will speak of these again in their proper place. [a]

Yet Antiochus was not satisfied with his unexpected capture of the city, nor with the plunder and the great slaughter. Carried away by his passions, and remembering what he had suffered during the siege, he forced the Jews to abandon the customs of their fathers, to leave their infants uncircumcised, and to sacrifice pigs on the altar. All of them refused to obey, and the most respected among them were butchered. Bacchides, whom Antiochus sent as commander of the garrison, added these wicked orders to his own natural savagery and left no excess of lawlessness untried. He tortured the leading citizens one by one, and every day he held up before the whole city the sight of its own capture, until by the very excess of his crimes he provoked his victims to dare to defend themselves. So Mattathias son of Asamoneus, one of the priests, from a village called Modein, armed himself together with his household — he had five sons — and killed Bacchides with cleavers. At once, fearing the great number of the garrison troops, he fled to the mountains. But when many of the people joined him he took courage, came down, gave battle, defeated Antiochus’s generals and drove them out of Judea. His success carried him to power, and because he had rid them of the foreigners, his own people willingly accepted his rule. When he died he left the government to Judas, the eldest of his sons. [d]

Judas, believing that Antiochus would not stay quiet, gathered the forces of the country. He was the first to make a treaty of friendship with the Romans, and when Epiphanes invaded the country again he drove him back with a heavy defeat. While the victory was still fresh he attacked the garrison in the city, which had not yet been rooted out, drove it from the upper city and penned the soldiers into the lower, the part of the town that is called the Acra. Having taken control of the temple, he cleansed the whole place and walled it round. He made new vessels for the services and brought them into the sanctuary, since the former ones had been defiled; he built another altar; and he began the sacrifices again. Just as the city was regaining its sacred order, Antiochus died, and his son Antiochus inherited both his kingdom and his hatred of the Jews. [g]

This Antiochus gathered fifty thousand foot soldiers, five thousand horsemen and eighty elephants, and invaded the hill country through Judea. He took the small town of Beth-zur; but at a place called Beth-zechariah, where the pass was narrow, Judas met him with his army. Before the lines engaged, Judas’s brother Eleazar caught sight of the tallest of the elephants, decked with a great tower and gilded battlements. Supposing that Antiochus was on it, he ran far out ahead of his own men, cut his way through the enemy’s ranks and reached the elephant. He could not reach the man he took for the king, because he was too high up; but he stabbed the beast under the belly, brought it down on top of himself and was crushed to death. He achieved nothing more than to have attempted great things, counting life second to glory. The man guiding the elephant was a commoner; and even if it had happened to be Antiochus, the bold man would have gained nothing more than to seem to have chosen death for the mere hope of a brilliant success. The deed was also an omen to his brother of how the whole battle would go. The Jews fought hard and long, but the king’s troops, superior in numbers and favored by fortune, won the day. Many were killed, and Judas fled with the rest to the district of Gophna. Antiochus went on to Jerusalem, stayed there a few days, and left for lack of provisions. He left behind a garrison as large as he thought sufficient and led the rest of his army away to winter in Syria. [h]

When the king withdrew, Judas did not stay idle. Many of his nation came to him, and he gathered together the survivors of the battle and engaged Antiochus’s generals at a village called Acedasa. There he showed himself the bravest man in the battle and killed many of the enemy, but he himself was killed. A few days later his brother John fell victim to a plot by Antiochus’s supporters and died. [j]