Jonathan, Simon and Hyrcanus

Judas’s brother Jonathan succeeded him. He conducted himself with caution toward his own people in general, strengthened his rule through friendship with the Romans, and made peace with the son of Antiochus. Yet none of this was enough to keep him safe. Trypho the tyrant, who was the young Antiochus’s guardian, had long been plotting against the boy and was trying to get rid of his friends. When Jonathan came with a few men to Antiochus at Ptolemais, Trypho seized him by treachery, put him in chains and marched against Judea. Then, when Simon, Jonathan’s brother, drove him off, Trypho in his anger at the defeat put Jonathan to death. [a]

Simon, however, led the nation’s affairs bravely. He took Gazara, Joppa and Jamnia among the neighboring towns; he also overpowered the garrison and razed the citadel. Later he became an ally of Antiochus against Trypho, whom the king besieged in Dora before his campaign against the Medes. But helping to destroy Trypho did not shame the king out of his greed. Not long afterward Antiochus sent his general Cendebeus with an army to ravage Judea and enslave Simon. Though Simon was by then an old man, he led the war with more than a young man’s vigor. He sent his sons ahead with the strongest of his men, while he himself took part of the army and attacked from another side. He also laid many ambushes in many places, even in the mountains, and prevailed in every encounter. After so brilliant a victory he was appointed high priest, and he freed the Jews from the rule of the Macedonians after a hundred and seventy years. [b]

Simon too fell victim to a plot: he was murdered at a banquet by his son-in-law Ptolemy. Ptolemy imprisoned Simon’s wife and two of his sons, and sent men to kill the third son, John, who was also called Hyrcanus. But the young man learned of their coming in advance and hurried to reach the city, trusting greatly in the people because of the memory of his father’s achievements and their hatred of Ptolemy’s crime. Ptolemy too tried to get in by another gate, but he was driven back by the people, who had already admitted Hyrcanus. He at once withdrew to one of the fortresses above Jericho, called Dagon. Hyrcanus, having received the high priesthood his father had held and offered sacrifice to God, set out in haste against Ptolemy to rescue his mother and brothers. [d]

He attacked the fortress and had the better of Ptolemy in every other way, but he was defeated by a just feeling. Whenever Ptolemy was hard pressed, he brought Hyrcanus’s mother and brothers out onto the wall where everyone could see them, tortured them, and threatened to throw them down headlong unless Hyrcanus withdrew at once. At this, pity and fear overcame Hyrcanus’s anger. But his mother did not give way, either under the torture or at the death she was threatened with. She stretched out her hands and begged her son not to be moved by the outrage done to her into sparing the impious man; for her, she said, death at Ptolemy’s hands was better than immortality, if only he paid the penalty for the crimes he had committed against their house. Whenever John thought of his mother’s courage and heard her pleading, he pressed the attack; but whenever he saw her beaten and torn, he lost his nerve and was wholly overcome by his feelings. While the siege dragged on in this way, the year of rest came round, which the Jews keep idle every seventh year, as they do every seventh day. In that year Ptolemy, freed from the siege, killed John’s brothers together with their mother and fled to Zeno, surnamed Cotylas, the tyrant of Philadelphia. [e]

Antiochus, angry at what he had suffered from Simon, marched into Judea, encamped before Jerusalem and besieged Hyrcanus. Hyrcanus opened the tomb of David, who had been the richest of kings, took out more than three thousand talents of money, and persuaded Antiochus with three hundred talents to raise the siege. Out of the surplus he also became the first of the Jews to maintain foreign troops. [f] Later, however, when Antiochus marched against the Medes, he gave Hyrcanus his opportunity for revenge. Hyrcanus at once attacked the cities of Syria, supposing, as proved true, that he would find them stripped of their best fighting men. He took Medeba and Samaga with the towns near them, and also Shechem and Mount Gerizim, and besides these the nation of the Cutheans, who lived around the temple built in imitation of the one at Jerusalem. He also took a good many other cities of Idumea, among them Adora and Marisa. [g]

He advanced as far as Samaria, where the city of Sebaste, built by King Herod, now stands. He walled it in on every side and set his sons Aristobulus and Antigonus over the siege. They pressed it so relentlessly that famine drove the people of the city to eat even things never used as food. The besieged called in Antiochus, surnamed Aspendius, to help them. He answered readily, but was defeated by Aristobulus and his brother, who pursued him as far as Scythopolis before he escaped. The brothers returned to Samaria, shut the people inside the wall again, took the city, razed it, and sold its inhabitants as slaves. As their successes continued they did not let their zeal cool, but advanced with their army as far as Scythopolis, overran it, and ravaged all the country this side of Mount Carmel. [h]

But the successes of John and his sons stirred up envy, and envy stirred up revolt among his countrymen. Many banded together against them and would not rest until, fanned into open war, they were defeated. John lived the rest of his life in prosperity and governed the state excellently for thirty-three whole years, and he died leaving five sons. He was truly blessed, and gave no one cause to blame fortune on his account. He alone possessed the three highest things: rule over his nation, the high priesthood, and prophecy. For the Deity spoke with him, so that he was ignorant of nothing that was to come. He foresaw and foretold that his two elder sons would not remain masters of the state; and their downfall is worth relating, to show how far they fell short of their father’s good fortune.