Judas Defeats the King’s Generals

Meanwhile Mattathias died, after appointing his son Judas in his place as general of the army he had gathered. Under his leadership several battles against the royal forces went well. First of all, he destroyed Apollonius, the enemy’s general, together with his whole army, though Apollonius had come into the fight with a large number of troops. When a man named Seron, who was then governor of Syria, heard of this, he strengthened his forces and attacked Judas with great spirit, confident in his greater numbers. But when the battle was fought he was routed and put to flight, and he went back to Syria having lost nearly eight hundred men. [a]

When Antiochus learned of this he was filled with rage and regret, galled that his generals had been beaten in spite of their large armies. So he gathered help from his whole empire and paid the soldiers a bonus that nearly emptied his treasury. He was in fact particularly short of money at that time. On the one side, the Jews, who used to pay him a yearly tribute of more than three hundred talents of silver, were now in revolt against him. On the other side, many of the Greek cities and countries were unsettled by the evil of persecution. For Antiochus had not spared even the Gentiles. He had tried to persuade them to give up their long-established superstitions and bring them over to a single kind of religious observance. No doubt those of them who held nothing sacred were easily led to give up their ancient forms of worship, but all of them alike were in alarm and distress. For these reasons the taxes had stopped coming in.

Boiling with anger over all this, for the man who had once been the richest of kings now felt keenly the poverty his own wickedness had brought on him, he divided his forces with Lysias. He handed over Syria and the war against the Jews to him, while he himself set out against the Persians to collect the taxes there. Lysias then chose Ptolemy, Gorgias, Doro, and Nicanor as generals for the war, and gave them forty thousand infantry and seven thousand cavalry. At their first attack they caused great alarm among the Jews. Then, when everyone was in despair, Judas urged his men to go into battle with brave hearts. If they put their trust in God, he said, everything would give way before them, for often before now a few fighting against many had won the victory.

A fast was proclaimed and sacrifice was offered, and after that they went down to battle. The result was that the enemy’s forces were scattered, and Judas took their camp and found in it a great deal of gold and treasures of Tyre. For merchants from Syria, never doubting the victory, had followed the king’s army hoping to buy prisoners, and now they were plundered themselves. When messengers brought news of this to Lysias, he raised troops with still greater effort, and a year later he attacked the Jews again with an enormous army. But he was defeated and withdrew to Antioch.