2 Maccabees 5

1About that time Antiochus launched his second expedition into Egypt.

2And throughout nearly the whole city, for forty days, it happened that horsemen were seen running through the air, wearing garments of gold and armed with lances drawn up in squadrons,

3and the brandishing of swords, and squadrons of cavalry drawn up, and attacks and counterattacks by both sides, and the movement of shields, and masses of spears, and the shooting of missiles, and the gleaming of golden ornaments, and all kinds of armor.

4Therefore everyone expected that the appearance would be for good.

5But when a false rumor arose that Antiochus had passed from life, Jason, taking no fewer than a thousand men, launched a sudden attack against the city. When those on the wall had been driven back, and at last the city was already being taken, Menelaus fled into the citadel.

6But Jason kept carrying out merciless slaughter of his own fellow citizens, not understanding that prosperity against kinsmen is the greatest calamity, and thinking that he was winning trophies over enemies and not over his own countrymen.

7He did not gain control of the government, but in the end, receiving shame from the plot, he again fled away to Ammanitis.

8So he met the end of a miserable ruin: confined with Aretas, the ruler of the Arabs, fleeing from city to city, pursued by all, hated as an apostate from the laws and abhorred as the destroyer of his homeland and fellow citizens, he was driven into Egypt.

9He who had made many exiles from their homeland perished in a foreign land, having gone up to the Lacedaemonians as though he would obtain protection because of the kinship.

10And after casting out a multitude unburied, he himself became unwept, and shared in no burial at all, nor in his ancestral tomb.

11When the king was informed about what had happened, he concluded that Judea was in revolt; so, after setting out from Egypt, savage in spirit, he took the city by force of arms.

12And he ordered the soldiers to cut down without mercy those they encountered, and to slaughter those who went up into the houses.

13There was a killing of young and old, a destruction of men and women and children, and slaughters of virgins and infants.

14And in the three whole days, eighty thousand were destroyed: forty thousand by violent hands, and no fewer than those who were slaughtered were sold.

15But not satisfied with these things, he even dared to enter the most holy temple in all the earth, with Menelaus as his guide, the one who had become a traitor both to the laws and to his homeland,

16and with his polluted hands taking the sacred vessels, and with profane hands dragging away the things that had been dedicated by many kings for the increase and glory and honor of the place.

17And Antiochus became arrogant in mind, not perceiving that the Master had been angered for a little while because of the sins of those dwelling in the city; therefore there came to be disregard for the place.

18But if we had not become involved in many sins, then, just as Heliodorus, who was sent by King Seleucus to inspect the treasury, was immediately scourged and turned back from his boldness when he came forward, so also would we have been struck down.

19But the Lord did not choose the nation for the sake of the place, but the place for the sake of the nation.

20Therefore even the place itself, after sharing in the nation's misfortunes, later also shared in its benefits; and though it had been overtaken in the wrath of the Almighty, it was restored again in the reconciliation of the great Master, with all glory.

21So Antiochus, after carrying off from the temple eighteen hundred talents, quickly departed for Antioch, thinking in his arrogance to make the land navigable and the sea passable on foot, because of the exaltation of his heart.

22He also left overseers to mistreat the nation: in Jerusalem, Philip, a Phrygian by birth, but in character more barbarous than the one who appointed him;

23and in Gerizim, Andronicus; and besides these, Menelaus surpassed the others in wickedness toward the citizens, having a hateful disposition toward the Jewish citizens.

24But he sent Apollonius, the chief polluter, with an army of twenty-two thousand, commanding him to slaughter all those in their prime and to sell the women and the younger ones.

25But when this man arrived in Jerusalem and pretended to be peaceable, he held back until the holy day of the Sabbath; and taking the Jews off guard, he ordered those under his command to arm themselves.

26And he confined all the Jews to the spectacle, and, rushing into the city with weapons, he brought down a considerable slaughter.

27But Judas, who was also called Maccabeus, having become about the tenth and having withdrawn, lived in the mountains like a wild animal with those who were with him, and they continued feeding on vegetation so as not to share in the defilement.