2 Maccabees 8

1But Judas, who was also called Maccabeus, and those with him, slipping in secretly into the villages, were calling together their relatives; and taking in those who had remained in Judaism, they gathered about six thousand.

2And they were calling on the Lord to look upon the people trampled down by all, and also to have mercy on the temple that had been defiled by ungodly men;

3and to have mercy also on the city that was being destroyed and was about to be leveled to the ground, and to hear the blood crying out to him;

4and also to remember the lawless destruction of the innocent infants, and the blasphemies committed against his name, and to hate evil.

5But when Maccabaeus had formed a band, he had by then become irresistible to the nations, because the wrath of the Lord had turned to mercy.

6And coming upon cities and countryside unexpectedly, he would set them on fire; and by seizing strategic places, he put not a few of the enemies to flight,

7He especially took the nights as allies for such attacks, and the report of his valor spread everywhere.

8But when Philip saw that the man was gradually making progress and advancing all the more often in successes, he wrote to Ptolemy, the governor of Coele-Syria and Phoenicia, to come to the aid of the king’s cause.

9But he quickly selected Nicanor son of Patroclus, one of his chief Friends, and sent him, having assigned to him no fewer than twenty thousand from the nations of every tribe to wipe out the whole Jewish people. They also appointed with him Gorgias, a military man experienced in matters of war,

10But Nikanor undertook to pay to the king the tribute owed to the Romans, amounting to two thousand talents, from the captivity of the Jews.

11So he immediately sent to the cities along the coast, inviting them to buy Jewish bodies, promising to hand over ninety bodies for a talent; but he did not expect the punishment from the Almighty that was about to come upon him.

12But news of Nicanor’s advance came to Judas; and when he had shared with those with him the presence of the army camp,

13But those who had become cowardly and distrusted the justice of God kept slipping away and going into exile.

14But they were selling all that remained, and at the same time were imploring the Lord to rescue those who had been sold by the ungodly Nikanor before he encountered them.

15and not because of them, but because of the covenants made with their fathers, and because of the invocation of his majestic and magnificent name over them.

16Then Maccabeus, after gathering those with him, about six thousand in number, urged them not to be terrified by the enemy, nor to fear the great multitude of the nations that had come against them unjustly, but to fight bravely,

17having set before their eyes the lawless outrage committed by them against the holy place, and the abuse of the city that had been mocked, and also the overthrow of the ancestral way of life.

18For they, he said, have put their confidence in weapons and boldness, but we have put our confidence in Almighty God, who is able with a single nod to bring down both those coming against us and the whole world.

19And he also recounted to them the help that had come to their forefathers, and the one against Sennacherib, how a hundred eighty-five thousand were destroyed.

20And the engagement in Babylonia against the Galatians had gone this way: when all who came to the need were eight thousand, together with four thousand Macedonians, and the Macedonians were at a loss, the six thousand destroyed the one hundred twenty thousand because of the help coming to them from heaven, and they received great advantage.

21With these words he encouraged them and made them ready to die for the laws and the fatherland, and he formed the army into four parts.

22having appointed his brothers to lead each division, Simon and Joseph and Jonathan, assigning to each one a thousand men in addition to five hundred,

23He also brought Eleazar, and after bringing forward the holy book and giving the watchword, “God’s Help,” he himself led the first company and engaged Nicanor.

24But with the Almighty as their ally, they slaughtered more than nine thousand of the enemy, and they wounded and maimed most of Nicanor’s army, and forced them all to flee.

25But they took the money of those who had come to buy them. And after pursuing them for a considerable distance, they turned back from the region, being hemmed in,

26For it was the day before the Sabbath, and for that reason they did not continue pursuing them for long.

27After they had collected their weapons and stripped the spoils from the enemies, they devoted themselves to the Sabbath, abundantly blessing and giving thanks to the Lord who had preserved them to this day, having appointed for them the beginning of mercy.

28But after the Sabbath, having distributed some of the spoils to those who had been oppressed, and to the widows and the orphans, they divided the rest among themselves and their children.

29After doing these things, and making a common prayer of supplication, they begged the merciful Lord to be fully reconciled to his servants.

30And after crushing the forces around Timothy and Bacchides, they killed more than twenty thousand of them, gained firm control of very high strongholds, and divided the plentiful plunder, making themselves equal sharers with the oppressed and orphans and widows, and even with the elderly.

31After carefully stripping them of their arms, they put everything in the proper places, but they carried the rest of the spoils to Jerusalem.

32But they killed the commander among those with Timothy, a thoroughly worthless man who had caused the Jews much distress.

33And while they were celebrating the victory in their homeland, they burned those who had set fire to the sacred gates, including Kallisthenes, who had fled into a certain house for shelter; and he received the reward worthy of his ungodliness.

34But Nikanor, that utterly defiled man, who had brought three thousand merchants for the sale of the Jews,

35Having been humbled by those who were thought to be the least among his own, and by the Lord’s help having laid aside his splendid robe, he made himself like a fugitive, traveling through the inland country in isolation and came to Antioch, having prospered beyond all expectation in the destruction of his army.

36And the one who had undertaken to pay tribute to the Romans from the capture of those in Jerusalem kept proclaiming that the Jews had as their defender one who fought for them, and that for this reason the Jews were invulnerable, because they followed the laws that had been commanded to them.