4 Maccabees 15

1O reasoning, tyrant over the passions of children! And godliness is to a mother more longed-for than children.

2a mother, with two things set before her—piety, and the temporary safety of her seven sons according to the tyrant’s promise—

3she loved piety more, which saves unto eternal life according to God.

4Oh, how can I describe the child-loving affections of parents, who imprint the likeness of soul and form in the small, marvelous character of a child, especially since mothers make fathers more sympathetic toward their children who have been born.

5For the more mothers are weak in spirit and have more children, the more they are devoted to their children.

6But of all mothers, the mother of the seven became the most devoted to her children, she who through seven pregnancies had her affection for them deeply planted within her;

7and because of the many pangs that each one of them suffered, she was compelled to feel sympathy for them,

8Because of her fear toward God, she disregarded the temporary safety of her children.

9And not only that, but because of the nobility of her sons and their obedience to the law, she had an even greater motherly affection for them.

10For they were righteous and self-controlled, brave and noble-minded and loving their brothers, and so devoted to their mother that, even while keeping the law's requirements to the point of death, they obeyed her.

11Nevertheless, although so many impulses of motherly affection were drawing the mother toward sympathy, the all-varied tortures were not able, by any of them, to turn aside her reason.

12But the mother urged each son individually, and all of them together, toward death for the sake of godliness.

13O sacred nature, and the affections of parents, and filial love toward parents, and nurture, and the unconquerable passions of mothers.

14As she watched each one being tortured and burned, the mother did not change because of her piety.

15she saw the flesh of her children melting in the fire, and the fingers of their feet and hands scattered on the ground, and the flesh of their heads down to the parts around their beards,

16their flesh laid out before them like masks.

17O mother, now tested by pains more bitter than the birth pangs for them.

18O only woman who gave birth to godliness in its fullness.

19Nor, as a third son was breathing his last, did you weep when you saw the eyes of each one, bull-like, looking upon the tortures and the same torment, and their nostrils foretelling death.

20seeing the flesh of her children cut off upon the flesh of her children, and hands severed upon hands, and heads struck off upon heads, and corpses falling upon corpses, and seeing a mass grave of her children,

21Not in this way do siren songs or swanlike voices with feminine sound draw those who hear, as the voices of children calling to their mother amid tortures.

22How greatly and how many times, then, was the mother tortured with torments while her sons were being tortured with wheels and cauteries?

23But devout reason, strengthening her inward affections even in those very sufferings, strained to disregard her temporary love for her children.

24Even while seeing the destruction of her seven children and the intricate variety of the tortures, the noble mother, after embracing them all, let them go because of her faith toward God.

25For just as, in her own soul as in a council chamber, she saw fearsome counselors—nature and birth and love for her children and the torture of her children—

26a mother holding two votes on behalf of her children, one deadly and one saving,

27I did not recognize the salvation that was saving seven sons for a little while.

28But the daughter remembered the steadfastness of Abraham, who feared God.

29O mother of the nation, avenger of the law, defender of godliness, and prizewinner in the struggle through motherly affections.

30O more noble than males in courage, and more manly than men in endurance.

31For just as Noah’s ark, being borne along in the world-filling flood, steadfastly endured the waves,

32So you also, guardian of the law, though surrounded on every side by the flood of passions and pressed by the fierce winds of your sons’ torments, bravely endured the storms of godliness.