4 Maccabees 3

1But this line of reasoning is utterly ridiculous, for reason evidently does not prevail over its own passions, but over bodily ones.

2For example, reason cannot cut off any one of your desires, but reason can make it possible not to be enslaved to desire.

3No one can cut anger out of your soul, but it is possible to help with anger.

4Reason cannot cut off any one of your evil tendencies, but it is able to join in helping you not to bend to that evil tendency.

5For reason is not the uprooter of the passions, but their adversary.

6Therefore, this is possible to perceive more clearly through the thirst of David the king.

7For when David, attacking the foreigners throughout the whole day, killed many of them along with the soldiers of the nation,

8Then, when evening had come, sweating and very exhausted, he came to the royal tent, around which the whole army of his forefathers had encamped.

9All the others were at the dinner;

10But the king, though very thirsty, even though he had abundant springs, was not able through them to relieve his thirst.

11But some irrational desire for the water among the enemies, tightening itself upon him, shriveled him, and while loosening him, burned him up.

12Therefore, while the defenders were indignant at the king’s desire, two young soldiers, steadfast men, ashamed by the king’s desire, armed themselves with full armor, and, taking a water jar, went over the enemy stockades.

13And after escaping the notice of the gate guards, they kept going through, having made their way through the whole camp of the enemy.

14And after courageously finding the spring, they filled the king’s drink from it.

15And even while burning with thirst, he reasoned that it would be an utterly dreadful danger to the soul if the drink were regarded as equivalent to blood.

16Therefore, setting reason against desire, he poured out the drink as a libation to God.

17For the self-controlled mind is able to conquer the compulsions of the passions, and to extinguish the burnings of desires.

18and to wrestle down the pains of the body, though they are extreme, and by the nobility and goodness of reason to spurn all the dominion of the passions.

19And now the time also calls us to the demonstration of the history of rational self-control.

20For since our fathers had deep peace because of their law-abidingness, and prospered, so that even Seleucus Nicanor, the king of Asia, set apart money for them for the sacred service and approved their polity,

21Then indeed some, having stirred up revolt against the common harmony, made use of calamities in many ways.