Category: 4 Maccabees

1 And when he had died, disfigured in his torments, the fifth leaped forward, and said,

2 I intend not, O tyrant, to get excused from the torment which is in behalf of virtue.

3 But I have come of mine own accord, that by the death of me, you may owe heavenly vengeance a punishment for more crimes.

4 O you hater of virtue and of men, what have we done that you thus revel in our blood?

5 Does it seem evil to you that we worship the Founder of all things, and live according to his surpassing law?

6 But this is worthy of honors, not torments;

7 had you been capable of the higher feelings of men, and possessed the hope of salvation from God.

8 Behold now, being alien from God, you make war against those who are religious toward God.

9 As he said this, the spearbearers bound him, and drew him to the catapelt:

10 to which binding him at his knees, and fastening them with iron fetters, they bent down his loins upon the wedge of the wheel; and his body was then dismembered, scorpion-fashion.

11 With his breath thus confined, and his body strangled, he said,

12 A great favor you bestow upon us, O tyrant, by enabling us to manifest our adherence to the law by means of nobler sufferings.

13 He also being dead, the sixth, quite a youth, was brought out; and on the tyrant asking him whether he would eat and be delivered, he said,

14 I am indeed younger than my brothers, but in understanding I am as old;

15 for having been born and reared to the same end, we are bound to die also in behalf of the same cause.

16 So that if you⌃ think proper to torment us for not eating the unclean, then torment!

17 As he said this, they brought him to the wheel.

18 Extended upon which, with limbs racked and dislocated, he was gradually roasted from beneath.

19 And having heated sharp spits, they approached them to his back; and having transfixed his sides, they burned away his entrails.

20 And he, while tormented, said, O period good and holy, in which, for the sake of religion, we brethren have been called to the contest of pain, and have not been conquered.

21 For religious understanding, O tyrant, is unconquered.

22 Armed with upright virtue, I also shall depart with my brethren.

23 I, too, bearing with me a great avenger, O deviser of tortures, and enemy of the truly pious.

24 We six youths have destroyed your tyranny.

25 For is not your inability to overrule our reasoning, and to compel us to eat the unclean, your destruction?

26 Your fire is cold to us, your catapelts are painless, and your violence harmless.

27 For the guards not of a tyrant but of a divine law are our defenders: through this we keep our reasoning unconquered.

1 When he, too, had undergone blessed martyrdom, and died in the caldron into which he had been thrown, the seventh, the youngest of all, came forward:

2 whom the tyrant pitying, though he had been dreadfully reproached by his brethren,

3 seeing him already encompassed with chains, had him brought nearer, and endeavoured to counsel him, saying,

4 You see the end of the madness of your brethren: for they have died in torture through disobedience; and you, if disobedient, having been miserably tormented, will yourself perish prematurely.

5 But if you obey, you shall be my friend, and have a charge over the affairs of the kingdom.

6 And having thus exhorted him, he sent for the mother of the boy; that, by condoling with her for the loss of so many sons, he might incline her, through the hope of safety, to render the survivor obedient.

7 And he, after his mother had urged him on in the Hebrew tongue, (as we shall soon relate) says,

8 Release me that I may speak to the king and all his friends.

9 And they, rejoicing exceedingly at the promise of the youth, quickly let him go.

10 And he, running up to the pans, said,

11 Impious tyrant, and most blasphemous man, were you not ashamed, having received prosperity and a kingdom from God, to kill His servants, and to rack the doers of godliness?

12 Wherefore the divine vengeance is reserving you for eternal fire and torments, which shall cling to you for all time.

13 Were you not ashamed, man as you are, yet most savage, to cut out the tongues of men of like feeling and origin, and having thus abused to torture them?

14 But they, bravely dying, fulfilled their religion towards God.

15 But you shall groan according to your deserts for having slain without cause the champions of virtue.

16 Wherefore, he continued, I myself, being about to die,

17 will not forsake my brethren.

18 And I call upon the God of my fathers to be merciful to my race.

19 But you, both living and dead, he will punish.

20 Thus having prayed, he hurled himself into the pans; and so expired.

1 If then, the seven brethren despised troubles even to death, it is confessed on all sides that righteous reasoning is absolute master over the passions.

2 For just as if, had they as slaves to the passions, eaten of the unholy, we should have said that they had been conquered by the;

3 now it is not so: but by means of the reasoning which is praised by God, they mastered their passions.

4 And it is impossible to overlook the leadership of reflection: for it gained the victory over both passions and troubles.

5 How, then, can we avoid according to these men mastery of passion through right reasoning, since they drew not back from the pains of fire?

6 For just as by means of towers projecting in front of harbors men break the threatening waves, and thus assure a still course to vessels entering port,

7 so that seven-towered right-reasoning of the young men, securing the harbour of religion, conquered the intermperance of passions.

8 For having arranged a holy choir of piety, they encouraged one another, saying,

9 Brothers, may we die brotherly for the law. Let us imitate the three young men in Assyria who despised the equally afflicting furnace.

10 Let us not be cowards in the manifestation of piety.

11 And one said, Courage, brother; and another, Nobly endure.

12 And another, Remember of what stock you⌃ are; and by the hand of our father Isaac endured to be slain for the sake of piety.

13 And one and all, looking on each other serene and confident, said, Let us sacrifice with all our heart our souls to God who gave them, and employ our bodies for the keeping of the law.

14 Let us not fear him who thinks he kills;

15 for great is the trial of soul and danger of eternal torment laid up for those who transgress the commandment of God.

16 Let us arm ourselves, therefore, in the abnegation of the divine reasoning.

17 If we suffer thus, Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob will receive us, and all the fathers will commend us.

18 And as each one of the brethren was haled away, the rest exclaimed, Disgrace us not, O brother, nor falsify those who died before you.

19 Now you are not ignorant of the charm of brotherhood, which the Divine and all wise Providence has imparted through fathers to children, and has engendered through the mother’s womb.

20 In which these brothers having remained an equal time, and having been formed for the same period, and been increased by the same blood, and having been perfected through the same principle of life,

21 and having been brought forth at equal intervals, and having sucked milk from the same fountains, hence their brotherly souls are reared up lovingly together;

22 and increase the more powerfully by reason of this simultaneous rearing, and by daily intercourse, and by other education, and exercise in the law of God.

23 Brotherly love being thus sympathetically constituted, the seven brethren had a more sympathetic mutual harmony.

24 For being educated in the same law, and practising the same virtues, and reared up in a just course of life, they increased this harmony with each other.

25 For a like ardour for what is right and honorable increased their fellow-feeling towards each other.

26 For it acting along with religion, made their brotherly feeling more desirable to them.

27 And yet, although nature and intercourse and virtuous morals increased their brotherly love those who were left endured to behold their brethren, who were ill-used for their religion, tortured even to death.

1 And more that this, they even urged them on to this ill-treatment; so that they not only despised pains themselves, but they even got the better of their affections of brotherly love.

2 O reasonings more royal than a king, and freer than freemen!

3 Sacred and harmonious concert of the seven brethren as concerning piety!

4 None of the seven youths turned cowardly, or shrank back from death.

5 But all of them, as though running the road to immortality, hastened on to death through tortures.

6 For just as hands and feet are moved sympathetically with the directions of the soul, so those holy youths agreed to death for religion’s sake, as through the immortal soul of religion.

7 O holy seven of harmonious brethren! for as the seven days of creation, about religion,

8 so the youths, circling around the number seven, annulled the fear of torments.

9 We now shudder at the recital of the affliction of those young men; but they not only saw, and not only heard the immediate execution of the threat, but undergoing it, persevered; and that through the pains of fire.

10 And what could be more painful? for the power of fire, being sharp and quick, speedily dissolved their bodies.

11 And think it not wonderful that reasoning bore rule over those men in their torments, when even a woman’s mind despised more manifold pains.

12 For the mother of those seven youths endured the rackings of each of her children.

13 And consider how comprehensive is the love of offspring, which draws every one to sympathy of affection,

14 where irrational animals possess a similar sympathy and love for their offspring with men.

15 The tame birds frequenting the roofs of our houses, defend their fledglings.

16 Others build their nests, and hatch their young, in the tops of mountains and in the precipices of valleys, and the holes and tops of trees, and keep off the intruder.

17 And if not able to do this, they fly circling round them in agony of affection, calling out in their own note, and save their offspring in whatever manner they are able.

18 But why should we point attention to the sympathy toward children shewn by irrational animals?

19 The very bees, at the season of honey-making, attack all who approach; and pierce with their sting, as with a sword, those who draw near their hive, and repel them even to death.

20 But sympathy with her children did not turn aside the mother of the young men, who had a spirit kindred with that of Abraham.

1 O reasoning of the sons, lord over the passions, and religion more desirable to a mother than progeny!

2 The mother, when two things were set before here, religion and the safety of her seven sons for a time, on the conditional promise of a tyrant,

3 rather elected the religion which according to God preserves to eternal life.

4 O in what way can I describe ethically the affections of parents toward their children, the resemblance of soul and of form engrafted into the small type of a child in a wonderful manner, especially through the greater sympathy of mothers with the feelings of those born of them!

5 for by how much mothers are by nature weak in disposition and prolific in offspring, by so much the fonder they are of children.

6 And of all mothers the mother of the seven was the fondest of children, who in seven childbirths had deeply engendered love toward them;

7 and through her many pains undergone in connection with each one, was compelled to feel sympathy with them;

8 yet, through fear of God, she neglected the temporary salvation of her children.

9 Not but that, on account of the excellent disposition to the law, her maternal affection toward them was increased.

10 For they were both just and temperate, and manly, and high-minded, and fond of their brethren, and so fond of their mother that even to death they obeyed her by observing the law.

11 And yet, though there were so many circumstances connected with love of children to draw on a mother to sympathy, in the case of none of them were the various tortures able to pervert her principle.

12 But she inclined each one separately and all together to death for religion.

13 O holy nature and parental feeling, and reward of bringing up children, and unconquerable maternal affection!

14 At the racking and roasting of each one of them, the observant mother was prevented by religion from changing.

15 She saw her children’s flesh dissolving around the fire; and their extremities quivering on the ground, and the flesh of their heads dropped forwards down to their beards, like masks.

16 O you mother, who was tried at this time with bitterer pangs than those of parturition!

17 O you only woman who have brought forth perfect holiness!

18 Your firstborn, expiring, turned you not; nor the second, looking miserable in his torments; nor the third, breathing out his soul.

19 Nor when you did behold the eyes of each of them looking sternly upon their tortures, and their nostrils foreboding death, did you weep!

20 When you did see children’s flesh heaped upon children’s flesh that had been torn off, heads decapitated upon heads, dead falling upon the dead, and a choir of children turned through torture into a burying ground, you lamented not.

21 Not so do siren melodies, or songs of swans, attract the hearers to listening, O voices of children calling upon your mother in the midst of torments!

22 With what and what manner of torments was the mother herself tortured, as her sons were undergoing the wheel and the fires!

23 But religious reasoning, having strengthened her courage in the midst of sufferings, enabled her to forego, for the time, parental love.

24 Although beholding the destruction of seven children, the noble mother, after one embrace, stripped offher feelingsthrough faith in God.

25 For just as in a council-room, beholding in her own soul vehement counselors, nature and parentage and love of her children, and the racking of her children,

26 she holding two votes, one for the death, the other for the preservation of her children,

27 did not lean to that which would have saved her children for the safety of a brief space.

28 But this daughter of Abraham remembered his holy fortitude.

29 O holy mother of a nation avenger of the law, and defender of religion, and prime bearer in the battle of the affections!

30 O you nobler in endurance than males, and more manly than men in perseverance!

31 For as the ark of Noah, bearing the world in the world-filling flood, bore up against the waves,

32 so you, the guardian of the law, when surrounded on every side by the flood of passions, and straitened by violent storms which were the torments of they children, did bear up nobly against the storms against religion.

1 If, then, even a woman, and that an aged one, and the mother of seven children, endured to see her children’s torments even to death, confessedly religious reasoning is master even of the passions.

2 I have proved, then, that not only men have obtained the mastery of their passions, but also that a woman despised the greatest torments.

3 And not so fierce were the lions round Daniel, nor the furnace of Misael burning with most vehement fires as that natural love of children burned within her, when she saw her seven sons tortured.

4 But with the reasoning of religion the mother quenched passions so great and powerful.

5 For we must consider also this: that, had the woman been faint hearted, as being their other, she would have lamented over them; and perhaps might have spoken thus:

6 Ah! wretched I, and many times miserable; who having born seven sons, have become the mother of none.

7 O seven useless childbirths, and seven profitless periods of labor, and fruitless givings of suck, and miserable nursings at the breast.

8 Vainly, for your sakes, O sons, have I endured many pangs, and the more difficult anxieties of rearing.

9 Alas, of my children, some of you unmarried, and some who have married to no profit, I shall not see your children, nor be felicitated as a grandmother.

10 Ah, that I who had many and fair children, should be a lone widow full of sorrows!

11 Nor, should I die, shall I have a son to bury me. But with such a lament as this the holy and God-fearing mother bewailed none of them.

12 Nor did she divert any of them from death, nor grieve for them as for the dead.

13 But as one possessed with an adamantine mind, and as one bringing forth again her full number of sons to immortality, she rather with supplication exhorted them to death in behalf of religion.

14 O woman, soldier of God for religion, you, aged and a female, have conquered through endurance even a tyrant; and though but weak, have been found more powerful in deeds and words.

15 For when you were seized along with your children, you stood looking upon Eleazar in torments, and said to your sons in the Hebrew tongue,

16 O sons, noble is the contest; to which you being called as a witness for the nation, strive zealously for the laws of your country.

17 For it were disgraceful that this old man should endure pains for the sake of righteousness, and that you who are younger should be afraid of the tortures.

18 Remember that through God you⌃ obtained existence, and have enjoyed it.

19 And on this second account you⌃ ought to bear every affliction because of God.

20 For whom also our father Abraham was forward to sacrifice Isaac our progenitor, and shuddered not at the sight of his own paternal hand descending down with the sword upon him.

21 And the righteous Daniel was cast to the lions; and Ananias, and Azarias, and Misael, were slung out into a furnace of fire; yet they endured through God.

22 You, then, having the same faith towards God, be not troubled.

23 For it is unreasonable that they who know religion should not stand up against troubles.

24 With these arguments, the mother of seven, exhorting each of her sons, over-persuaded them from transgressing the commandment of God.

25 And they saw this, too, that they who die for God, live to God; as Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and all the patriarchs.

1 And some of the spearbearers said, that when she herself was about to be seized for the purpose of being put to death, she threw herself upon the pile, rather than they should touch her person.

2 O you mother, who together with seven children did destroy the violence of the tyrant, and render void his wicked intentions, and exhibit the nobleness of faith!

3 For you, as an house bravely built upon the pillar of your children, did bear without swaying, the shock of tortures.

4 Be of good cheer, therefore, O holy-minded mother! holding the firmsubstance of thehope of your steadfastness with God.

5 Not so gracious does the moon appear with the stars in heaven, as you are established honorable before God, and fixed in the firmament with your sons who you did illuminate with religion to the stars.

6 For your bearing of children was after the fashion of a child of Abraham.

7 And, were it lawful for us to paint as on a tablet the religion of your story, the spectators would not shudder at beholding the mother of seven children enduring for the sake of religion various tortures even to death.

8 And it had been a worth thing to have inscribed upon the tomb itself these words as a memorial to those of the nation,

9 Here an aged priest, and an aged woman, and seven sons, are buried through the violence of a tyrant, who wished to destroy the polity of the Hebrews.

10 These also avenged their nation, looking to God, and enduring torments to death.

11 For it was truly a divine contest which was carried through by them.

12 For at that time virtue presided over the contest, approving the victory through endurance, namely, immortality, eternal life.

13 Eleazar was the first to contend: and the mother of the seven children entered the contest; and the brethren contended.

14 The tyrant was the opposite; and the world and living men were the spectators.

15 And reverence for God conquered, and crowned her own athletes.

16 Who did not admire those champions of true legislation? who were not astonied?

17 The tyrant himself, and all their council, admired their endurance;

18 through which, also, they now stand beside the divine throne, and live a blessed life.

19 For Moses says, And all the saints are under your hands.

20 These, therefore, having been sanctified through God, have been honored not only with this honor, but that also by their means the enemy did not overcome our nation;

21 and that the tyrant was punished, and their country purified.

22 For they became the ransom to the sin of the nation; and the Divine Providence saved Israel, aforetime afflicted, by the blood of those pious ones, and the propitiatory death.

23 For the tyrant Antiochus, looking to their manly virtue, and to their endurance in torture, proclaimed that endurance as an example to his soldiers.

24 And they proved to be to him noble and brave for land battles and for sieges; and he conquered and stormed the towns of all his enemies.

1 O Israelitish children, descendants of the seed of Abraham, obey this law, and in every way be religious.

2 Knowing that religious reasoning is lord of the passions, and those not only inward but outward.

3 When those persons giving up their bodies to pains for the sake of religion, were not only admired by men, but were deemed worthy of a divine portion.

4 And the nation through them obtained peace, and having renewed the observance of the law in their country, drove the enemy out of the land.

5 And the tyrant Antiochus was both punished upon earth, and is punished now he is dead; for when he was quite unable to compel the Israelites to adopt foreign customs, and to desert the manner of life of their fathers,

6 then, departing from Jerusalem, he made war against the Persians.

7 And the righteous mother of the seven children spoke also as follows to her offspring: I was a pure virgin, and went not beyond my father’s house; but I took care of the built-up rib.

8 No destroyer of the desert,orravisher of the plain, injured me; nor did the destructive, deceitful snake, make spoil of my chaste virginity; and I remained with my husband during the period of my prime.

9 And these my children, having arrived at maturity, their father died: blessed was he! for having sought out a life of fertility in children, he was not grieved with a period of loss of children.

10 And he used to teach you, when yet with you, the law and the prophets.

11 He used to read to you the slaying of Abel by Cain, and the offering up of Isaac, and the imprisonment of Joseph.

12 And he used to tell you of the zealous Phinehas; and informed you of Ananias and Azarias, and Misael in the fire.

13 And he used to glorify Daniel, who was in the den of lions, and pronounce him blessed.

14 And he used to put you in mind of the scripture of Esaias, which says, Even if you pass through the fire, it shall not burn you.

15 He chanted to you David, the hymn-writer, who says, Many are the afflictions of the just.

16 He declared the proverbs of Solomon, who says, He is a tree of life to all those who do His will.

17 He used to verify Ezekiel, who said, Shall these dry bones live?

18 For he did not forget the song which Moses taught, proclaiming, I will kill, and I will make to live.

19 This is our life, and the length of our days.

20 O that bitter, and yet not bitter, day when the bitter tyrant of the Greeks, quenching fire with fire in his cruel caldrons, brought with boiling rage the seven sons of the daughter of Abraham to the catapelt, and to all his torments!

21 He pierced the balls of their eyes, and cut out their tongues, and put them to death with varied tortures.

22 Wherefore divine retribution pursued and will pursue the pestilent wretch.

23 But the children of Abraham, with their victorious mother, are assembled together to the choir of their father; having received pure and immortal souls from God.

24 To whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.