2 Maccabees 5 - New Catholic Bible (NCB)

Chapter 5

Jason Dies Wretchedly in Exile. ¹ About this time, Antiochus undertook his second expedition^[a] against Egypt. ² It then happened that all over the city, for almost forty days, there were apparitions of horsemen clad in gold galloping through the air, companies fully armed with lances and drawn swords— ³ squadrons of cavalry in battle order, charges and counter-charges in this direction and that, with brandished shields, massed spears, and hurled javelins, and gold accoutrements and armor of all kinds glittering brightly. ⁴ Therefore, everyone prayed that these apparitions might prove to be a good omen.

⁵ However, when a false rumor began to circulate that Antiochus had died, Jason^[b] commandeered no fewer than a thousand men and launched a surprise attack on the city. When the defenders on the walls were driven back and the city was on the verge of being taken, Menelaus took refuge in the citadel. ⁶ Jason then embarked on a merciless slaughter of his compatriots, failing to comprehend that success against one’s own kindred was the greatest of disasters, but rather imagining that he was winning trophies of victory over enemies, not over his own people. ⁷ However, he failed to seize control of the government. In the end, his treachery only resulted in disgrace for him, and once again he took refuge in the country of the Ammonites.

⁸ At length Jason came to a miserable end. After being accused before Aretas,^[c] the ruler of the Arabs, he fled from city to city, hounded by all, detested as a transgressor of the laws, and hated as the executioner of his country and his compatriots, until he was cast ashore in Egypt. ⁹ From there he crossed the sea to Sparta, where he hoped to obtain sanctuary because of the Spartans’ kinship^[d] with him. There, he who had sent into exile so many children of his homeland, died himself in exile. ¹⁰ Furthermore, this man who had cast out so many to be unburied now had no one to mourn for him, with no funeral of any kind and no place in the tomb of his ancestors.^[e]

¹¹ Antiochus IV Epiphanes Ravages the Temple.^[f] When news of what had happened reached the king, he came to the conclusion that Judea was in revolt. He therefore set out from Egypt, raging like a wild beast, and took the city by storm. ¹² He then ordered his soldiers to cut down mercilessly everyone they met and to slay those who fled to their houses. ¹³ There was the massacre of young and old, the extermination of women and children, and the slaughter of young girls and infants. ¹⁴ In the course of three days there were eighty thousand victims—forty thousand killed in hand-to-hand fighting and another forty sold into slavery.

¹⁵ Not content with this, the king had the audacity to enter the holiest temple in the entire world, with Menelaus, who had become a traitor to the laws and to his country, serving as his guide. ¹⁶ The king laid his unclean hands on the sacred vessels, and with his profane hands he gathered up the votive offerings that other kings had made to enhance the glory and the honor of the holy place. ¹⁷ With an inflated opinion of himself, Antiochus failed to realize that the Lord had been angered for a time because of the sins committed by the inhabitants of the city, and that it was for this reason that he was disregarding the holy place. ¹⁸ If it had not been the case that they were involved in many sinful acts, Antiochus would have been flogged and checked in his presumptuous act as soon as he approached, just as had been the case with Heliodorus, whom King Seleucus had sent to inspect the treasury.

¹⁹ However, the Lord had not chosen the people for the sake of the holy place, but the holy place for the sake of the people.^{[g] 20} Therefore, the holy place itself, having shared in the misfortunes that afflicted the people, afterward shared in their good fortune, and what had been abandoned by the Almighty in his anger was restored again in all its glory once the great Sovereign became reconciled.

²¹ The Governor Mistreats the Jews. Antiochus hurried back to Antioch, taking with him eighteen hundred talents from the temple. He was so arrogant that, in his pride, he thought he could sail on the land and traverse the sea on foot. ²² However, he left governors behind to oppress the people: at Jerusalem he left Philip, a Phrygian by birth^[h] and with a more barbarous nature than the one who appointed him, ²³ and, at Mount Gerizim,^[i] Andronicus; and in addition to these there was Menelaus who lorded it over his compatriots worse than the others did.

Such was Antiochus’s animosity toward the Jewish people, ²⁴ that he sent Apollonius,^[j] the commander of the Mysians, with an army of twenty-two thousand men, with orders to slaughter all the adult men and to sell the women and children into slavery. ²⁵ When this man arrived in Jerusalem, he pretended to be peacefully disposed and waited until the holy Sabbath day. Then, finding the Jews abstaining from work, he ordered his men to parade fully armed. ²⁶ He put to the sword all those who came out to watch, and then he charged into the city with his armed warriors and slaughtered a great number of people.

²⁷ However, Judas Maccabeus,^[k] with about nine others, escaped into the wilderness, where he and his companions lived like wild animals in the hills, eating nothing but what grew wild there to avoid contracting defilement.

Footnotes

1. 2 Maccabees 5:1 Second expedition: the author does not mention the first expedition against Egypt by Antiochus in 169 B.C. (1 Mac 1:16-20) and seems to regard the coming of the Seleucid army into Palestine in 171 B.C. (2 Mac 4:21f) as the first expedition. He apparently combines the first pillage of Jerusalem in 169 B.C. after Antiochus’s first expedition against Egypt (1 Mac 1:20-28; see 2 Mac 5:5ff) with the second pillage of the city two years later (167 B.C.) following the king’s second expedition against Egypt in 168 B.C. (1 Mac 1:29-35; see 2 Mac 5:24ff).
2. 2 Maccabees 5:5 Jason: brother of Onias III and claimant of the high priesthood (2 Mac 4:7-10). He was later supplanted by Menelaus and driven into the Transjordan by him (2 Mac 4:26).
3. 2 Maccabees 5:8 Aretas: King Aretas I of the Nabateans (see 1 Mac 5:25).
4. 2 Maccabees 5:9 Spartans’ kinship: see 1 Mac 12:20f concerning this fictitious kinship between Jews and Spartans.
5. 2 Maccabees 5:10 Remaining unburied constituted an infamous punishment for the Jews (see 1 Mac 7:17; Deut 28:26; Jer 7:33; 22:19).
6. 2 Maccabees 5:11 Obstructed in Egypt by the Romans (see Dan 11:27-30), the Syrian king retaliates against the Jews. The number of the victims is inflated, and the author exaggerates the event as well: he adds to the massacre the pillage that preceded it by a year (169 B.C.). What is important is solely the lesson that he draws from it: Israel has brought misfortune upon itself by sinning against God.
7. 2 Maccabees 5:19 People are more important than even the most sacred institutions (see Mk 2:27).
8. 2 Maccabees 5:22 Philip, a Phrygian by birth: this is the same person mentioned in 2 Mac 6:11; 8:8 but not Philip the regent mentioned in 2 Mac 9:29; 1 Mac 6:14.
9. 2 Maccabees 5:23 Mount Gerizim: a mountain in Samaria near the city of Shechem; at its summit the Samaritans had built a schismatic temple that would be destroyed by John Hyrcanus in 128 B.C.
10. 2 Maccabees 5:24 Apollonius: the commander of the Mysians mentioned in 2 Mac 3:5; 4:4; 1 Mac 1:29.
11. 2 Maccabees 5:27 Judas Maccabeus: the third son of Mattathias, of the Hasmonean family (1 Mac 2:1-28). Defilement was contracted because of taking part in customs contrary to the Mosaic Law (see 2 Mac 4:11; 1 Mac 1:48, 63).