2 Maccabees 5 — Greek text and reception

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About this time Antiochus organized his second expedition into Egypt.

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Throughout the whole city, for nearly forty days, horsemen were seen racing through the air, wearing robes interwoven with gold, armed with lances and arrayed in squadrons; there were drawn swords,

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formations of cavalry, attacks and countercharges on either side, movements of shields, masses of spears, volleys of missiles, flashes of golden ornaments, and armor of every kind.

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Therefore everyone prayed that the manifestation had come for good.

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When a false rumor arose that Antiochus had departed this life, Jason took no fewer than a thousand men and suddenly attacked the city. Those on the wall were driven back, and when the city was finally being taken, Menelaus fled to the citadel.

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Jason slaughtered his own fellow citizens without mercy, not realizing that success against his kinsmen was the greatest misfortune. He imagined he was setting up trophies over enemies rather than his own countrymen.

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He did not gain control of the government; receiving shame as the outcome of his plot, he again went away as a fugitive into the Ammonite country.

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In the end he met a disastrous conclusion. Accused before Aretas, ruler of the Arabs, he fled from city to city, pursued by everyone, hated as a deserter of the laws and abhorred as the executioner of his homeland and fellow citizens, until he was driven into Egypt.

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He who had made many strangers to their homeland perished in a foreign land, having sailed to the Lacedaemonians in the hope of obtaining shelter because of their kinship.

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He who had thrown out multitudes unburied went unmourned and received neither any funeral care whatever nor a place in his ancestral tomb.

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When news of these events reached the king, he concluded that Judea was in revolt. He therefore broke camp in Egypt, savage in spirit, took the city by force of arms,

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and ordered the soldiers to cut down without mercy those they met and slaughter those who went up into the houses.

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There was killing of young and old, destruction of boys, women and children, and slaughter of virgins and infants.

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In the space of three days eighty thousand were lost: forty thousand in the acts of violence, and no fewer than those slaughtered were sold.

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Not content with this, he dared to enter the holiest temple in all the earth, with Menelaus as guide—the man who had become a traitor to both the laws and his homeland.

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With defiled hands he took the sacred vessels, and with profane hands swept away the gifts other kings had dedicated for the enhancement, glory and honor of the place.

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Antiochus was exalted in his mind, not seeing that the Master had been briefly angered because of the sins of those inhabiting the city, and therefore had disregarded the place.

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Had they not happened to be involved in many sins, he too, like Heliodorus, whom King Seleucus sent to inspect the treasury, would have been scourged immediately upon advancing and thrown back from his rashness.

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But the Lord did not choose the nation for the sake of the place; He chose the place for the sake of the nation.

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Therefore the place itself, having shared in the nation's misfortunes, afterward shared in its benefits. What had been abandoned in the Almighty's anger was restored again in all glory when the great Master became reconciled.

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Antiochus, then, carried off eighteen hundred talents from the temple and quickly withdrew to Antioch. In his arrogance he imagined he could make the land navigable and the sea passable on foot, because of the haughtiness of his heart.

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He also left overseers to afflict the people: in Jerusalem, Philip, a Phrygian by birth, whose character was more barbarous than that of the man who appointed him;

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and at Gerizim, Andronicus; besides these, Menelaus, who exalted himself over his fellow citizens more wickedly than the others. Having a hateful disposition toward the Jewish citizens,

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he sent Apollonius, commander of the Mysians, with an army of twenty-two thousand, ordering him to slaughter all the men in their prime and sell the women and the younger people.

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On arriving in Jerusalem, Apollonius pretended to be peaceable and waited until the holy day of the Sabbath. Finding the Jews at rest, he ordered those under him to parade under arms.

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He stabbed all who came out to watch, and rushing armed into the city, struck down considerable multitudes.

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But Judas, also called Maccabeus, withdrew into the wilderness with about nine others. He and those with him lived in the mountains like wild animals, continually eating plants so as not to share in the defilement.