1 Maccabees 6:1-13

Common English Bible

Last days of Antiochus Epiphanes

6 King Antiochus was traveling through the upper provinces when he heard that Elymais, a city in Persia, was famous for its great quantities of silver and gold. ² Its temple was very rich and contained gold shields, breastplates, and weapons that Alexander (the son of Philip, the first Macedonian king to rule over the Greeks) left there. ³ So he went and tried to take the city by force and plunder it. But he was unsuccessful because the city’s inhabitants knew about his plan. ⁴ They resisted him in battle, and he fled. With great disappointment, he planned to return to Babylon.

⁵ While King Antiochus was in Persia, someone came to him and reported that the armies that had gone into the land of Judah had been thoroughly defeated. ⁶ Lysias, who had gone first with a strong force, had turned and run from the Jews. The Jews then grew stronger when they took weapons, supplies, and abundant spoils from the armies they defeated. ⁷ They had taken down the disgusting thing that he had set up on the altar in Jerusalem. Furthermore, they had surrounded the sanctuary and also Lysias’ town Beth-zur with high walls like before.

⁸ When the king heard this news, he was stunned and badly shaken. He took to his bed, sick from grief. Things hadn’t turned out for him as he had planned. ⁹ He lay there for many days because he was deeply depressed. He realized that he was dying. ¹⁰ He called his closest political advisors^[a] and said to them, “Sleep has left my eyes. I’m depressed from worrying. ¹¹ I say to myself, What distress I’ve come to! What a great flood I’ve now been plunged into! Once I was kind and was loved in my power. ¹² But now I recall the wrongs I did in Jerusalem. I seized all its silver and gold equipment. I ordered the destruction of the inhabitants of Judah without good reason. ¹³ I know it’s because of all this that these misfortunes have come on me. I’m here, dying of bitter disappointment, in a foreign land.”