1 Maccabees 1:41-61

Common English Bible

Installation of Gentile worship

⁴¹ Then King Antiochus sent word throughout his entire kingdom that everyone should act like one people, ⁴² giving up their local customs. The Gentile nations all readily accepted the king’s command. ⁴³ Many Jews also willingly adopted the king’s religion. They sacrificed to idols and violated the Sabbath. ⁴⁴ The king sent messengers carrying letters to Jerusalem and the surrounding towns of Judah. He directed Jews to follow customs that had been unknown in the land. ⁴⁵ He banned the regular practices of entirely burned offerings, sacrifices, and drink offerings in the sanctuary. He banned the observance of sabbaths and feast days. ⁴⁶ The sanctuary and its priests were to be defiled. ⁴⁷ They should build new altars, together with sacred precincts and shrines for idols. They should sacrifice pigs and other ritually impure animals. ⁴⁸ Jews were no longer to circumcise their sons. They were supposed to make themselves repulsive to God by doing unclean and improper acts. ⁴⁹ All of this was intended to make them forget the Law and change its regulations. ⁵⁰ Whoever didn’t obey the king would die.

⁵¹ In this way, Antiochus wrote to his whole kingdom. He appointed inspectors over all the people, and commanded the Jewish communities to offer pagan sacrifices, town by town. ⁵² Many Jewish people, those who abandoned the Law, followed suit and did evil in the land. ⁵³ The king’s inspectors^[a] drove Israel into hiding in every place of refuge they had available.

⁵⁴ Now on the fifteenth day of Kislev,^[b] in the year 145, they set up a disgusting and destructive thing on the altar for entirely burned offerings in the sanctuary. The inspectors^[c] built other altars in the surrounding Judean towns. ⁵⁵ They burned incense at the doors of houses and in the streets. ⁵⁶ When they found the Law scrolls, they tore them to pieces and burned them. ⁵⁷ If anyone was caught in possession of a copy of the covenant scroll or if anyone kept to the Law, that person was condemned to death by royal decree. ⁵⁸ They were unrelenting in attacking Israelites, all those who were identified as law-observant month after month throughout the towns. ⁵⁹ On the twenty-fifth day of the month they offered sacrifice on the altar built over the altar for entirely burned offerings. ⁶⁰ In keeping with the decree, they killed women who had circumcised their sons. ⁶¹ They hanged the infant boys from their mothers’ necks. The king’s agents also killed the families of the women as well as those who had performed the circumcisions.