2 Maccabees 4:15-17

New Revised Standard Version, Anglicised Catholic Edition

¹⁵ disdaining the honours prized by their ancestors and putting the highest value upon Greek forms of prestige. ¹⁶ For this reason heavy disaster overtook them, and those whose ways of living they admired and wished to imitate completely became their enemies and punished them. ¹⁷ It is no light thing to show irreverence to the divine laws—a fact that later events will make clear.