2 Maccabees 8:15-17

New Catholic Bible

¹⁵ and to do so, if not for their own sake, then at least out of consideration for the covenants made with their ancestors and because they themselves bore his sacred and majestic name.^[a]

¹⁶ Maccabeus assembled his forces, who numbered about six thousand, and exhorted them not to succumb to panic when confronted by the enemy, nor to fear the vast horde of Gentiles who were advancing to attack them unjustly, but to fight bravely, ¹⁷ keeping ever before their eyes the outrages unlawfully perpetrated by the Gentiles against the holy place and the cruel indignities inflicted on the city as well as the subversion of their ancestral way of life.