2 Maccabees 12:26-31

New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition

Judas Wins Other Victories

²⁶ Then Judas^[a] marched against Carnaim and the temple of Atargatis and slaughtered twenty-five thousand people.^{(A) 27} After the rout and destruction of these, he marched also against Ephron, a fortified town where Lysias lived with multitudes of people of all nationalities.^[b] Stalwart young men took their stand before the walls and made a vigorous defense, and great stores of war engines and missiles were there.^{(B) 28} But the Jews^[c] called upon the Sovereign who with power shatters the might of his enemies, and they got the town into their hands and killed as many as twenty-five thousand of those who were in it.^(C)

²⁹ Setting out from there, they hastened to Scythopolis, which is seventy-five miles^[d] from Jerusalem. ³⁰ But when the Jews who lived there bore witness to the goodwill that the people of Scythopolis had shown them and their kind treatment of them in times of misfortune, ³¹ they thanked them and exhorted them to be well disposed to their race in the future also. Then they went up to Jerusalem, as the Festival of Weeks was close at hand.^(D)