2 Maccabees 3:19-21

Good News Translation

¹⁹ Women, wearing nothing but skirts of sackcloth, crowded the streets. Young girls whose parents had never allowed them to be seen in public ran to the gates or to the walls of the city, or just stared out of their windows. ²⁰ But wherever they went, they lifted their hands to God in prayer. ²¹ What a pitiful sight it was to see the High Priest in such great agony and frustration and to see everyone in the city confused and lying face down on the ground.