2 Maccabees 5:15-27

Common English Bible

¹⁵ Not content with these measures, he dared to enter into the holiest temple of all the earth, guided by Menelaus, who had become a traitor to the laws and to his native land. ¹⁶ Clutching the holy equipment with polluted and unclean hands, Antiochus made off with them and the things donated by other kings to increase the prestige, glory, and honor of the holy place. ¹⁷ Antiochus was really pleased with himself, not realizing the Lord had become angry for a short time because of the sins of those who lived in the city. For this reason, he had shut his eyes to the holy temple.^{[a] 18} If they hadn’t previously been involved in so many sins, Antiochus would have been forced to abandon his rashness and been defeated at once when he attacked, just like Heliodorus (the one King Seleucus sent to inspect the treasury). ¹⁹ But the Lord didn’t choose the nation because of the place, but the place because of the nation. ²⁰ So the temple^[b] also shared the misfortunes of the nation, but afterward it also shared in its good fortunes. That which the almighty abandoned in his wrath would again be restored with all glory when the nation was reconciled to the great Lord.

²¹ Antiochus carried away 102,600 pounds of silver from the temple and hurried back to Antioch, imagining in his pride and arrogance that it was possible to sail across the land and march across the sea. ²² He left governors who mistreated the people. In Jerusalem there was Philip of the Phrygians, who had a manner more barbarous than that of the man who appointed him. ²³ In Mount Gerizim there was Andronicus, and in addition there was Menelaus, who treated the citizens worse than the others. In his hostility against the Jewish citizens, ²⁴ Antiochus sent Apollonius, a Mysian leader of twenty-two thousand soldiers, with the command to slaughter all adult men but to sell the women and children into slavery. ²⁵ When Apollonius arrived in Jerusalem, he pretended to be peaceable. He waited until the holy Sabbath day to take advantage of the Jewish rest from work, and then he led an armed parade of his troops. ²⁶ He suddenly killed with swords all those who had come out to see the spectacle. While running into the city with his foot soldiers, he slaughtered a large number of the crowd. ²⁷ But Judas, also known as the Maccabee, and about ten men with him, fled into the highlands where he (along with those accompanying him) managed to avoid defiling themselves by living like wild animals: they ate grass for food.