3 Maccabees 3:9-11

Revised Standard Version

⁹ for such a great community ought not be left to its fate when it had committed no offense. ¹⁰ And already some of their neighbors and friends and business associates had taken some of them aside privately and were pledging to protect them and to exert more earnest efforts for their assistance.

Ptolemy’s Decree That All Jews Be Arrested

¹¹ Then the king, boastful of his present good fortune, and not considering the might of the supreme God,^[a] but assuming that he would persevere constantly in his same purpose, wrote this letter against them: